Police union demands Honolulu Police Department address officer shortage

The state police union is demanding that Honolulu’s short-staffed Police Department do more to fill empty police beats around the island.

Lt. Robert Cavaco, the recently elected president of the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers, held a news conference Thursday afternoon to highlight HPD’s long-standing police officer shortage.

“We are here today to sound an alarm to alert the residents and businesses we work to protect that they are being deceived by the leadership of the Honolulu Police Department into thinking they are receiving police protection,” Cavaco said.

As of Feb. 3, HPD has 2,143 authorized positions. In January there were 322 vacancies and 110 recruits in various stages of training, according to the department. Cavaco identified about 130 unfilled beats — each representing a work shift in one of HPD’s patrol areas — on Oahu that have no police presence.

He also attributed growing crime on Oahu to the shortage. From Jan. 1 to Feb. 5, 2021, there were 61 robbery cases, he reported, which jumped to 112 this year during the same time period. He also said that sexual assault cases rose to 38 from 24, rape cases to 34 from 21, and auto theft cases to 542 from 419.

HPD’s operating budget this fiscal year is over $300 million, and Cavaco noted that some of those funds are already allocated to fill HPD’s empty beats. He said that the funding should go toward overtime pay as a short-term solution to the officer shortage and that SHOPO wants to meet with HPD and other local leaders to figure out a longer-term fix to the problem.

HPD interim Chief Rade Vanic pushed back against SHOPO and Cavaco, saying in a statement that a shortage of police officers does not mean police services are absent in some areas.

“For administrative purposes, each patrol officer is assigned to a single, specific beat. Operationally, however, officers routinely work together and assist each other to cover their sectors,” Vanic said in the statement. “To say that a neighborhood or beat would not receive police services due to understaffing is incorrect and a scare tactic.”

Vanic met at least once with SHOPO about patrol staffing shortages and did brief the Honolulu Police Commission about the meeting. A discussion between Vanic and the Police Commission about staffing shortages is scheduled for the next commission meeting, Wednesday.

Cavaco and Councilwoman Heidi Tsuneyoshi, who chairs the Honolulu City Council’s Public Safety Committee, said it’s unclear why the police shortage has continued despite HPD having the funding necessary to fill the vacancies. She said it’ll be a topic of discussion during the next Public Safety Committee meeting, March 2.

The City Council also will begin discussing the city’s budget in March, Tsune­yoshi said.

“It’s a good time to ask, What’s happening with the funding that was there, and how has that been allocated, and what do we need to do going forward?” she said.

HPD officer shortages have been an issue for years, but Tsuneyoshi suggested that Cavaco, who was elected to be SHOPO’s president in December, might have decided to bring attention to it again in part to highlight his priorities early in his term.

Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, in a news conference Thursday morning, said he’s alarmed by the police shortage and supports SHOPO’s efforts to improve police coverage on the island.

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Star-Advertiser staff writer Peter Boylan contributed to this report.