Years ago, when I was managing editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, a local high school yearbook published a photo of Black students with a caption making a clearly racist crack about watermelons.

Instead of apologizing to the rightfully outraged parents and making amends, the school and Department of Education circled the wagons and insisted they had done nothing wrong, for which they predictably got their comeuppance in court when the parents sued.

As part of the settlement, DOE had to hold a sensitivity conference for high school yearbook and newspaper advisers, and I was invited to give tips on preventing such mistakes.

As I explained simple ways to double-check material before publication, I noticed a table of veteran teachers with pinched faces ready to jump me in the Q&A.

As they laid into me, they basically weren’t concerned with getting it right; they just wanted to not be blamed when things went wrong.

I see the same unfortunate bunker mentality in the dispute over the 2020 arrest and handcuffing of a 10-year-old Black girl at Honowai Elementary after a parent complained about a picture she drew of a girl who allegedly bullied her.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, on behalf of the mother, is demanding $500,000 in damages and better policies on how police and schools deal with such situations.

The DOE and police are circling their bureaucratic wagons, with an assistant chief telling the Police Commission last week that the arrest was “reasonable and necessary.”

It’s an indefensible position, and authorities should be improving procedures on their own initiative without having to be sued.

Few fair-minded people would find it reasonable to arrest and traumatize a 10-year-old, separate her from her mother and haul her to the station in handcuffs in a matter that didn’t involve physical violence. What happened to counseling?

It’s not clear the girl’s race was a factor, but given the national tensions over police relations with the Black community, simple sensitivity would have been appropriate.

We’re forever told HPD doesn’t have mainland problems, but in recent years we’ve seen a chief convicted of corruption and sent to prison, his successor fail from toxic defensiveness and spite, several controversial police shootings of suspects from disadvantaged communities, an officer allowed back on the force after being caught on video viciously beating a woman, and allegations of on-duty officers running a personal adversary of one off the road — crippling a 14-year-old passenger — and fleeing the scene.

And our traditionally timid Police Commission seems paralyzed in even beginning the crucial search for a new permanent chief.

I’m not sold on the claim of attorney Eric Seitz that HPD is “corrupt and lawless” and should be placed under federal monitoring, but some kind of forced oversight will become necessary if the department and Police Commission don’t un-circle the wagons and honestly address systemic failings that repeatedly bruise police and the community they serve.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.