There were 95 violations of the Honolulu Police Department’s policies on use of body-worn cameras this year through September, nearly doubling the 58 total reported in 2021 in a review of administrative investigations as the department deliberates discipline that goes beyond counseling.

Of the 95 violations, nine officers accumulated two violations each, HPD Maj. Brandon Nakasato told the Honolulu Police Commission.

The body-worn camera violations were found through 53 internal reviews through September. They include eight administrative investigations, five case referrals from the commission, two critical-incident investi­gations, 12 police pursuit reviews, eight Taser-use reviews, three criminal investigations and 15 motor vehicle collisions involving officers.

In addition, the Professional Standards Office’s Quality Assurance Division pulls footage from 10 random calls for service from each division in all eight patrol districts and the traffic division, forwarding them to supervisors for review. Through August, supervisors found 48 violations, compared with 42 during a 10-month period from March through December 2021.

Between the administrative investigations and the professional standards reviews, there have been 143 violations of body-worn camera policies so far this year.

Nakasato stressed that reviews generated by audits and administrative oversight evaluate everything an officer is doing, not just whether a camera policy was bypassed.

Police commissioners Wednesday asked Nakasato about disciplinary measures for violations.

“Say it’s a criminal case, supervisor’s review … that’s just the normal disciplinary process, is that what happens?” commissioner Carrie K.S. Okinaga asked.

Nakasato said professional standards would document the violation through an investigation, getting a response from the accused officer. “If the evidence supported (the allegation and violation in) most cases … they were issued a division counseling,” said Nakasato. “That’s the trend right now in terms of discipline.”

Commissioner Ann Botticelli told Nakasato that what commissioners cannot discern from the numbers is how the 95 documented violations relate to the total population of cameras used by the force every day.

“It could be a really small percentage,” she said. “We don’t know how many cases were reviewed, say, through administrative investigation and that percentage that also had a body worn camera component to it. … We’re sort of looking at these numbers in isolation instead of the context of the overall picture.”

HPD uses body-worn camera recordings to document officer interactions in accordance with federal, state and county laws. HPD began outfitting officers with 1,200 cameras in August 2018.

The program started as a 30-day pilot project in November 2017 with 77 officers working from 2 to 11 p.m. in HPD District 1 — Central Honolulu.

In the second quarter of 2018, HPD ordered 1,200 Axon Body 2 cameras on the Unlimited Plan with five years of storage on Evidence.com and 391 Axon Signal Vehicle units, according to a news release from the company. The program cost about $3.5 million to start and costs about $1.5 million each year to maintain.

The cost per camera, including storage, ranges between $15 and $79 a month, according to a 2018 price sheet from the company.

Officers assigned to patrol and HPD’s traffic division are equipped with the cameras, while plainclothes officers, including Specialized Services Division operatives and Crime Reduction Unit members, are not. HPD said the footage of police interactions gathered from the cameras is used to “enhance the department’s ability to provide evidence for investigative and prosecutorial purposes” and to aid officer evaluation and training.

Commissioner Doug Chin, a former deputy prosecuting attorney and state attorney general, said it’s positive that the department is doing audits and sharing the results, but pointed out that the violations are trending in the wrong direction.

“I think what you’re sharing is a big concern, and it might require some more follow-up,” said Chin. “By all accounts it’s worse. We’re looking at numbers that show that the violations from 2021 to 2022 have increased when they should be decreasing. I don’t know how to interpret these numbers any other way.”

Chin pointed out that the 2022 statistics are for only nine months. “Is it, the department did a better job of catching these violations … or is it just that it’s worse?” asked Chin.

Nakasato said HPD is stepping up scrutiny of existing policies and looking out for camera violations.

Among the violations this year, there were 89 instances in which an officer turned the camera on but failed to activate it; 28 in which there was late activation; 17 in which an officer failed to turn it on while using lights and siren; seven early deactivations; and two violations for not turning it on at all. That compares with 100 violations in 2021, 93 for failure to activate, six for late activation and one for leaving it off.

When pressed by Chin for reasons why officers may not be turning on their cameras, Nakasato replied that there are several types of violations in that category, including not turning a camera on before arriving at a scene, or not activating it before initiating a law enforcement or investigative encounter, or if it was left off while the lights and sirens of a patrol car were on.

“I think we’ve really improved on … just having the camera on itself,” said Nakasato, who told Chin the department has not reached any general conclusions as to why officers may not be turning on their cameras. Chin said he is certain there are non-nefarious reasons for the violations as well as improper ones, and that comparing HPD’s findings with comparable departments on the mainland would help.

Okinaga said the body-worn camera program has passed the point where violations were expected by new users getting accustomed to the training.

“As we go along, the thinking always was … there might be violations. It’s a new policy; people might not be sure when to do it (turn on the camera). So are we at the stage where divisional counseling is still going to be the norm?” asked Okinaga. “Because we’re getting into multiple years of the program.”

“We’re actually in discussions of how to … progress from here and also looking at technology to help our supervisors on the field to catch it (possible violations) … on the road,” Nakasato replied. “We’re looking at all options to get the compliance.”

“If we can just encourage that … especially for multiple violations, repeat multiple violations, because we think it’s so helpful to our reviews when we have the body-worn cameras,” said Okinaga. “It tends to assist the reviewers in figuring out what exactly happened during the incident not just one person’s version of it.”

Commissioner Kenneth Silva said he favors “progressive discipline” for camera violations.

“If there are multiple offenses by the same person, there has to be corrective action,” said Silva. “Otherwise, in essence, you really don’t have a program. What we track and measure is definitely what people are going to understand, especially when there is progressive discipline.”