LIHU‘E — In typical and traditional Native Hawaiian fashion, Kaua‘i Police Chief Darryl Perry is not just administering his huge department for the present. He is looking far into the future, well beyond his planned tenure at the top, to
LIHU‘E — In typical and traditional Native Hawaiian fashion, Kaua‘i Police Chief Darryl Perry is not just administering his huge department for the present.
He is looking far into the future, well beyond his planned tenure at the top, to leave in place a department ready to serve and protect an ever-growing Kaua‘i for generations to come.
As he put it, “For da next braddah to come in,” meaning the chief to replace him.
Within the next couple months, Perry, with input and participation from officers, records personnel, dispatchers and others, using population projections and other data, will finalize new district and beat boundaries for the whole island.
The intent is to put in place a new system that will be flexible enough to work for the next 15 to 25 years, he said in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview in his office earlier this week.
The current system of three districts will give way to a five-district configuration, and the current number of beats (now known as “sectors”) will be expanded from 10 to 22, which will impact how statistics and records are collected and kept, and how officers are dispatched, he explained.
It also casts a long eye on all-important officer safety, he added.
And, while there are concerns with the conditions at various KPD substations and satellite offices across the island (the Waimea substation is “a hole in the wall. We need to have a new building;” the Kapa‘a substation is “ratty”), he will take Kukui‘ula’s offer for a new storefront location in the new subdivision’s commercial complex (“The area of growth is the Po‘ipu side”), while keeping the smaller offices at Po‘ipu Kai and the Koloa Neighborhood Center.
By year’s end if all goes as planned, KPD will for the first time in anyone’s recent memory be fully staffed in terms of sworn officers, he said.
There are currently 17 vacancies, down from 30. He has high hopes for all 13 “solid” recruits in class now and there are 75 other applicants who have passed some phase of the comprehensive screening process.
“All of them are doing excellent and I am optimistic” that all will pass and become officers, Perry said of the recruits.
There is normally a 20 percent attrition rate in recruit classes.
“Barring any retirements, we should be fully staffed by the end of the year, and that’s unprecedented,” he said.
As may be expected, “there is a caveat,” Perry said. Even if KPD reaches its allocated 148 sworn positions, that is still down compared to departments on the other islands and down around 27 positions compared to the recommended number of officers per total population.
“We have to be fiscally responsible” and that means trying to limit officer overtime. “Even with that, our officers get burned out. They have to decompress, take time off,” he said.
Still, oftentimes, “we have to call them in on their days off. We cannot run short, because it endangers the officers and the public,” said Perry, who has been a police officer for more than 35 years and KPD chief since October 2007.
The surge in applicants today is in stark contrast to when he first came aboard.
“It was very competitive” initially, but he started to see increases in applications after he joined the force. With the economic downturn, he started seeing even more applicants, he said.
Addressing the issue of officer morale, Perry acknowledged that “from a personal perspective, sometimes it’s very difficult” to maintain professionalism and an upbeat attitude knowing that in almost every case, whenever a citizen calls the police, it’s because there is a problem or a crisis, hardly ever a call to tell of courageous deeds or officers going above and beyond the call of duty.
Officers deal with “the saddest, baddest or maddest,” and have to learn how to deal effectively with them, especially in domestic-abuse cases, which have long been acknowledged as the most dangerous calls to which officers have to respond, he said.
Sometimes, those involved in domestic-abuse cases turn on officers, venting their frustrations. “You’re there as a problem-solver, not a problem-instigator,” he said.
Keeping feelings inside, for officers and others, can be a dangerous thing, he says from experience. “But if you don’t open up, and you don’t discuss it, there are going to be problems,” said Perry, acknowledging the important work of the Rev. Jan Rudinoff, former pastor of St. Michael & All Angels’ Episcopal Church in Lihu‘e, who has returned as the KPD chaplain.
While Rudinoff’s work in helping officers discuss their feelings and problems is a big plus, Perry said he’d like to have an on-staff psychologist like at the Honolulu Police Department.
There is also the county Employee Assistance Program, he added.
“As the years go by, you get a little jaded, less sensitive.”
Perry, who served in many different capacities with HPD, says he misses being a beat officer “because there are no more administrative duties” on the beat, and beat officers can usually look forward to the next day’s shift after finishing the current day’s shift, leaving the previous day’s work behind. It’s not like that for an administrator, he said.
While people couldn’t really blame him for simply handling what’s already on his plate, he is constantly looking to the future. “How do we move forward?” with human-resources issues, police and civilian employee union concerns, morale — all the while trying to put in place mechanisms to allow KPD to progress for the next 15 to 20 years.
In addition to installing a new Internal Affairs Division to investigate allegations of police misconduct, he also wants KPD to join the other county police departments as accredited through the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.
“But we have a lot of work ahead of us” before accreditation can be achieved, he said.
Not only was the IAD created without adding any new staff, but much of the KPD senior staff has also been trained on law, union contracts, procedures, and internal affairs matters both nationally and with HPD’s IAD officers, said Perry, 58.
“We’ve made a lot of necessary changes” in policies and procedures for handling allegations of officer misconduct, including replacing a disciplinary review board that included beat officers with an administrative review board made up of senior officers, he explained.
There was no KPD IAD before Perry’s time. Now, Lt. Hank Barriga and Detective Michael Gordon make up KPD’s IAD branch. Barriga attended the FBI academy on the Mainland, Perry said.
Both men understand “the importance of upholding the integrity of the department,” he said. It’s all about making sure “everybody’s doing what they’re supposed to do,” and inspections of systems toward that end, added Perry.
“My intent is to be forward-thinking, open, honest, transparent.”
In addition to his IAD chores, Barriga still heads up the Criminal Intelligence Unit, which is in charge of gambling investigations as well as other crime investigations, and handles security for the various KPD buildings.
Selected chief by members of the Kaua‘i Police Commission, Perry started on the job on Oct. 1, 2007. While commission members wanted to give him an open-ended contract, Perry opted for a three-year deal.
Paul C. Curtis, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or pcurtis@kauaipubco.com
