KAILUA-KONA — Continuing to foster a strong relationship between police officers and the community will remain at the forefront for Assistant Chief Mitchell Kanehailua as he leads West Hawaii’s men and women in blue.
“We want to maintain that level of service that people in Kona, in particular, have come to expect,” Kanehailua said. “The community has been terrific with our officers, and with the support we have had, we really do want to keep it a really good working relationship.”
He also hopes to build on the relationship and community policing efforts he said his predecessor, Paul Kealoha, worked so hard to forge by bringing law enforcement and the public together more often, not just because there is a crime or an emergency.
“I would like to focus on getting the officers more ingrained in the community so that it can get to where it’s not this wall between policemen and the community or people,” he said, going on to note that strategies used in the past, such as having foot patrol beats where officers had daily contact with people on good levels, are making a come back in law enforcement.
“In the long run, that is my hope, that we can kind of move more towards where police are very integrated in the community,” he said. “We would get more respect and crime would lessen because people wouldn’t be afraid to come and report things — they would feel more safe talking to us.”
Kanehailua, who joined the Hawaii Police Department 32 years ago after graduating from Kamehameha Schools — Kapalama, took the helm of operations in the department’s North and South Kohala, Kona, and Ka’u districts, also known as Area II, after being promoted Dec. 1 to assistant chief upon the retirement of Kealoha, a 31-year HPD veteran.
Though Kanehailua still officially lives in Hilo, he spends most of the week in Kona and has done so since he was promoted to Area II major back in March 2013. He loves the weather and the opportunity to surf.
“I love surfing. I surf every morning and every night. I love the area down in Kohanaiki, most of the time I am down there,” he said. “The surfing keeps me going. I have been surfing for over 20-some years now and that makes the start of my day great and ends my day on the right note.”
He still, however, understands how people in West Hawaii can feel about officers, whether in patrol of administration, who live outside the district in which they work.
“I intend to remain here for a good long while,” he said. “I have 32 years in the department so my retirement is going to come. But in the meantime, I’m going be here. I’m not going to transfer or anything, this is where I want to stay.”
Kanehailua, a Laupahoehoe native, comes from a family with a history in law enforcement on the Big Island. His great-grandfather, Ernest Kanehailua, was a sheriff in Kohala in the 1930s. His father, also named Mitchell Kanehailua, was an inspector in Hilo with the HPD before he died at age 39 of a heart attack shortly after Kanehailua was hired by the department. His brother, Marshall Kanehailua, is currently an assistant chief overseeing the department’s Administrative Bureau.
The loss of his father, though difficult, said Mitchell Kanehailua, has also motivated him throughout his policing career.
“Because I had gone to school on Oahu, boarding at Kamehameha from seventh grade, I had lost a lot of closeness at home and this, I think, makes me feel that I got closer to my dad,” he said.
Kanehailua began his career in 1984, working as a patrol officer in the Kona District stationed out of what is today the police barracks in Captain Cook. Three years later, he transferred closer to home in Hilo where he worked in the patrol division for another four years before spending nine years in the department’s VICE section in Hilo, ultimately becoming a K-9 handler. He’d spend a short time as a patrol sergeant in Waimea before holding that title in the Puna District for another five years.
In 2004, Kanehailua was promoted to lieutenant of the department’s VICE Section based in Kailua-Kona. In his two years heading the section, he saw ranks double and the Ice Task Force and airport detail created. He then spent about a year as a lieutenant in Hilo patrol before attending and graduating in 2007 the 10-week FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
The next several years he served in the the Hilo criminal investigations section as a lieutenant before moving up the ranks to captain in the Hamakua District in 2010. In 2012, Kanehailua was promoted to captain of the Hilo criminal investigations section, and in 2013, he earned another promotion, this time to major of Area II operations where he served until being named assistant chief.
In his new role, Kanehailua said his door is always open to both the community and his officers. He encourages anyone to contact him via email to mitchell.kanehailua@hawaiicounty.gov if they have questions or an issue, or if they’d like him to make an appearance at a meeting. If he cannot physically attend, Kanehailua said he will assign a representative to be at the meeting and report to him.