Sometimes the best ideas are the obvious ones that make you slap your forehead. A woman called to ask why The GardenIsland doesn’t print the police artist’s sketch of a possible suspect in the West Side killings on the front
Sometimes the best ideas are the obvious ones that make you slap your
forehead.
A woman called to ask why The GardenIsland doesn’t print the
police artist’s sketch of a possible suspect in the West Side killings on the
front page every day until an arrest is made. She also wondered why the drawing
isn’t posted in more public places than the reported few on that side of the
isle.
Great questions.
For the newspaper’s part, the answer was that
the sketch won’t be a daily 1-A staple. But we’ll print it more often. We
shouldn’t assume everybody saw it the first time we printed it and committed it
to memory.
As for other ways of displaying the rendering of the man
authorities think may have murdered two women and brutally attacked a third
since April, the early word back from Kaua’i County officials is that stores,
offices, community centers and so on are good places to do it, alright, and
worth looking into.
The lady who gave some brains here a kick-start noted
that, in other parts of the world where she has lived at the same time a serial
killer was at work, drawings of the suspect were virtually plastered
everywhere. What better way is there, she pointed out, to get the public
involved – and put possible victims on alert – than to make death’s face
familiar?
For instance, women visitors to Kaua’i, traveling around,
hitchhiking and whatever, could certainly be at risk if they meet up
unknowingly with a serial killer.
The news media’s role in helping make
them and others aware of that risk can sometimes ruffle feathers. Just this
week, several readers complained to TGI about its front-page story Monday about
infamous serial murder cases around the world. Our intent with the story was to
inform Kauaians about the scope and prevalence of such cases, many of which
weren’t initially thought to be serial in nature until the body count climbed.
But upset readers claimed we were frightening people needlessly, especially
with the headline “A murderous plague comes to Kaua’i.”
Two days later,
Kaua’i Police inspector Mel Morris, in a prepared statement, scolded the media
for continuing to “sensationalize” the island’s cases and, in the process,
potentially jeopardizing the investigation. He apparently was set off by a
Honolulu television station’s news report – “flat out wrong,” he called it –
that police had a suspect in custody.
Morris may have a point, at least on
the TV station.
Also right are the woman who wants to see the suspect
sketch more often, and other concerned citizens who want the Westside cases to
be high-profile until they’re solved.
The respective interests should mesh,
not clash.
TGI editor Pat Jenkins can be reached at 245-3681 (ext.
227) and [
HREF=”mailto:pjenkins@pulitzer.net”>pjenkins@pulitzer.net]