Most of Oahu’s residents had no idea there was an armed and dangerous man racing across the island, pursued by police in a wild car chase, for most of New Year’s Day until it was all over, when he was killed as the result of a shootout.

If anyone needed evidence of the Honolulu Police Department’s weak commitment to keeping the public informed, this is Exhibit A. For two years HPD has worked with a new communication network that’s no longer accessible to the news media or to citizens at large. The ineffective public-information system it substituted simply is unacceptable.

The day’s horrors began early Monday, around 7:30 a.m., when Emergency Medical Services personnel sent out an alert about their response to a shooting of a woman in Moanalua. An entry on the HPD listing of dispatch calls indicated only that there was an “aggravated assault” at about that time.

No details. No early indication that subsequently there was a chase, one that ranged from Kapahulu to the North Shore and back to the University Avenue H-1 freeway ramps, where the suspect, Sydney Tafokitau, 44, was killed at about 4 p.m. The two officers who were shot in the confrontation are expected to recover, fortunately.

The first time police alerted news media to Tafokitau that day was in a CrimeStoppers email that the Honolulu Star-Advertiser received at 2:26 p.m. The email started with a Dec. 16 attempted murder case in which Tafokitau was a suspect, and then added his New Year’s shooting — this one in Kalihi at 11:35 a.m. Monday when plainclothes HPD officers tried to arrest Tafokitau in a stolen vehicle — and a later theft of a car at gunpoint on the Windward side.

“Knowing he’s armed and dangerous, we want to make sure we have control of that situation, as best we can,” Police Chief Arthur “Joe” Logan told reporters later Monday, in defending HPD’s scant release of information as the crime spree unfolded.

“Our concern is to the public, and are they in danger? And what we don’t want is for anyone from the public trying to interject themselves into the investigation, trying to take video or possibly trying to see if this is the individual, and get close.”

This is not how it played out. For the first several hours, the only indication the public had any idea of the problem was a series of alerts about street closures. Many people who were essentially uniformed about the dangers did, unintentionally, get close to it.

For example: A woman in Windward Oahu, the victim of the carjacking. Tafokitau held a rifle to her head, ordering her out of her vehicle. Later, near the University of Hawaii-Manoa, drivers were funneled away from the scene but got stuck in the UH lower campus for some time. Thankfully, the Windward woman was not hurt, and the shooter did not break away near UH to endanger any of the motorists in the traffic logjam nearby.

They were protected by good fortune, however — not by withholding information.

There was unofficial information on social media, and police officers themselves knew very well just how dangerous the situation could become. One text that circulated was from a police wife who said her husband had warned her to stay indoors because an active shooter was driving around. She passed on that warning to friends. Undoubtedly, this was not the only message of this sort.

It’s a natural impulse to share information, of course, but the general public deserves to be in the loop as well, particularly in hazardous situations.

Instead of police scanners that used to be monitored by reporters, HPD’s current communications system is a public website (honolulupd.org/active-police-dispatch-calls), but it doesn’t always include information that the media need to get the word out with urgency.

Logan has said HPD will review this situation. The Honolulu Police Commission, and the mayor, need to hold him to that pledge.

“Serving and protecting with aloha” is the HPD slogan. It turns out information is part of that protection for the public the department serves.