A rash of burglaries in Kona has left residents terrified and contemplating taking their safety into their own hands.
“People are actually putting bullets in their pistols and somebody is going to get hurt,” South Kona Councilwoman Brenda Ford said Monday, a day after a weekend filled with a flurry of phone calls and emails flying between district residents comparing notes about the most recent burglaries, car thefts and police reactions.
Jon Sabati moved to South Kona from Oahu 26 years ago, after he was burglarized three times in three Oahu districts. He took his daughter out for her birthday, and came home to find the house ransacked.
The burglary — and his anger at being victimized — spurred him into action, creating an email alert list about area burglaries.
“It escalates,” he said. “This type of criminal won’t stop until they’re caught.”
He said he understands the department only has a few officers assigned to South Kona, but said he felt it was also a little ridiculous that he had to wait several hours to talk to an officer after reporting the burglary.
James Baydo, whose South Kona home was burglarized Friday morning, said the officers who came to his house to investigate the break-in were polite, but misinformation passed from some officers to him left him wondering about the department’s overall competency.
“They need to have enough people on the ground to do something meaningful,” he said.
The problem isn’t just the crimes, South Kona residents told West Hawaii Today, but also what feels like slow police response, minimal police preventative action and nonexistent communication between different parts of the police force. Callers told West Hawaii Today of several instances in which officers told them patrol officers and detectives, for example, don’t communicate regularly. Attempts to reach a community police officer can take days, several residents said. And one North Kona woman said a police officer patronized a neighbor who tried to offer a description of a couple seen in the neighborhood the day of a home invasion, telling her it wasn’t illegal for someone to walk down the street.
Police Chief Harry Kubojiri said none of those complaints had made it to his office.
“If that is an accurate assessment of what happened, that is unacceptable,” Kubojiri said.
People can make complaints about patrol officers to the district’s patrol captain, about detectives to the area’s criminal investigations division captain or about any officer to Kubojiri at hcpdone@co.hawaii.hi.us, the chief said.
He said the department wasn’t having communications issues, but did recently designate one lieutenant to spearhead the burglary spike investigation. About 20 department personnel, from various parts of the department and different districts, have been assigned to the burglary investigation.
For years, South Kona has had just two patrol officers assigned per shift. Kubojiri said the region now has three, for at least two of the force’s three shifts. The department is also taking its message to the public, after several weeks of news reports about the burglaries, at a community meeting 6:30 tonight at Konawaena High School’s cafeteria.
Kubojiri also acknowledged the lack of communication between the department and Neighborhood Watch programs. He said his department would shoulder the blame for the discontinuation of emails between many of the watch groups and the community policing officers. The department was rectifying that situation, he said.
North Kona and South Kona have had 23 burglaries since Aug. 26, Patrol Capt. Richard Sherlock said, including nine in South Kona. That’s a high number for that district, he said.
Questions about the lack of patrol officers in South Kona, and the lack of a police station there, are fair concerns, Mayor Billy Kenoi said.
“We all want better coverage in all of our communities,” he said. “I’ll work with Chief Kubojiri to do whatever we can. We’re all very concerned. We want to be sure we put as much resources in place as we can.”
Prosecuting Attorney Charlene Iboshi said the community needs to take an active role in preventing burglaries. She emphasized the need for Neighborhood Watch groups and individuals keeping an eye on what’s going on at the houses around them.
But she acknowledged that police resources are an ongoing problem.
“There’s just not enough police officers to get the job done,” she said.
Corporation Counsel Lincoln Ashida said the county has an obligation to guard public safety, but courts have ruled the obligation isn’t all encompassing.
“There is no legal obligation to prevent a crime,” Ashida said, adding police departments’ roles are more reactive, with investigation after a crime.
After the crime is committed, and police have begun the investigation, the prosecutor’s office provides legal support to investigators, Iboshi said. When the police create a special enforcement unit for a particular investigation, the prosecutor’s office designates a deputy prosecutor to take the lead in working with that task force, she added.
She came back again to the role the community needs to play in preventing crimes and helping with investigations.
“It’s not like we have eyes, ears and surveillance cameras and catch everybody,” she said. “That’s the reality. We need to work with everybody.”
Is the process slow? Sure, she said. Can it get frustrating? Yes, she said, listing the many steps in getting a suspected criminal off the street.
“First it has to be reported,” she said. “The police have to gather enough evidence so it can go forward. We have to get a conviction. Then we have to convince the judge to give a meaningful sentence.”
The community can help there, too, she said, by writing to judges prior to sentencing, even if they aren’t the victim of that particular crime. The entire community is a victim whenever crimes are committed, she said.
Ford said she would like to see higher bail amounts, so people charged with crimes can’t post bail and offend the night they’re released, a situation which may have happened this week.
She said it’s time for the council to authorize a bond sale to build the South Kona Police Station, for which she and former Mayor Harry Kim secured land several years ago. County officials have been hoping for grant money to help cover construction costs, but Ford said it looks like no grant funding is available. As a South Kona taxpayer, she said she feels shortchanged by the police coverage in the district, the only one on the island without its own police station.
Ford cautioned people attending tonight’s meeting to leave at least one adult home during the meeting, to prevent offering burglars more empty homes as targets.
