chief’s corner – On the Beat

Aloha!

Please join me as I write a regular installment of “On the Beat with Chief Darryl Perry” in The Garden Island newspaper.

Starting this month, I will be answering selected questions that you, the public, are reluctant to ask but would like to know. For example: Why is it that there are so many officers at the scene of a traffic accident?

This forum is meant to educate the public and to give a perspective of what law enforcement officers are charged with on a daily basis. Noted law attorney Will Aitchison said, “Today’s law enforcement officer is expected to be a master of many trades … on any given day he may be called upon to act as a social worker by intervening in a family dispute, wrestle with a combative suspect who resists being taken into custody, act as a prosecutor in traffic law cases, provide emergency medical treatment to the victims of an automobile accident, maneuver an unwieldy police car through the streets of a city at high speed in response to a burglary-in-progress call, reason with an individual who is threatening to commit suicide, draft affidavits of probable cause in preparation for obtaining and serving search warrants, or dismantle a laboratory recently used to manufacture methamphetamines or other dangerous drugs. He must almost be an attorney in order to follow rules of criminal procedure which seem to change at a dizzying pace.”

We are expected to be on-duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even when we are off-duty. But it is not only the officer who carries the awesome burden of this job. The officer’s families too bear the cross of maintaining balance in their lives while always being in the public eye.

So join me as I open up the world of law enforcement from a totally different perspective from what you are accustomed to seeing on television and in the movies.

• Darryl Perry is the chief of police at the Kauai Police Department. Send your comments or questions to dperry@kauai.gov