HPD to shift 100 officers to patrol to combat overtime, boost response

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - The Honolulu Police Department will reassign 100 officers to patrol to reduce overtime costs and improve emergency response.

The reassignments take effect Nov. 1.

In a press conference Thursday, HPD Chief David Lazar said the move will put “100 officers back on the road and back at the stations” without reducing response capabilities.

He said the goal is simple: “More officers available to serve our communities and a safer working environment for our personnel.”

Where the officers are coming from

Lazar said personnel will be reallocated from a variety of assignments, including the chief’s office, Community Affairs Division, Criminal Investigations Unit, records section, traffic unit, training division, narcotics vice unit, administration, major events division, technology division, human resources, and the misdemeanor follow-up section at district stations.

“We want to encourage officers to embrace the plan, knowing that they now have an opportunity to help out their fellow officers on the road so that everyone can remain safe and that we can deliver even better services to the community,” Lazar said.

The department will also end 4th Watch, or the additional weeks of training after field training, the chief said.

Officers leaving field training will be assigned to a station, ride with an officer for a few weeks under supervision, and then patrol on their own, Lazar said.

Overtime overage and staffing shortage

The department has an overtime budget of around $6.8 million every quarter and exceeded it by about $6 million in quarter one, Lazar said.

“The primary factor was that we just don’t have enough officers in patrol to do the work. We have beats. We have shift work 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said. “So it just makes sense also to send officers to those stations to reduce the overtime workload.”

The department remains several hundred officers below the 2007 mandate of 2,177 sworn officers, with a current gap in the high 200s to close to 300 when including recruits in the academy, field training and 4th Watch, Lazar said.

Lazar said the department hired 66 officers a couple months ago, a 12-year record, with that class now at 63. He said another class at the end of the month is on track to equal or exceed that, and a class of 32 recruits graduates Oct. 30.

Investigations and patrol priorities

Lazar said the reallocation will not sacrifice any ongoing investigations.

“We have to have enough staffing in all the elements throughout the department to really do our job effectively,” he said. “The trade-off is, at the end of the day, we need to have police officers on patrol. But make no mistake, we still will investigate narcotics crimes. We will still go after gambling houses. We still are going to investigate every single type of crime that’s occurring.”