KAILUA-KONA — A Hawaii Police Department official refused to field questions from the county Police Commission when asked about the investigation of missing drug evidence.
“I won’t comment,” said Deputy Chief Kenneth Bugado Jr. to commissioners Friday morning at the West Hawaii Civic Center. “It’s an ongoing investigation.”
Commission Chairman Peter Hendricks then told Bugado that transparency is important in these types of situations. The deputy chief agreed with him.
On Thursday, the department released information that a former HPD officer was a person of interest after drugs were found missing from evidence. The initial investigation began in October 2017. According to authorities, an amount of cocaine recovered as evidence in 2014 was found to be lighter than reported during its initial recovery.
According to a police release, the discrepancy was discovered when the evidence was being weighed in preparation to use a small quantity of the drug for training purposes.
At the time of the investigation, the release indicates, the officer was immediately placed on administrative leave without pay. Audits of other evidence recovered by the officer revealed “other anomalies, which revealed cases whereby there was a weight discrepancy in marijuana concentrate, (hashish), from two separate investigations.”
The officer has since retired from the department. Hawaii County Prosecutor Mitch Roth thinks the individual might have retired this year and doesn’t know if the former employee was receiving retirement benefits.
In an interview on Hawaii Public Radio, Police Chief Paul Ferreira said the officer held the rank of detective. The former officer’s years of service were not disclosed. The officer’s identity also was not released nor was the amount of drugs missing.
“I’m hoping this case can be resolved and the public can know details that will allow us to make necessary changes to make the department better,” Hendricks said after Friday’s meeting. “We need to have absolute zero tolerance for actions which damage the Police Department’s ability to serve the public.”
Ferreira was not present during the commission meeting. Bugado informed commissioners the chief was on Oahu attending a meeting.
Ferreira has declined to make further statements regarding the investigation.
“As stated in the media release, this is still an open investigation; therefore, no additional comments will be made by me or my staff,” Ferreira stated in an email Thursday afternoon.
The case was forwarded to Roth’s office March 2 for a review of possible charges.
“We’re determining whether to keep it here or if we have any conflicts,” Roth said.
If a conflict of interest is determined, Roth said the case would be forwarded to the state Department of the Attorney General, where it could be prosecuted or assigned to a prosecutor’s office in another county.
Email Tiffany DeMasters at tdemasters@westhawaiitoday.com.
Shades of corrupt Kenoi “investigation”: pass the buck, pass the buck, pass the buck…all while keeping as much information “secret” as possible, you know, to protect the innocent. Eventually, maybe years later, “they” will conclude “mistakes were made”, and something vaguely resembling a slap on the wrist will be termed “justice”. Makes you wonder how many other “anomalies” there are within the police department that will never see the light of day unless “accidentally” discovered by some snoopy reporter or member of the public. What a joke.
Police Commission was given the middle finger by Chief Louis Kealoha…Oops my bad, Chief Ferreira and his Barny Fife looking side kick.
Was that before or after the chief of police did a few lines?
I wonder what ole Mitch and the always retiring Ricky would do if this dirty filthy pig who took the coke actually took some POT instead??
Any evidence that has been compromised or tampered with must now be expunged and in some cases charges may now be dismissed due to lack of reliable evidence. Oh well, it appears that the temptation of nose candy was just to great to resist, even for law enforcement.
It’s been a long time coming for police officers, especially vice cops to get random drug tests, by a community whistleblowing group. If they’re clean then they have nothing to worry about. Call it an incentive to stay clean.
It’s the dirty cops, vice, fbi and maybe even judges involved, nobody can be trusted in this state. In this case we don’t even know how much is missing. Is it a few grams or ounces or more? Personal use amounts or to sell it, we don’t know.
The ones who don’t do drugs and brings these drugs in to distribute, that’s who needs to be caught and they don’t because there are certain people helping them, it’s always the little guy who’s usually using and addicted that takes the fall from the looks of it. People have to be complete idiots if they don’t know there are people looking the other way at the docks for things like container loads of illegal fireworks, same thing with drugs.
The system does not work, when people get caught with drugs they go to jail for about 10 days and then go to out patient rehab. If they get caught again it’s 10 days again usually and a 90 inpatient rehab, 3rd time 20 days. They go to out patient when they get out, but it’s a revolving door, it doesn’t work.
The addicts need more than the 90 days of mandatory inpatient rehabilitation given after getting busted with drugs 2-3x or everything else the courts did (jail, out-patient, counselling, etc) would be wasted efforts because these addicts need more time inside of “mandatory inpatient rehab.”. They need at least one year of Inpatient Rehabilitation and help with learning how to actually have a normal sane life again, with a secure job before they get out of rehab.. that would be “ideal.”
Praying on it..