Ford Gunter THE GARDEN ISLAND After almost a quarter of a century as a Kaua‘i Police officer, Joseph Ka‘auwai knows exactly how long he’s been at it. “Twenty-four years, 10 months and 24 days,” he said Tuesday before starting his
Ford Gunter
THE GARDEN ISLAND
After almost a quarter of a century as a Kaua‘i Police officer, Joseph Ka‘auwai knows exactly how long he’s been at it.
“Twenty-four years, 10 months and 24 days,” he said Tuesday before starting his afternoon shift.
More importantly, he knows exactly how long he’s got until retirement.
“Sixty-nine more days,” he said.
Most important of all, though: Ka‘auwai knows what he wants to do next, and that’s sit on the incoming County Council. Before, he would only talk of Kaua‘i’s problems with his wife of five years. Now, he wants to fix them.
“I thought, why do people sit around and talk about it?” he said. “Why not do something?”
While the thought of a police officer shaking up the council — that is, going from one organization alleged to favor the buddy system to another — might not stir the winds of change in many voters, Ka‘auwai just might be a breath of fresh air.
“I’ve arrested relatives and cited friends,” he said. “The community is supposed to come first, not my personal feelings. For the last 24 years, I have never been known to make everybody happy.”
Born in Anahola in 1962, Ka‘auwai attended Kapa‘a Elementary, then Kamehameha School on O‘ahu. He received a mechanical engineering degree from Oregon Institute of Technology but joined the police force upon graduation.
Since then, he’s seen the ebb and flow of illegal drug use, from the virtual ice age of the past 10 years to now, where a new trend is developing.
“Everything is coming back,” he said, referring to other illegal drugs — marijuana, cocaine, heroin. “We’re beating ice on one front, and losing on everything else.”
Ka‘auwai considers drugs the island’s most pressing problem, and one that needs more manpower to defeat.
“In 1982, there were eight beats; in 1992, there were 10 beats,” he said. “There was a 300 percent population growth during that time. Why don’t the police and fire and ambulance (services) grow with the community?”
The next step is enforcement.
“We need to get these people who abuse into the judicial system to be placed in rehab,” he said. “These people are not placing themselves in rehab.”
Ka‘auwai favors a treatment facility like the adolescent live-in clinic proposed for Hanapepe, but not in Hanapepe.
“It’s not a good place,” he said. Instead, it should be built on the Eastside, he says, where the island’s population is most dense, and drug abuse is growing the fastest.
For those who know Ka‘auwai, it should come as no surprise that traffic is another pet project.
“We need more roads,” he said. “A four-lane highway from Lihu‘e to Puhi is too short.”
His solution, though, does not involve building more roads, per se, but paving an existing one, far to the island’s interior.
“The Powerline road, between Princeville and Lihu‘e,” he says. “If you stretch that to come (west of Lihu‘e), that would help a lot.”
Of course, local business associations in Lihu‘e and the Kapa‘a/Wailua corridor won’t think too favorably on all that commuter traffic heading inland.
“We need to look at other options,” Ka‘auwai said simply. He acknowledges the environmental issues associated with the Powerline plan as well, but these are ideas coming from a practical — and proven — mind when it comes to traffic control. After all, he’s the one who thought up and implemented the traffic signal bypass system at the intersection of Kuhio and Kapule highways just north of the airport, long a bottleneck during rush hour.
Of course, these ideas will take money, but Ka‘auwai is confident he can find somewhere in the county budget to trim the fat. As for where, exactly: “I don’t know,” he said with a calm conviction. “That’s what I’d like to find out.”
Ka‘auwai carries himself well, and through a calculated serenity he seems to inspire trust — an assurance that he can get the job done.
“I’ve been applying myself to be a councilman for 24 years,” he said.
Typical bureaucracy, however, the County Council is not.
“It’s like any place,” he counters. “You have to adjust to certain situations. I should be able to discuss with (councilmembers) and find the middle ground.”
While Ka‘auwai — who has neither actively campaigned nor accepted any contributions — has been light on criticizing the current establishment, a favorite pastime of political challengers everywhere, he does acknowledge that something has to change.
“They have to do what is right by the community and not play politics,” he said. “It’s not my community, it’s the island’s community.”
Ka‘auwai has a tendency to simplify, but in a way that’s almost enlightening in its simplicity.
“We just have to listen,” he said. “You have to listen before you can decide.”
