Kauai's police chief search narrows down to 3 finalists
LIHUE » The Kauai Police Commission has selected an outsider, an insider and a person whose name can't yet be disclosed as the finalists for the Kauai police chief position.
Sixty-six people have applied for the job despite the fact that the last three chiefs selected by the commission have retired or resigned while mired in controversy.
CPS Human Resource Services, hired by the county to assist with the search, whittled the list to six, and the final three were selected by the commission. In August, officials said, the finalists are scheduled to come to Kauai for interviews and other assessments, and then the commission will make their final selection.
The three finalists are: Gerald Mines, a former New York City Police Department captain from Mt. Vernon, N.Y.; Darryl Perry, an investigator with the state Attorney General's Office and former Honolulu Police Department officer from Mililani; and a third individual whose name was not released because of his present assignment to a sensitive position within the federal government, county officials said Friday.
Mines also served as police commissioner for the Mt. Vernon Police Department following his retirement after more than 40 years of service with the NYPD. He has also applied for the police chief job in Corpus Christi, Texas, according to media reports.
Perry, a former major with the HPD, was born and raised on Kauai, and became a police officer on Kauai before moving to HPD. He was the runner-up candidate when K.C. Lum was selected as chief in 2004.
Current Kauai Police Commissioner Leon Gonsalves Sr., who has been friends with Perry since the 1970s, was one of several staunch supporters of Perry during the 2004 chief search. Perry also received a lot of support in 2004 from the police union and KPD's top brass, according to former Police Commissioner Stanton Pa.
Lum retired in June 2006 days before the Kauai County Council met to rescind his contract amid allegations of ethics violations involving commissioners and a civil rights suit involving a racial slur against the chief.
Lum took over from George Freitas, who retired in 2004 after being investigated by the Police Commission for hindering prosecution in a case involving a fellow officer. He was cleared of hindering charges, but eventually sued by his secretary for wrongful termination. The suit was settled this year.
Freitas' predecessor was Calvin Fujita, who resigned in February 1995 after he was the subject of a lawsuit that accused him of favoring certain ethnic groups at the expense of others. The case was dismissed in 2000.
