Oahu’s “thin blue line” has been wearing even thinner, and at a time when public concern about community safety is on the rise.

So it comes as some relief to learn that efforts to stabilize staffing while retirements continue to land on personnel desks are showing some positive results at the Honolulu Police Department.

There is much more to do, however, to bring more candidates into the police pipeline, filling some critical needs for patrol officers in especially vulnerable communities, such as Waikiki and Downtown/Chinatown.

HPD Chief Arthur “Joe” Logan, six months after starting the job and confronting a longstanding staffing shortage, said this week that 104 new police officers will be on board by year’s end. Although the precise count of retirements won’t be known until after Dec. 31, so far 54 officers have taken this route. It appears, then, that training will have more than offset the departures.

Various strategies have been tried, driven in part by budgetary pressures: Overtime expenses had mushroomed even before the pandemic years, as HPD worked to patch over the staffing shortage. In 2019, the department paid out $38 million in overtime — some of it with questionable controls — nearly double the $19 million spent in 2015.

But none of those budget woes changed the facts on the ground: A spike in crime, particularly high-profile cases in Waikiki, meant that keeping the patrol shifts staffed became a paramount concern.

Even with a more recent easing in criminal offenses there, Logan correctly sees a boost in staffing as a top-tier priority. And the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers, the statewide union, has argued that staff shortages put officers and the public at risk.

Among the experiments piloted, with some success, is a reshuffling of staff so that officers can work three 12-hour shifts.

This is a generational issue, though, with large-scale retirements of baby boomers, so stopgap measures won’t be enough.

So it makes perfect sense that the training of new recruits would ramp up on a long-term basis. New cohorts of recruits are now put through the Ke Kula Makai training academy every 2-1/2 months, more frequently than before.

In addition to maintaining that pace, Logan is also looking at reviving a “cadet” program in which high school graduates are hired on a provisional basis until they reach their 21st birthday, then qualifying under Hawaii state law to carry a gun. Until then, cadets could help with office tasks and shadow experienced patrol officers.

This at least would be an investment of City and County resources for the future, rather than inefficiently siphoning away taxpayer resources for overtime pay, which must be brought under control.

A shortage of police officers is an issue that many cities face. The Police Executive Research Forum documents an 18% increase in retirements between 2020 and 2021 and a 5% drop in recruits.

To some extent, Hawaii is seen as a source of recruits to fill those slots nationwide, as well. It’s difficult to retain officers when they’re lured away by better pay in cities with a lower cost of living than Hawaii’s.

It’s also true, however, that a “grow your own” approach is key to grooming more home-grown officers who have deep connections to Hawaii and are more likely to stay put. Incentivizing people to become established in the police force of their home state is the way to go.

The wrong way: giving in to the policing trends and yielding on determination to solve property crimes. These may pale in comparison with violent crime, but victims, tourists and kamaaina alike, feel violated.

Oahu residents need to feel safe, and an increased police presence on the street should be the goal.