The rise of crack houses and rampant crystal methamphetamine use on the island has further eroded public confidence in the Big Island's police force.

The job of restoring the department's respectability has fallen on Lawrence Mahuna, a 30-year police veteran who was named the new chief in December.

In his first weeks as the Big Island's top cop, Mahuna stood before reporters to offer his word of honor that police will aggressively pursue citizen complaints about drug houses and make drug dealers fear law enforcement. He also lectured new recruits about the importance of being polite and respectful to the public as they carry out their day-to-day duties.

"I've tried to emphasize a new humility, a compassion for people that perhaps got lost in the shuffle at times," Mahuna said.

He is planning a campaign to persuade the County Council to approve more than $1.4 million in new police spending for additional officers and equipment, including money for a new vice unit to target heroin, crystal methamphetamine, also known as ice, and other "hard" drugs.

"I have no axe to grind with anybody," he said. "The police department is the No. 1 priority for me, and that includes our image."

Mahuna, 52, sees himself as chief executive officer of a $35 million corporation with 635 employees and 150,000-plus customers. He believes the Big Island has the best police department in the state, but if the customers aren't satisfied, the company has to change, he said.

Mahuna has his doubters, including regular police department critic Del Pranke of Puna, who doesn't believe the chief is qualified for the job. But even Pranke said the Big Island police department is making progress and forging new connections with the public through its community policing program.

"Most of the officers on the beat have a lot more credibility than they used to," he said. "They are much more professional today than they were 10 years ago."

Pranke is a member of the watchdog group Citizens For Justice that formed in the early 1990s amid concerns the department was mishandling the investigation into the death of Yvonne Mathison, who was run over by her husband, police officer Kenneth Mathison.

Big Island police also were criticized for their six-year investigation of the 1991 rape and murder of Dana Ireland in Puna.

Both the Mathison and Ireland cases ended in convictions, and police defend their actions, saying they needed time to collect solid evidence to build their cases.

Other troubles followed. In 1997, police officer Jeffrey Darrow killed fellow officer Kenneth Keliipio in a car crash and was subsequently convicted of drunken driving and third-degree negligent homicide. He was sentenced to probation.

The department also was found liable in a civil suit filed by 19 current and former officers who claimed they were wrongly passed over for promotion because top ranking officers rigged promotion tests in the 1980s and 1990s. The case resulted in a $4.2 million judgment in 1999 against the police department, which is appealing the decision.

Then a year ago, Kona detective Albert Pacheco allegedly shot and killed his wife, Cathalene, after ramming her van near their home in Waikoloa. Pacheco has been charged with murder and is awaiting trial. The victim's children have filed a lawsuit against the police department, claiming officials ignored signs that Pacheco was headed for a meltdown.

Mahuna, who supervised Pacheco years ago in South Kohala, said he and Pacheco's supervisors had no idea the detective was so deeply troubled. As a result of the tragedy, Mahuna is planning new training for police supervisors in spotting and intervening with employees suffering an overload of personal or job stress.

The chief acknowledges the department lacks credibility "with some portions of the community," but said he believes that is slowly changing. He said part of the image problem may be because police haven't done enough to highlight their successes.

Retired Hilo lawyer Steve Christensen agrees the vast majority of Big Island officers are dedicated and decent, but "those very few who aren't are the ones that everybody talks about."

Christensen, who worked as a defense attorney and then as a county attorney who handled claims against the police department, said there also is substantial antagonism against police in some quarters because of the department's controversial marijuana eradication program.

"(Mahuna) doesn't have a position that anybody sensible would envy," Christensen said. "We ask a lot of our police officers. We ask a great deal, and they put up with ridiculous and devastating and tragic stuff all the time."

Mahuna was born in Hilo and graduated from Kamehameha Schools in 1968. He majored in psychology at Washington State University because he planned to be a social worker or counselor, but he found that police work paid better.

A divorced father of two grown sons, Mahuna divides his time between work in Hilo and his home in Waimea, staying with his mother in Hilo during the work week. One of Mahuna's sons, Reed, followed him into police work and now patrols the South Hilo district.

The chief's late father was a Hilo fire captain and an Army veteran of three wars. Mahuna said his father once told him, "If you do something that you love, the money and everything else will come."

Mahuna said he initially didn't want the police chief's job because he felt he didn't have the right personality for the position.

"I don't like the publicity; I'm a very private individual," he said. "I thought somebody with better communication skills who was more sociable was more in line with the chief's job." But he said rank-and-file officers urged him to try for it, and "I felt I could make a difference."

He sees the new police crackdown on drug houses as one way to win back community confidence. In two recent sweeps, police and federal agents raided suspected drug operations in East Hawai'i and arrested 28 suspects.

Mahuna said he knows what it's like to share a neighborhood with drug dealers. "I've lived a couple of houses from an ice house, and it's touched me by my loss of truck tires, scuba tanks, a lawn mower," he said. It took four months before police shut the drug house down, which gave Mahuna a taste of the public's frustration.

Part of his strategy for coping with the problem is a new six-member, $400,000-a-year, "dangerous drug enforcement" unit that would focus exclusively on ice, cocaine and heroin.

Morale in the department has improved under the new chief, said Deputy Chief Harry Kubojiri, who served under Mahuna as a rookie in Kona in the 1970s. He said Mahuna backs up his people, but "he's not going to cover up something or defend someone who is obviously wrong."

"You can almost anticipate that if you have acted outside the parameters of the department, you will be disciplined. It's clear," Kubojiri said. "He's by the book, and yet he's compassionate. And that's why I think the morale went up. No one has to guess where he's coming from."