On Sunday, West Hawaii Today will begin publishing weekly police arrest logs.
It’s nothing new, newspapers have been doing it for decades — who was arrested, age, town where they live, reason for arrest and bail amount.
But it’s new for this one so, come every Sunday, a page will be filled with lines like: John Doe, 40, Kailua-Kona, disorderly conduct, $250.
If they’re arrested then released pending investigation, that will be noted in the report, too.
The reason is information sharing. A goal of any paper is telling the community as much as they can about their neighbors or even people they’ve never met before and, unfortunately, arrests are a part of this island as they are anywhere else. Being our community is West Hawaii, the arrest logs — which are public record furnished by the Hawaii Police Department — will stick to North and South Kohala, Kona, Ka‘u and Hamakua police districts.
Readers of this opinion page will probably remember letters to the editor around the holiday season calling for the names to be printed of DUI suspects as a way to hold them accountable, as well as deter others. This isn’t a reaction to that, though the points were valid. This is an addition that’s been in works for awhile.
Some say printed police logs are gossip fodder, but what anyone does with any information is up to them.
It won’t be sensational, it won’t be flashy and it will never be on the front page.
It will also be reserved for print and there are a couple reasons for that.
First, Sunday print editions should always be full of news, info, ads and deals people can’t find anywhere else. This can be a part of that.
Second, we won’t follow a great majority of the arrest log cases after the fact, we won’t tell you how they turned out. The logs are a snapshot of what’s happening and where. They can show cases where the arrested were released and never charged, which is not that uncommon. So it spares the innocent from having a disparaging report headline their online profiles even after their named has long been cleared.
We hope you find the information relevant.