At least two of the little steel Stryker vehicle cutouts glued in public places around town have been removed.

The Advertiser yesterday chiseled one off the sidewalk in front of the newspaper's Kapi'olani Boulevard building, after being told that someone had tripped over the metal silhouette of the Army vehicle being based on O'ahu.

A state agency on Saturday removed one of the cutouts that had been glued to the concrete base that rings the King Kamehameha statue downtown.

Police said they have received no complaints about the cutouts and were not aware of any plans to go around taking them down.

The 6-inch galvanized steel cutouts also have appeared in front of the First Hawaiian Bank building downtown, Hale'iwa Beach Park and Shark's Cove. Local artist Mat Kubo could not be reached yesterday, but said in an earlier interview that he is gluing 319 of the cutouts — the number of Strykers coming to O'ahu — in places where people congregate "to give the notion that there is this other presence here."

Police showed up at The Advertiser building yesterday after a call about the cutouts from an Advertiser reporter on Friday.

"Before police can do anything, we need to do an assessment of what it is," said police spokesman Capt. Frank Fujii. "I wanted to come out and see for myself and then call the beat officer if it was appropriate."

Colleen Soranaka, safety loss control manager at The Advertiser, said maintenance employees had planned to remove the item yesterday anyway. "We were told that somebody tripped over it," she said.

"It's like any other vandalism. We just take care of it," Soranaka said. The Advertiser did not file a complaint with police because no one was hurt, she said.

Fujii said the cutout presented a danger to people using the sidewalk. "A person walking barefoot could cut themselves on it or if it was raining someone could slip," he said.

A Stryker cutout around the Kamehameha statue was removed Saturday by a worker for the state Department of Accounting and General Services, said Louise Kim McCoy, communications director for the state Sheriff's Department.

No one called to complain, McCoy said, but obviously "no one wants to see that on a King Kamehameha statue."

Reach Robert Shikina at rshikina@honoluluadvertiser.com.