By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Staff Columnist

The subject line from the CrimeStoppers media release said it all:

Halawa Escapees: CAPTURED!!

Just like that, with "captured" capitalized and two exclamation points.

Assistant Chief Boisse Correa began his statement to the media by saying, "This is a very happy time for law enforcement and for the community."

Happy and proud. With all the things that could have gone wrong, that the three fugitives were caught without incident or injury is quite a laudable achievement for all involved in the manhunt. As Lt. Bill Kato put it, "It was a very good pickup."

Press conferences at the HPD main station are rarely a happy thing. Even at the ones where officers are honored for heroics, there's usually a reverent, even somber tone. But not this time. Everyone was smiling. The police leaned far back in their chairs with looks of contentment on their faces. Correa even joked with reporters about having the three fugitives in custody at the police cellblock. "We're charging them and we're sending them back to Halawa right away. Bam. We don't want 'em. It's non-negotiable."

But the weird thing was that as they were being brought in to the main police cellblock, the three escapees were also smiling. They looked right into press photographers' cameras with loopy grins on their faces. They looked like kids who got busted for something manini, like acting silly at a rock concert. They looked like it was a game. "There was no resistance," Kato said. "Scribner seemed kind of relieved. Batalona just put his hands up and came slowly off the bus."

Perhaps the only stoic face there was that of Officer Rik Orton, who spotted David Scribner walking on the side of the road in Punalu'u. Orton was on patrol from the Kahuku police station, and though he was keeping his eye out for the three, he was just driving on his regular route. Orton kept his cool and radioed in:

"Eh, I going turn around check this guy out. Kinda' scruffy looking. Looks like Scribner."

Minutes later, his voice, completely unemotional, came across the scanner again:

"Got Scribner."

Though he made the arrest himself, drawing his gun and ordering Scribner to the ground, Orton seemed unaffected by the excitement of the day. When asked if he was surprised to spot a wanted man walking down the road, Orton replied, "No, I wasn't surprised. I was expecting to run into them someday, and today was the day."

The community certainly played a large role in this capture, from tips phoned in to police to the meals brought to the crews working at the Hau'ula mountains. It was the kind of partnership with law enforcement that gets talked about at conferences and community meetings.

There are so many threats to our safety, things that are beyond are control or out of our hands. But this time, it worked. We got 'em.