LIHU‘E — A multi-year, multi-agency, multi-state, multi-nation, methamphetamine-trafficking investigation begun by Kaua‘i Police Department officers garnered a significant award, Chief Darryl Perry said last week. As a result of a county-state-federal investigation that started on the Garden Isle with KPD
LIHU‘E — A multi-year, multi-agency, multi-state, multi-nation, methamphetamine-trafficking investigation begun by Kaua‘i Police Department officers garnered a significant award, Chief Darryl Perry said last week.
As a result of a county-state-federal investigation that started on the Garden Isle with KPD officers and led to the arrest of eight residents and confiscation of 11 pounds of meth worth nearly $500,000, KPD was named 2008 Agency of the Year by the Western States Information Network, Perry said.
A plaque acknowledging the award is attached to a wall of joint county-state-federal law-enforcement offices in Restaurant Row in Honolulu, said Ken Tano, a retired Honolulu Police Department officer and WSIN regional coordinator for Hawai‘i.
Out of over 1,000 law-enforcement agencies at the federal, state, county and city levels from five western states (Hawai‘i, California, Washington, Oregon and Alaska), KPD was chosen Agency of the Year, Perry told members of the Kaua‘i Police Commission at its regular August meeting Friday at the Historic County Building.
The meth-trafficking case that led to the arrest of eight Kauaians in October 2007 was the co-case of the year for 2008 in the federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area investigative arena, Tano said in a telephone interview Monday.
The award is the result of KPD participation in information- and intelligence-sharing and “significant law-enforcement activities” in the multi-jurisdictional case that ended up with 13 federal search warrants being issued on four islands in Hawai‘i, and six search warrants and four arrest warrants being issued in Sacramento, Calif., Tano said.
“And they (KPD) do a really good job of that,” Tano said of intelligence-sharing.
The ring that was disrupted by Operation Garden Ice was responsible for bringing to Hawai‘i and Kaua‘i meth from the Philippines and Sacramento, he said.
“That becomes significant because you want to take down the source,” Tano said.
All told, 11 pounds of meth, $115,000 in “assets” and $1.5 million in real property was forfeited, Tano said.
KPD officers started the case with good intelligence, and federal wiretaps were eventually employed to gather sufficient information to make the busts, Tano said.
“Wiretaps are very, very expensive,” and in this case involved overtime and Spanish-speaking interpreters, he said.
As a result of the KPD intelligence, the case was designated of federal importance through the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, Tano said.
The WSIN was formally established in 1981 by the U.S. Department of Justice through a congressional appropriation for the establishment of six Regional Information Sharing Systems centers throughout the United States, according to the WSIN Web site, ag.ca.gov/wsin.
The purpose was to form a partnership between the federal government and local law enforcement. WSIN is a bureau under the California Department of Justice Division of Law Enforcement, and the California Department of Justice is the grantee agency for WSIN.
WSIN supports multi-agency coordination and cooperation, and encourages and facilitates the timely exchange of intelligence among member agencies at the local, state and federal levels, the Web site says.
WSIN responds to the information-sharing needs of its law-enforcement members in the five western states.
In order to qualify for membership, an organization must be a public agency located within a WSIN member state which has general or specific state or federal statutory authority for enforcement, intelligence, or prosecution of narcotic, gang, terrorism, and Part I crimes (homicide, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, auto theft and arson).
The expansion to Part I crimes was approved by the WSIN Policy Board in 2005 in response to the needs of member agencies, the Web site states.
The Policy Board sets broad policy for the overall objectives, functions, and operations of WSIN.
The Policy Board, which governs WSIN, consists of two top law-enforcement officers from each of the five member states.
The California attorney general (currently Edmund G. Brown Jr.) is the permanent chairman.
