Police yesterday closed the 'Iolani Palace grounds, blocked off a section of King Street and deployed their robot after a plastic box the size of a shoe box was found on a bench near the palace bandstand.

Police bomb unit technicians determined that the "suspicious package" was a battery power pack and gave the all-clear at 11:40 a.m., three hours after the situation began.

The activity drew a couple of dozen onlookers and snarled Downtown traffic.

Roger Stucke, who works in a Downtown office building, said he reported the box to police after noticing it at 8:30 a.m. when he was on his way to Starbucks to pick up some coffee.

"I'm very aware of all of the homeland security issues, so I thought it was time for me to practice what I preach," Stucke said.

An information technology specialist, Stucke said the box had no markings and was unlike anything he had seen before.

"It was a blue plastic box, about the size of a shoe box, with a three-prong male plug sticking out of one side and an LCD screen, about 1 1/2 by 3 inches, attached to another side," he said.

Stucke said he mentioned the box to a palace groundskeeper, who immediately headed toward it.

"I told him, 'Whatever you do, don't pick it up.' "

Stucke called police at 8:50 a.m. to report the object.

Police spokesman Maj. Clayton Kau said the box contained about 20 D-cell batteries. He said the device will be turned over to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, which administers the palace grounds, as a "found item."

About two dozen or so spectators who stood on the makai sidewalk along King Street in front of the post office had front-row seats to what looked at times like footage straight out of a television crime drama.

The bright blue box sat on a bench about 20 yards from the makai side of the bandstand. Police and deputy sheriffs shooed pedestrians away from the sidewalk on the palace side of King Street.

A large, blue-and-white police truck pulled up on the diamondhead side of the palace and unloaded a small, all-terrain robot that began making its way toward the package about 9:45 a.m.

The robot crept to within five feet of the box and kept the video camera trained on it for the next hour.

At about 10:55 a.m. the robot extended its arms, picked up the box, pulled it off the bench toward the bandstand and dropped it on the ground.

At that point, police closed King Street and rerouted east-bound traffic onto Alakea Street. Lanes on Hotel and Richards streets leading to the palace were also closed.

A bomb unit technician covered from head to foot in protective gear walked up to the box and knelt beside it. He set what looked like a video or X-ray camera on the ground about five feet from the box, stepped away for about 90 seconds and retrieved the camera.

Twenty minutes later, two men not wearing protective gear picked up the box and rode off in a truck. Officers reopened the palace grounds.

"I had to walk all the way around just to get to the library," said Mario Rodriguez, 51, a Wai'anae resident and mall security guard. "The security was nice about it, but it was a real inconvenience. They had their yellow tape out, and I thought somebody got killed."

Susan Ishida, coordinator of the Royal Hawaiian Band, said the band's scheduled midday performance at the bandstand began a little later than planned.