Kuhio Beach hours to change for safety, cleanliness’ sake

The city Department of Parks and Recreation is making plans to extend Kuhio Beach Park’s daily closure by an extra two hours — a move that will broaden the park’s shutdown from midnight to 5 a.m.

Waikiki stakeholders, including hotel management and beach concession operators, have said the current closure hours of 2 to 5 a.m. have drawn overnight sleepers and created unsafe, unsanitary and sometimes dangerous situations.

John Deutzman, who has long been concerned about crime in his Waikiki neighborhood, helped spearhead the push for earlier closure hours for Kuhio Beach Park, saying the current schedule has been creating a nuisance.

“The graffiti people, the gang people, the drug people, the homeless — it’s like this whole crew goes there because it’s the only park that’s open that late,” Deutzman said. “Overall, closing it earlier, I think that will be a good thing. I’m not a fan that it has to be done in the first place, but I think we have to exercise all options.”

Nathan Serota, spokesperson for the city Department of Parks and Recreation, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Friday that the department received confirmation last week of a closure request, which was championed by the Waikiki Neighborhood Board and the Honolulu Police Department. The request was forwarded to Laura Thielen, director of the city Department of Parks and Recreation, for approval.

Serota said, “We will be making the closure hours at Kuhio Beach Park the same as those at Kapi‘o­lani Park. A reminder: you can traverse park property during these closure hours, especially to access the ocean, but you cannot remain within the park.”

He added, “Our staff plan on making the changes to the physical signs (this) week, and I will additionally announce it.”

Deutzman said he believes further restricting Kuhio Beach Park access during late night and early morning will support crime-reduction and community-building efforts by Safe and Sound Waikiki, which has been in Waikiki for about eight months.

“My analysis of crime data supplied by the District 6 Community Policing Team shows crime in Waikiki is down significantly,” he said. “The decrease in crime coincides with an increase in consequences — arrests, prosecution, and sentencing. However, there are still areas that are packed with troublemakers. The cement picnic table area across from Ohua (Avenue) is dangerous and uninhabitable for residents and tourists.”

Kuhio Beach Park users Sunday had mixed reactions to the new hours.

A group of repeat visitors from New Zealand to Hawaii said they weren’t bothered with closing the park earlier, especially if it improved safety in Waikiki, which they already felt good about.

“We feel so safe here,” said Jennie Hanvey. “We’ve never felt any bad feeling. “

Waikiki residents Ashlee Anghag and Danny Daniels said they didn’t support the measure.

Anghag said, “I don’t like it. It’s public land. This reminds me of when we had COVID restrictions and couldn’t go to the beach when we wanted to go. We work hard every day. We want to enjoy where we live.”

Daniels said “people need to respect the land” but that he objected to the broad “punishment” of all park users based on the behavior of a few.

“People that are doing illegal stuff are still going to do illegal stuff,” he said.

The coming Waikiki beach closure follows a new three-hour closure period from 2 to 5 a.m. daily that the Waikiki Beach Special Improvement District Association implemented in March at the Royal Hawaiian Beach, a privately owned stretch of sand with public access that extends from the Royal Hawaiian groin to the start of Kuhio Beach Park beyond the Moana Surfrider.

Rick Egged, president of the Waikiki Improvement Association, said establishing closure hours for the Royal Hawaiian Beach is making a difference for the Waikiki community.

“It’s gone well. It’s enabled us to clean up the area,” Egged said, adding that the WIA board also supports closing Kuhio Beach Park earlier.

“We agreed that it made sense for closure hours to be consistent with Kapi‘o­lani Park,” he said.

Currently, the rules are different from Waikiki park to park. Closure hours in the city’s beach parks in Waikiki range from 2 to 5 a.m. at Kuhio and Duke Kahanamoku beach parks, to midnight to 5 a.m. at Ka­piolani Beach Park.

A scan of the online city park closure list at bit.ly/ParkClosureHours reveals that Waikiki’s beach parks appear to be the only ones on Oahu that stay open until at least midnight. Typical closure hours at other parks are from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii was not immediately able to respond to the Star-Advertiser’s request for comment. However, during an interview in March regarding the setting of closure hours for the Royal Hawaiian Beach, Wookie Kim, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, called the tactics for enforcing beach closure hours “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Kim noted that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has held that “when the number of available shelter beds is far exceeded by the number of unsheltered houseless people in a city, that enforcing criminal laws against houseless people violates the Constitution — the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.”