ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ

So many things went wrong in the last days of Linda Johnson’s life.

But the series of events that set up the tragedy of Johnson’s brutal killing didn’t just happen once.

They’ve been going on for years. They happen as a part of the way our community deals with, or doesn’t deal with, the reality of mental illness.

Let’s start with the shameful fact that Johnson was bludgeoned to death outside of the Kapolei police station, just steps from the front door. the killing had to be called into the station.

The cops inside were unaware of the attack that was happening on the police station property. Guess they don’t have a Ring camera. The rest of us do. We have to. Oahu is a dangerous place, and, increasingly, we have to protect and serve ourselves.

This is a terrible addition to, and an escalation of, recent crimes that have taken place right under the cops’ noses. In October 2021, just outside the Waikiki police station, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.

It was, almost unbelievably,. The whole area went up in a spectacular blaze in February 2020 in the same spot just feet from the Waikiki substation.

Maybe the cops were all out on patrol and not sitting at their desks. Maybe the substation has a really good air-filtration system so no one on duty inside could smell the smoke. Maybe they just thought the rookie had burned some toast. Whatever. It happened twice.

As Denby Fawcett reported, the Chinatown police substation was recently vandalized. The window on the front door was shattered and temporarily patched with red tape. Maybe the Honolulu Police Department needs to hire private security for its facilities like so many businesses do.

The killing of Linda Johnson happened outside the Kapolei police station because the man charged on suspicion of second-degree murder in the case had just been released from the police station cell block.

Michael Armstrong had been arrested the night before after allegedly causing a disturbance at a group home facility and punching a police officer who responded. He was released when the city prosecutor’s office declined to take the case and instead, asked for further investigation.

So Armstrong, in whatever agitated condition that led to the original call about his behavior and the alleged assault on a police officer, was released with no follow-up, no plan, no guard rails to keep him out of further trouble.

Linda Johnson was outside the Kapolei police station because she had been arrested, too. Her crime was, essentially, being homeless.

She was arrested for sleeping at Kuhio Beach Park in Waikiki when the park was closed. She ended up in Kapolei because a closer cell wasn’t available. Once released from custody, she had nowhere to go.  on her long struggle with mental illness. She might have stayed near the police station thinking it was safe.

Instead, she was beaten to death, allegedly by a man whose violence already had been reported to the police.

Here’s the start of the critical to-do list:

1. HPD needs more police officers.
2. HPD police officers need to level up.
3. There has to be a better way to deal with mentally ill homeless people than ignoring them or arresting them. We’ve now had decades of practice, spent tens of millions of dollars and we still haven’t figured it out.
4. A person arrested for violent behavior needs to be evaluated by a professional for the potential to be a danger to self, danger to others or gravely disabled before being turned loose with nothing in place to help them or prevent them from hurting others.
5. The city prosecutor’s office needs a reset. It’s like a computer that got overloaded with software and is now glitchy. Steve Alm was elected to rid the stink left behind by the former administration, but it’s not clear that ’90s-era programs like Chinatown Weed and Seed can be effective in the 2020s, especially considering his office’s now

This case is too horrible to slip into the fog of forgetfulness or to fall out of the news cycle when something new and outrageous captures the public attention. Honolulu should not be so hardened and cynical that we shrug at the brutality suffered by a woman who was not able to take care of herself.

It represents the worst that can happen when so many things are left unfixed in a community. It was not so much an aberration but an eventuality.