Criminal probe
of official
dropped

State narcotics chief Keith
Kamita was the subject of
complaints alleging improprieties

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By Rod Antone
rantone@starbulletin.com

The state Attorney General's Office has suspended a criminal investigation involving Keith Kamita, chief of the State Narcotics Enforcement Division.

However, according to a source familiar with the case, Kamita remains the focus of a separate investigation within the Department of Public Safety, which oversees the Narcotics Division. In response, Kamita's attorney said that he has heard even that investigation may result in nothing.

"He was interviewed by the investigators of internal affairs from public safety (yesterday)," said attorney Keith Kaneshiro.

"The indication they gave my client was that there was no basis for these allegations even on the administrative level. ... However, they haven't formally announced this."

Sydney Hayakawa, deputy director of the Public Safety's Law Enforcement Division, which includes the Narcotics Division, did not confirm or deny whether the attorney general's criminal investigation of Kamita had ceased and added only that "Keith has been on paid administrative leave since March 6th and remains on leave."

The source said the Attorney General's Office investigation determined all criminal allegations against Kamita to be unfounded.

The complaints made against Kamita alleged that he stole state property and used it for his own purposes, provided confidential information from the division's criminal database system to unauthorized individuals and allowed other unauthorized persons to access the database themselves. Kamita was also alleged to have stolen automobile parts off of a federally seized vehicle.

Another source said the noncriminal allegations against Kamita included possible ethical violations by improperly receiving money for speaking engagements from pharmaceutical companies and universities and also accepting a donation of food -- $200 worth of beef -- from a particular company that did business with the Narcotics Division.

Kaneshiro said in many cases the allegations were "twisted" to make Kamita look like he did something wrong.

"In the case with the car, all they had to do was talk to the Internal Revenue Service," Kaneshiro said. "The IRS seized this car and the road guard fell off, and they were going to throw it away anyway, and they told Keith that the department could have it."

"The problem I have is that any halfway decent investigator would find out if there were any substance to these allegations first. ... I'm surprised that it got this far."

It is not clear whether the criminal allegations against Kamita have been dropped completely or if the department of Public Safety is now investigating them as possible administrative violations. Kamita has headed the narcotics department , which has a staff of about a dozen people, for the past nine years. The narcotics division is in charge of investigating the use and sale of controlled substances and prescription drugs. Neither Kamita nor acting division supervisor Ed Howard was unavailable for comment yesterday.