Lack of officers is hurting operation of HPD, chief says

Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard last week gave the City Council a rough but far-ranging outline of her priorities for the department, including plans to increase HPD’s ranks significantly and create a larger yet friendlier presence in the community.

Ballard, who took over as chief in November, told the Council Public Health, Safety and Welfare Committee on Thursday that increasing demands for service coupled with a nagging officer vacancy problem have left the department so short-handed that it cannot keep up with investigations and is forced to pay more overtime to make up for the vacancies.

“Our department has been stagnant for the last five to seven years,” Ballard said.

Incrementally increasing staffing is also essential if HPD wants to continue to be accredited with the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies Inc. (See story here.)

In the Criminal Investigations Division, “we’ve already started cutting services in CID,” the chief said. “People who have cases that come into (CID) are getting letters saying that we’re sorry, but we’re not able to investigate your case because we don’t have the staffing to investigate your case.

“So we’re using our staffing on the more high-profile type of cases, and the other ones are not being investigated, and so the cutting of services are already starting to occur.”

On the patrol side, only about 65 percent of patrol officer positions were filled when she took office in November.

“You just can’t do that,” Ballard said. “It’s not fair to the officers; it’s not to the community.”

The goal is to make the patrol divisions 100 percent staffed by 2023, starting with 5 percent growth in the coming budget year. “Until we get to 100 percent and we fill these vacancies, it’s going to take overtime, and it’s going to take a lot of overtime.”

Departmentwide there are roughly 250 vacancies out of about 2,100 sworn- officer positions, Ballard said. There also are about 100 vacancies among 500 civilian positions.

Speeding up the time it takes for a recruit to apply and get into the police academy, which used to take up to a year, is a priority. That’s been reduced to six to seven months after HPD took over aspects of the hiring process formerly with the Department of Human Services.

Ballard said she is also eyeing “a shortened academy” that will allow former officers from other agencies as well as those with criminal justice degrees to move through the process more quickly.

“No sense in them learning stuff that they’ve already learned,” she said.

Once HPD has filled its vacancies, Ballard said, she will propose gradually adding a minimum of about 300 new departmentwide positions, an increase of about 14 percent, over a period of five-plus years. Anticipated are 164 new patrol positions in hopes of discontinuing overtime to cover beats; 50 new Criminal Investigations Division positions; and 20 new Narcotics-Vice Division positions.

Until patrol staffing is at 100 percent, beat officers are going from case to case and then writing reports.

“They’re not having the time to get out of their cars and actually go out there and knock on doors, talk to the business people, find out what’s going on, what their needs are. We tell them, ‘Park your car, get out, walk around the neighborhood. If you see someone out watering their grass, you stop and talk story. Introduce yourselves to them.’ I think that’s what we’re losing. For so long the Police Department has been kind of … standoffish, but we’re trying to get over that. The deputies are out there talking to the officers and command every day and saying, ‘Hey, this is a different Police Department. We’re open, we want to have an open discussion, we want people come to us and to feel comfortable coming to us.’”

Committee members applauded Ballard’s approach.

“I think this will be a great way of rebuilding confidence in the Police Department,” Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga said.

The CID positions cannot be neglected “because they’re the ones who pick up all the cases afterwards,” Ballard said. There are currently about 110 positions in CID, so her long-term plan amounts to about a 50 percent increase.

The increase in CID staff will also allow for establishment of a cybercrime unit, the chief said. “Times are changing, and we have to keep up with the times.”

Bolstering Narcotics-Vice is also critical, she said.

As was the case 20 years ago, “the crime that’s occurring on the streets, all this violent crime, property crime, is all being fueled by drugs again,” Ballard said.

“The drug of choice: crystal meth. We are seeing it over and over and over again,” she said. “We need to get the big boys and girls, not just the dealers.”

Other long-term priorities Ballard presented to the Council:

>> Pushing equity pay for excluded managerial HPD post to provide incentive for quality applicants to excluded managerial ranks: “I have assistant chiefs who are making less than the majors; I have majors that are making less money than my captains; I have captains that are making a lot less money than my lieutenants.”

>> Using civilian vacancies to handle parking enforcement: “High-paid officers should not be out on the street giving parking tags, towing cars and doing abandoned vehicles. That can be done by civilian people. … We can take away that responsibility from the officers so that they can become more efficient, out on the road, more proactive and doing more community policing.”

>> Tackling homelessness: “We’ve become the homeless enforcement unit. We know, obviously, that’s not going to change. We do not have the staffing to enforce (homeless-related violations), I’ll be totally honest with you. So we need a unit … who can go out and not just do enforcement, but to work with the homeless, to try and get them the services that they need, get them into housing and do the best that we can and try to clean up the streets in Honolulu because the patrol officers have got their plates full right now.” More drop-in centers are also being considered.

>> Beefing up staffing at the Scientific Investigation Division: “They’re busting at the seams. We have sent out the kits for DNA testing for sex assaults. That takes time. If we can do it in-house, we could get those results a lot faster.”

>> Establishing new alternative call-servicing unit and online reporting: “This (call-servicing) unit will only be taking cases over the phone and online cases. We’re not 1950 anymore. Officers cannot respond and make cases for people who just want to see an officer. We’re going to switch their thinking over to you can do it online and you can do it over the telephone.” These two things will cut the work of patrol officers by 20 percent.

>> Creating a nonemergency call number: “911 should not be used for nonemergencies. It should only be used when an officer needs to respond quickly. We are looking at and investigating the 311 system or using a seven-digit number for people to call for nonemergencies. But it’s going to take people to staff those numbers.”

>> Repairing and maintaining the HPD headquarters building: Ballard described those in the Information Technology Division “‘the plastic people’ because when you go down there, they’re actually working out of tents. They’ve got tarps hanging over the top of their cubicles. The Vehicle Maintenance Section, which is in the basement of our building, it floods every day. … We’re talking about inches of water that’s on the floor of our building. They have to put everything up on blocks; their paperwork is all mildew if they don’t wipe it down every day.”

>> Updating technology and training at the Training Center both for recruits and current officers: “We’re trying to update the technology out there — so use-of-force training, justification for use of force — because it hasn’t been done for over nine years. The curriculum they’re teaching now … when I was out there as a major was what we instituted. We have to address and we have to up the training and the professionalism of our police department.”