The recent series by Rob Perez is a convincing and troubling account of miscon- duct and impunity in the Honolulu Police Department (“Crossing the Line,” Aug. 21-23).

Nearly 1 in 6 of HPD’s 2,099 officers has been taken to court one or more times since joining the force, he reported, and since 2010, one HPD officer has been arrested or prosecuted every 40 days.

HPD leaders claim that police misconduct is committed by a few bad apples, but these frequencies show that the problem is systemic.

In comparative perspective, the rate at which HPD officers get arrested (per 1,000 officers) ranks 11th-worst in the country among the 80-plus police departments with at least 1,000 officers.

The other departments at the bottom of this barrel — New Orleans, Baltimore, St. Louis and so on — are in locations that are much more difficult to police than Honolulu, for they have more guns, more crime, more lethal violence, more inequality and more racial tension. As big American cities go, Honolulu is an easy place to police.

Why, then, do Honolulu police behave so badly?

The series provides an important part of the answer: All too often, police are not held accountable for their misbehavior.

Their unaccountability has several causes.

>> The blue code of silence encourages police to speak-no-evil when it comes to the conduct of their comrades.

>> Judges in the state criminal justice system routinely give deviant officers second chances through deferred acceptance of guilty and no contest pleas.

>> And the police union — the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers — does all it can to protect its members and advance their interests, often through grand non-sequiturs, such as the claim that charges against police should be discouraged so that police can make money to pay their mortgages and the private-school tuition for their children.

Change needs to occur in SHOPO and HPD, but they have repeatedly proven that they will not pursue it voluntarily. Progressive change must be pressed upon them.

Ultimately, police misconduct is a political problem, and the buck stops with our elected representatives — including Mayor Kirk Caldwell and city Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro — who have failed to stand up to HPD, SHOPO and the sycophants on the Honolulu Police Commission and the Honolulu City Council who support them.

For example, there has been little political pressure to change a law that prohibits releasing the names of disciplined police officers to the public (unless they have been fired).

The main purpose of secrecy is protection, and this law provides police with much more protection than other county and state workers enjoy.

Similarly, there has been little political pressure to change the absurd legal requirement that citizen complaints against HPD officers be made in writing, notarized and presented in person or through the mail.

The plain purpose of this law is to discourage citizens from making complaints. Statistics presented by Perez suggest it is doing just that.

These dysfunctional laws can be undone — if there is political will.

And they can be replaced by laws that would hold police accountable — if there is political will.

Policing is an occupation rife with opportunities for misconduct, yet some police departments have high integrity. Perez’s series has demonstrated that HPD is not one of them.

There is little mystery about what needs to be done to improve police behavior on Oahu. The real questions are: Will our representatives push for progressive change, and will citizens demand that they do so?

For the problem of police misconduct to persist, all we need to do is nothing.

David T. Johnson is a professor of sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.