OCEAN VIEW — Mayor Harry Kim spent Wednesday evening at the Ocean View Community Center quelling wave after wave of frustration from an animated crowd of roughly 60 residents, many of whom feel the county has left them behind.
The meeting, which lasted about two hours, often turned boisterous, bordering on raucous. The occasional comment or query was even peppered with light profanity, indicative of the anger present throughout the hall. But for the most part, the tone was passionately civil as members of the rural community expressed their numerous concerns.
The complaints were many, but focused mainly on an explosion of crime in recent years — namely involving burglary and drug use.
“We need to show a stronger police presence in Ocean View because our crime is astronomical,” said Debbie Dubos, a co-organizer of the meeting. “These people cycle in and out of jail, and they do it again. They’ve robbed every single business in our town more than once (over the last three years).
“People speak of vigilantism. They are just really mad. They’re sick of it.”
Dubos and Ron Gall, president of the Ocean View Community Association, have gathered up roughly 350 signatures for a petition asking Kim to move the police substation operations to the area’s fire station. Dubos said police officers have told her and others on numerous occasions they can’t use the substation because it isn’t equipped with encrypted communication lines.
Home break-ins and squatting are also rampant in the area, and several residents who asked to remain unnamed cited examples of walking their property to collect used needles, ditched or forgotten bags of narcotics, and even discarded firearms.
Criminal activity is exacerbated by the fact that during the day, only four police officers patrol an area larger than the entire island of Oahu. Come night, that number drops to two.
The average police response time to a burglary or robbery call, based on comments from the crowd, is at least two hours — rendering security measures like fences, barred windows and alarm systems essentially meaningless, they said.
The perpetrators understand the situation, said Walter Fullerton, a Kona architect who has a home in Ocean View. Criminals’ awareness that they’re unlikely to be caught and face the consequences of their actions has emboldened them further.
“The police are doing the best they can, but they’re understaffed,” Fullerton said, who offered at the meeting to design a new substation free of charge. “This is like the wild, wild west. They can’t arrest anybody in dangerous situations because they have no backup.”
Gall said because of this, neighborhood watch numbers have recently increased almost threefold, but such a development is hardly enough to halt the problem, or even curb it.
Kim offered a listening ear along with his sympathies. He said that he, too, has been a victim of a break-in at his residence in Puna, adding he understood what it felt like to feel violated, to feel unsafe in one’s own home.
But the mayor refused to sugarcoat the situation. The problem, he said, is money. The county budget is set through the end of June, and the county is still trying to make cuts before the end of the fiscal year — a trend he said will continue into next fiscal year.
Kim’s highest priority, he explained, is to avoid raising burdensome taxes on low-income families, which are scattered across the Big Island and concentrated heavily in areas like Puna and Ocean View.
The money that is available must be disbursed after gauging the needs of each community, and while Kim acknowledged Ocean View’s population is growing — he said the estimates he’s heard range between 6,000-8,000 residents — allocating a sizable portion of the budget to address concerns there isn’t likely in the immediate future.
“Adding one more officer per beat is not one man. It’s five people. You’re talking $500,000-plus,” said Kim, adding he would reach out to police officers and prosecutors to try and address procedural concerns in that way. “Are these things I know you don’t want to hear? Absolutely, you don’t want to hear it. But (I’m not) trying to get away from your problem. I’m trying to tell you what the problem is.
“I understand your anger.”
Nancy Bondurant, an Ocean View resident and musician by trade who plans to run for the Legislature in two years, said throwing money at crime doesn’t address the root causes of it.
She added the answer to breaking the cycle of crime and depravity in the community is as simple as the answer to quenching one’s thirst — water.
Gall agreed that bringing water to the area in the form of a second well would have the broadest reach in immediately addressing the area’s concerns.
He said the Hawaii Department of Education can’t even entertain construction of a school without a reliable water source, and the problem begins there.
“If there’s a school here, there’s activities for kids. There’s sports. There’s after-school, extracurricular activities,” said Gall, adding that most children are travelling an hour and a half per day just to attend class.
Bondurant said she sees the ramifications of a well reaching far beyond even that.
“The cycle is no water, no schools, no business, nothing for the kids to do, then we have crime — sex trafficking, prostitution, meth houses,” she said. “If the kids have nothing to do, then they’re going to get in trouble.”
Other issues brought up at the meeting were improvements to Highway 11 for commuters traveling from the Ka‘u area to Kona for work. Dubos also mentioned a relocation of a temporary transfer station away from its current setup near a community park.
Kim subdued the fusillade of criticism and complaints that came his way, but remained true to his message until the end. That message was essentially for community members to hold on. He’ll do what he can with the resources available, but he refused to make any promises or set any timetables.
After the meeting concluded, however, most in attendance expressed understanding for Kim’s position, including Fullerton.
“(The mayor) is limited in what he can do,” Fullerton said. “But we have tens of thousands of lots here being taxed, and so I think we should have more representation, especially with the police department.”
Email Max Dible at mdible@westhawaiitoday.com.
