LIHU'E, Kaua'i —During 2003 and 2004, at a time when the Kaua'i Police Department was busy tearing itself apart trying to get rid of one chief and hire another, the county had the highest rate of violent crime in the state.

The 2004 property crime rate was higher than on the Big Island but lower than Maui and O'ahu.

Police Chief K.C. Lum said preliminary data show violent crime and property crimes are dropping, and he credited an emphasis on increased drug enforcement. Lum said the department confiscated five times more crystal methamphetamine in the first seven months of 2005 than in 2003.

But the agency's problems go far beyond crimefighting.

It was recently disclosed that FBI agents in recent months have been looking into several issues at the Kaua'i Police Department. Details of the investigation have not been released.

The problems at the police department are not new. In 2003, Mayor Bryan Baptiste called on the U.S. attorney and the FBI to look into allegations of corruption within the department. That request followed the filing of a federal lawsuit that alleged, in part, that officers were trafficking in drugs. That lawsuit has still not been resolved.

The police department overspent its budget in the last fiscal year by $300,000, its first-ever deficit. Lum said no one told him there was a shortfall, and that financial information is still slow in coming from the county administration.

Other financial worries include mounting costs from lawsuits filed by police officers against other officers and claims by residents alleging false arrest, brutality and other misconduct.

"It's alarming. I'm very, very concerned," said county Finance Director Michael Tresler.

Two of the lawsuits were filed by police officers against the department and fellow officers, alleging, in part, that officers were involved in drug trafficking.

One suit was filed early in Lum's administration and the other under former chief George Freitas. Neither has come to trial.

"When several officers tell me they were more afraid of other officers than of the addicts on the street, that's a problem," said Kaua'i County Councilwoman Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, a former deputy prosecutor who is pushing for a council investigation of the police department.

The allegations of misconduct have caught the attention of the FBI, which has been talking with witnesses in at least three different cases. The FBI will not comment on possible investigations, but several Kaua'i residents confirmed that federal agents have interviewed them, most recently within the past two weeks.

Meanwhile, police department employees are filing an increasing number of grievances. Bryson Ponce, Kaua'i president of the State of Hawai'i Organization of Police Officers, said police officers filed 29 grievances in 2005, compared to an average of five to seven annually in the previous five years.

Hawai'i Government Employees Association agent Dale Shimomura said grievances by civilian employees also have increased under Lum.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.