Whats crime like on the island these days? Should I have much concern for my safety if i had to walk a mile or so around dark? Just curious.
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Staying safe on Oahu
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Re: Staying safe on Oahu
Originally posted by memorylaneWhats crime like on the island these days? Should I have much concern for my safety if i had to walk a mile or so around dark? Just curious.
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Re: Staying safe on Oahu
Today's Honolulu Advertiser reported on crime statistics for 2003, comparing Honolulu to other cities:
Property crimes (per 100,000 residents per year)
5,852.6 Phoenix
5,335.9 Honolulu
4,560.6 Las Vegas
4,058.4 San Francisco
3,290.1 San Diego
Violent crimes
694.5 Las Vegas
537.7 San Francisco
506.5 Phoenix
476.9 San Diego
287.9 Honolulu
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Re: Staying safe on Oahu
I think anyone can be quite safe here. The key here as it is elswhere is to not put yourself in the wrong place. This is a matter of common sense. Going to some hole in the wall bar in a rough neighborhood where you are definetly out of place for example. Personal behavior is another thing that can get you in trouble. Arrogance towards people is a no know. Almost every instance of someone getting hurt or robbed happened because the victim was in a place he shouldn't have been.
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Re: Staying safe on Oahu
Originally posted by sheik yerfaniArrogance towards people is a no-no.
Don't go to a place demanding to see some premarketed fake aloha spirit.
(awrite gawdayumit. where IS that aloha spirit!? They told me it was around here somewhere!)
Do go, expecting a good time, free of crime, because Honolulu is a built up congested city like any other in amurikuh where you will see what you want to see. Life is a self fulfilling prophecy. It's a mirror. You get back what you put out.
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Re: Staying safe on Oahu
Originally posted by sheik yerfaniAs for looking for the Aloha spirit, it is alive and well here.
For decades, it was never a conceptualized "thing" as it is now. We just didn't separate it from our life or see it as a commodity until Hawaiian culture started to be commercialized and marketed to the world. As "paradise", fulla heaploads of that good ol' unique "aloha spirit" found on the third shelf there at ABC store next to the cheap hollow plastic Ku tiki god with the red rhinestone eyes. But when people come over from a bustling mainland city and think that's all they're gonna see; "paradise", and unfortunately experience the haphazard occasional 'crime' or lack of aloha spirit to any degree, then they feel ripped off. Cuz they were sold a bill of goods. and they didn't get exactly that.
aloha spirit;
It is an internal thing. and external too, cuz it permeates our lives.
(It may have gone underground to a degree . ) But it can't be conceptualized and crystalized, formatted, made a statute on the lawbooks, (as the local government has done) It is not as many think it is, as the tourist industry would have it;
"Oh look, there is some o' that aloha spirit we heard about. yea.. right over there..."
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Re: Staying safe on Oahu
The spirit of Aloha: My experience is that it helps to be Hawaiian at heart. It helps to embrace the local people, their culture, music and dance. Locals can sense through na'au how sincere you are. I have been fortunate to learn about polynesia thanks to a hanai daughter that is Hawaiian. So I think it is important to join in, try to meet the real peoples of Hawaii and don't isolate yourself to fellow travelers. You need a mix of ethnicites that reflect the other world that is Hawaii.
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Re: Staying safe on Oahu
Originally posted by sheik yerfaniLocals can sense through na'au how sincere you are.
azzrite! I sell now and then at da swap meet; it's a good place to people watch and there, you get an immediate sense of this difference;
Mainlanders come by; more often than not; they don't talk, look up, acknowledge. many are snide. pushy. affrontive. caustic. demanding. argumentative; "Well I can get that around the corner for a dollar cheaper!"
whereas locals; we talk story. cuz we all ohana. or at least give the confirmation. or you goin be bonked, shut down. (see "the wat up show" at the short film festival?)
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Re: Staying safe on Oahu
One other good survival tip is if possible, go places with a local! Usually "criminal types" won't mess with you if you hang out with someone who looks local, mainly because the locals know where it's safe and where it's dangerous to go.
Miulang"Americans believe in three freedoms. Freedom of speech; freedom of religion; and the freedom to deny the other two to folks they don`t like.” --Mark Twain
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Re: Staying safe on Oahu
Originally posted by MiulangOne other good survival tip is if possible, go places with a local! Usually "criminal types" won't mess with you if you hang out with someone who looks local, mainly because the locals know where it's safe and where it's dangerous to go.
Miulang
but je'like anywhere. carry yourself with assurance and don't act the ugly amercian, chances are better; you goin' do o.k.
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Re: Staying safe on Oahu
Here's another crime statistics figure for you: Honolulu is the 3rd safest city (population 500,000+) in the USA according to this survey.
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Re: Staying safe on Oahu
Honolulu is one of the safest places I have ever been. There is low-level property crime, and there might be more of that than other places. If you leave an expensive camera in your car at Pali Lookout, there's a good chance that it will be gone by the time you return, for example. I noticed a funny father-son team getting ready to take stuff from under my towels while I played with my daughters at Kuhio Beach last year, too. (I let them know that they should move on instead of waiting for them to take something and then going after them, because we were on vacation.) While that sort of thing can be a pain in the neck, avoiding theft is fairly straightforward, especially if you make an effort not to bring too many unnecessary expensive or indispensable things with you.
There isn't a lot of violent crime. I know the locals will say that things are bad in some places, that ice is out of control, etc., but there is simply no comparison between Honolulu and other urban areas of its size or larger. (I might have a jaundiced view from D.C., but I think the comparison holds even with, for example, Portland or Cleveland or Houston.)
That's one of the reasons that Dog the Bounty Hunter cracks me up. There was an episode when he was standing at the chess tables in Waikiki and telling the viewers that it was drug-central Waikiki. If that's true, the old-timers playing speed chess out there must be criminal masterminds because I never suspected any distribution or violence there.
I'll qualify my assessment with one caveat: I've had the fortune of marrying into a wonderful Samoan family, so I've never gone anywhere in Hawaii (be it Mayor Rights or KPT or Kam IV or wherever) without having the feeling that there was fam nearby who had my back. Still yet, other than the prospect of getting into a bar fight, or threatened by some puny mugger with a swiss army knife -- both of which you are more likely to find in any college town than in the worst parts of Waikiki -- there just never seemed to be that much trouble to begin with.
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