2012-06-15 Police Commission Minutes

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Hawai‘i Police Commission Regular Session Minutes June 15, 2012 Page 2 Horner moved to accept the correspondence. Commissioner Ignacio motion, and it carried unanimously. Discussion was held in executive session. POLICE CHIEF’S REPORT ON DEPARTMENT ACTIVITIES Including, but not limited to: Crime report by area, category, and trends: Major Randy Apele gave the crime report. He reported that up to May 31, 2012, there were 7,333 serious crimes in Area I and Area II, of which the Criminal Investigation Units investigated 1,949 of those cases, 1,281 in Area I and 668 in Area II. For the month of May, the Police Department received 7,939 calls for service. 2,645 were for criminal and traffic and 5,294 were for miscellaneous public assistance. In the District of South Hilo, they had a high amount of break-ins into parked motor vehicles. They increased media coverage and reminded the public to be proactive, to lock their cars, and not leave valuables in view. Burglaries, which are break-ins into homes, have increased in Hilo and Puna over the last several months. They have gone back to doing old fashion police work. In Puna theyÓve gone to the problem areas such as Hawaiian Paradise basically stopping vehicles for traffic violations and gaining intelligence off of that, identifying the guys who are going out and doing these break-ins and working on sharing information. Another big thing they are working on is the pawn shops and the gold dealers. South Hilo Patrol has people assigned to specifically do follow-ups at pawn shops. Once they identify known or suspected burglars, they see the same names over and over again pawning items. They try to connect the items from the pawn shops to the victim reports and try to match up the items and try to identify who may be responsible. They are also working on educating the pawn shops about their lawful compliance and reporting. If they receive an item, they need to make sure they have a good description and receive the proper identification so when the police follow-up, they have good information. One of the biggest problems they now have is the gold dealers. The opinion is that they fall under the same rules and regulations as the pawn shops. They are trying to get them to comply with those rules and regulations. A lot of times they receive gold and ship it out right away, that day, so they have no opportunity to track the items down. ItÓs very popular now to steal jewelry and get them to the gold dealers right away. Puna had about three to four robberies from the beginning of this year. They arrested a 19-year old male who was responsible. They are pretty confident that those robberies will cease as long as they have him in custody.