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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, January 15, 2003

Waikiki targeting thieves on beach

By James Gonser
Advertiser Urban Honolulu Writer

Waikiki, the most popular tourist destination in Hawai'i, is also the most heavily guarded and patrolled area in the state, with groups of citizens, police and private security units monitoring the streets. But small-business owners say that one part of it is still vulnerable to crime against tourists — the beach itself.

Scuba instructor Lyle Kleusch, who helped capture a purse snatcher in Waikiki one recent afternoon, would like to protect tourists more.

Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

Now, fueled by the recent arrest of a purse snatcher chased down and held for police by a scuba instructor and a taxi driver, business operators on the beach are banding together to fight crime and protect their customers.

Lyle Kleusch, owner of Scuba Excursions and Adventures Hawai'i, who helped catch the purse thief two weeks ago, said he has been talking for six months with hotel workers, taxi drivers and beach concessionaires about the crime problem. Now they plan to seek help from police to form a type of community watch group consisting of the people who make their living on the beach.

"Since I came back here to O'ahu and opened my own business, I noticed that this is a real problem, especially for Japanese," Kleusch said. "A lot of them don't know better and they just leave their bags on the beach and they go swimming and come back and their purse is gone.

"I've been telling everybody we've got to watch out for these people."

Thousands of visitors flock to the beach every day, awed by the experience and oblivious that they're being watched by criminals, police say. Thefts occur every day, according to beach concession operators, and police patrols on the beach are becoming more and more infrequent.

"The police can't be everywhere — they are spread so thin," Kleusch said. "All the beach activities people can be their eyes and ears."

Officer Leland Cadoy, coordinator for the Waikiki Community Area of Responsibility, said police have a beach patrol, but "manpower has had a major effect on police work in general. A citizens patrol on the beach would make a big difference for us."

Hawai'i has a population of about 1.2 million, including about 200,000 nonresidents on any given day. The tourist population is frequently targeted by criminals.

Waikiki is known to the Honolulu Police Department as District 6 and it is the smallest such jurisdiction on O'ahu, but it's packed with activity 24 hours a day. The district stretches from the Hawai'i Convention Center to the slopes of Diamond Head; from the Ala Wai Canal to Waikiki Beach. Just under 20,000 people live in Waikiki; 30,000 workers and 87,000 tourists pour into the area every day.

Waikiki ranks fourth out of the eight Honolulu police districts in violent crime but second in the number of thefts. When less serious crimes are factored, Waikiki is the second to lowest in overall numbers.

The district already has a police substation, military police and surveillance cameras, along with private guards in hotels. The Waikiki Business Improvement District pays for the Aloha Patrol to walk along Kuhio and Kalakaua avenues from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., and four different Citizen's Patrols overseen by HPD make weekly tours of residential areas from Hobron Lane to the condominiums along the "Gold Coast" near Diamond Head to watch for crime. A new group is about to start for residents in the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor.

But the beach is left without anyone to watch over it regularly.

On Jan. 2 at about 3:30 p.m., Kleusch was walking along the public access to Waikiki Beach between the Sheraton Waikiki and Halekulani hotels when he noticed something strange.

"Here comes this guy trotting past me in a raggedy old T-shirt and slippers carrying a Gucci bag, so I ran after him and hollered at him to stop and he dropped the purse," Kleusch said.

"A taxi driver saw what was happening and tripped him up and I tackled the guy. I said, 'You're busted. Don't move.' We didn't hurt him, just kept him there until the police arrived."

Cadoy said there are no statistics on the number of property crimes that occur specifically on Waikiki Beach, but a purse theft could be recorded as a larceny-theft or a robbery in district totals, depending on the circumstances.

On O'ahu, there were 163 purse snatchings in 2000, with losses put at $139,287 — compared with 167 in 2001, with losses at $166,430.

There were 238 reported thefts by pickpockets in 2001, up from 230 in 2000, according to crime statistics.

Kleusch said criminals on the beach work often in pairs, scoping out tourists whose purses or wallets are rolled up in their pants. They wait until the victims go for a swim. One thief will walk by and grab the valuables while the other keeps a lookout for police.

"There are guys that do this for a living," Kleusch said. "It is even competitive to them. They have their turf."

Kleusch said there are not enough police to cover all the beach area "hot spots" and he is worried that with the increasing number of property crimes, tourists will go home with bad memories of Hawai'i and never come back.

"These visitors will be completely upset and go back and tell 100 people how terrible it was that their vacation was ruined," he said. "Their cash, credit cards and IDs got ripped off."

Cadoy said police use all-terrain vehicles to make beach patrols, manpower permitting, but with retirements and the loss of officers to higher-paying jobs on the Mainland, those patrols are performed less and less.

Kleusch would like to see warning signs at all beach access routes telling people not to take valuables with them and to keep an eye on what they do carry. He would also like to see tourists informed about how to avoid crime as they arrive.

Detective Letha DeCaires, coordinator of HPD's CrimeStoppers program, said the Visitors Aloha Society of Hawai'i does provide literature in hotel rooms in several languages warning tourists not to leave unattended items on the beach, but it is often ignored. She said the visitor industry doesn't want to start an anti-crime campaign because it could make Hawai'i look bad.

"We talked about showing a 'be safe from crime' video on the airlines, but that got a big goose egg," DeCaires said.

"In Miami they make all the visitors watch a crime video when they turn on their TVs. They said that isn't the aloha spirit here."

Reach James Gonser at jgonser@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2431.