Pearl City's Beat 358 keeps police busy

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

PEARL CITY — The busiest police beat on the island — No. 358 — stretched in front of Sgt. Michael Cobb in the form of a sea of rooftops reaching from the mountains to the Pearl City peninsula.

Rookie officer Robert Cavaco learns about Beat 358 from Honolulu Police Cpl. James Chong, background. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

But the most remarkable thing about Beat 358 is the way that it is otherwise so unremarkable.

"It's just a normal community," said Cobb, who has been assigned to the Pearl City district for nearly all of his 24 years with the Honolulu Police Department. "There's really nothing unusual that would attract the wrong element."

In many ways, Beat 358 looks like any other O'ahu neighborhood.

It's shaped like a thin slice of pie and is bordered by Waimano Home Road on the 'Ewa end and Ka'ahumanu Street on the Diamond Head side. Newer, single-family homes form a serpentine path along the back ridgeline, running five miles between Waimano Home Road and Ka'ahumanu. On the makai side, 80- and 90-year-olds living in simple plantation-style houses mix with younger people near the underpass of the H-1 freeway, just off of the strip malls that line busy Kamehameha Highway and Moanalua Road.

	Beat 358
	Calls for Service
•	April: 840
•	March: 925
•	February: 870
•	January: 911

"The only thing I can figure is that this is a good place for crimes of opportunity," Cobb said.

To look at Beat 358 is to see a reflection of the modern history of Hawai'i.

Sugar and pineapple lands once dominated the area, broken up by small clusters of plantation homes that had no need for locks or enclosed garages.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Beat 358 filled in with concrete and homes as it was overrun by the sprawl from urban Honolulu.

"In that whole beat of 358, it's all developed," said officer Arleen Apuna, who works with neighborhood watch groups for the Pearl City District. "You've got a combination of residential, businesses and schools. We get calls coming in at all times, 24 hours a day."

Census tracts don't match the way the police department configured Beat 358 so it's impossible to get a precise picture of the age, income and ethnic make-up of the area. But the overwhelming majority of the 11,000 or so residents are hard-working, good neighbors, say police, school officials, homeowners and business people.

They're a mix of professional, two-parent households, older Japanese-Americans retirees living in 40-year-old, modest homes and low-income families renting townhouses and apartments.

In the past 15 years, enrollment at Pearl City High School dropped 300 students, to just more than 2,000. Where Japanese Americans once made up 40 percent of the student population, they're now down to 26 percent. But Filipinos — many of them immigrants coming in from 'Ewa Beach and Waipahu on geographic exemptions — now represent 25 percent of the students.

Beat 358 includes the Momilani neighborhood, where pedestrians cross a walkway over Moanalua Road. This arching walkway at Hoolaulea Street is one of two that are familiar landmarks in Pearl City. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

Carolyn Izumigawa, associate minister of administrative services for the First Baptist Church of Pearl City, spent most of her 40 years in Pearl City on Ho'ohaku Street just around the corner from her church, located in the heart of Beat 358.

"I remember when it was just a few houses surrounded by sugar cane," she said. "Up until about 1975 it was still pretty safe to walk home from Pearl City High School. Now it's not."

Five years ago, thieves broke into the church and stole a computer. Two months ago, a church member's car was burglarized, followed by another last month. Izumigawa still walks home from church at night, but only when she has to.

"I've done it, but I don't like it," she said.

Still, Izumigawa believes the problems in her neighborhood are no worse than anywhere else on O'ahu.

"It happens all over," she and others said. "I can't think of any community that hasn't had problems."

Waiau District Park, a beautiful chunk of open space on the mauka end of Beat 358, was hit by graffiti Tuesday night. And then again Wednesday night.

"They just got their spray paint and tagged the whole building," said Andy Yamada, program director for the park for the past six years. "I don't know why. For several months we've had nothing and then all of a sudden, it comes back."

If there is any comfort to neighbors, it's that the bulk of the crimes are nonviolent thefts and burglaries — just like most of the crimes in Hawai'i. Thieves tend to target carports and cars parked along curbs and in shopping centers.

Last year, one person jumped a chain link fence and left a set of muddy footprints as he made off with two air compressors that Casey Moore uses at his 'ukulele shop, Kelii Ukulele.

"There's no reason to feel harm or danger," Moore said. "If the cops were slow, maybe. But they came, brah. They came right away when I called 911. When I work at night, I see them patrolling through here all the time."

Between the various shifts, Beat 358 is the responsibility of four officers — James Chong, John Agena, Garret Rivers and Marco Romualdo.

There is no stigma in the department for working the beat with the most crimes, said Chong, who's has been assigned to 358 for seven years. "Nobody gives you a hard time," he said. "But you worry when the stats start getting too high. We call it beat pride."

He's now training a rookie officer, Robert Cavaco, who graduated from the police academy in March.

"For getting experience," Cobb said, "you can't beat this beat. You'll see everything here."

Dan Nakaso can be reached by phone at 525-8085, or by e-mail at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.