Honolulu police used force in fraction of 2022 incidents

Incidents that required Honolulu police officers to use some form of force to resolve a confrontation made up less than 1% of calls for service in 2022, according to the Honolulu Police Department’s 2022 use-of-force report.

The 2,648 incidents that ended with officers using force represented 0.36% of the 728,209 calls for police service in 2022. HPD’s use-of-force policy requires officers to fill out and file a use-of-force report whenever an officer uses force that goes beyond routine handcuffing.

The 425 assault cases, 383 responses to mental health emergency examination and observations and incidents, and 197 miscellaneous public calls were the incidents that most often required officers to use some form of force that ranges from physical restraint to unholstering a firearm to discharging a Taser or handgun.

Mental health cases usually involve people “having a mental health or substance abuse episode, being taken to a medical facility for emergency examination,” who often a danger to themselves or others and “necessitate physical restraint due to behavior and actions,” according to the report, prepared for Chief Arthur “Joe” Logan and his leadership team in March.

Miscellaneous public calls commonly involve weapons, use of force at a receiving desk due to physically resistant detainees, or other incidents that “do not necessarily fall under any other category, but force was justifiably used.”

Rounding out the top 10 incidents that led to officers using force were 143 disorderly-conduct calls, 111 larceny reports, 91 intimidation cases, 85 criminal contempts of court, 84 aggravated assaults, 76 second-degree criminal trespassing cases and 62 incidents where a subject resisted arrest.

In 2022, “physical confrontation” techniques were the most frequent force option used by officers and accounted for 56.8%, or 1,503, of use-of-force applications.

That is a slight increase from 2021 when those techniques represented 53.5%, or 1,415, of use-of-force applications by officers.

In 2022, 19.6%, or 519, of use-of-force applications involved officers who unholstered a firearm.

In 99.4%, or 516, of these incidents, there were 130 incidents in which officers “unholstered their firearms for precautionary purpose only” and 386 incidents in which officers unholstered their firearms with a subject present. In both circumstances, officers did not discharge their weapons.

In the three instances when a weapon was fired, “one incident involved the death of a subject.” No suspects were hurt in 79.8% of the incidents, compared with 82.3% in 2021. There were no officer injuries in 95.6% of the incidents in 2022, compared with 96% in 2021, according to the report.

Maj. Manuel A. Hernandez, head of HPD’s Ke Kula Makai training academy in Waipahu, told Honolulu police commissioners May 17 that use-of-force incidents make up a small percentage of HPD’s response to calls for service.

“Officers determine the appropriate, justified control force option to utilize based specifically on the level of resistance the individual is providing. Outside factors such as race, gender, etc., are not the determining factor in use of force applications,” said Hernandez. “Control force options dictate the level of force to be utilized in response to the subject’s level of resistance.”

Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders accounted for the highest percentage of subject resistance incidents by race with 33.0%. NHPI was followed by people identifying as white, 28.5%, and those who identified as Asian, 15.0%.

The race of each subject is self-reported to police and is not based on official birth records or other vital statistics.

“We do break it down more granular than these broad categories,” Deputy Chief Rade K. Vanic told commissioners May 17. The broad race categories are used for the use-of-force report and for reporting crime statistics to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Vanic said.

Commissioner Elizabeth A. Char, a doctor and former director of the state Department of Health and Hono­lulu’s Emergency Services Department, told Vanic that she worked with the broad race reporting categories with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and that the data does “not accurately reflect actionable information.”

Commission Chair Doug Chin noted the race breakdowns for use-of-force incidents in 2022 resemble arrest statistics kept by HPD.

“It’s a big issue, and it’s a big thing to think about, but I think that is where the numbers are interesting,” said Chin, a former city prosecutor and Hawaii attorney general.

Logan told commissioners the department believes the race data is “comparing apples to apples” rather than trying to compare the “whole population of the City and County of Honolulu with the number of use-of-force (incidents) or arrestees.”

“Not everybody behaves in a manner that is criminal, therefore would never have an engagement with officers,” said Logan. “You have to understand it has to be within those that engage with an officer, not against the other 60% of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders who don’t engage with police officers (as the subject of a crime).”

Commissioner Ann Botticelli asked Logan whether there is a mechanism in place to determine whether there is an “implicit bias problem” with how police engage subjects and use force. “Is there something we should look into and train for?” she asked.

Vanic responded that HPD does have implicit bias training for new recruits and as part of an annual training regime for all employees.

“It can be dangerous to equate the number of individuals, the makeup as far as overall, total population, and say that because they make X percent of total population, then therefore they are supposed to commit that percentage of crime,” Vanic said. “Hawaiians maybe make up 12% to 13%, or part-Hawaiians, but for whatever reason they are committing or we are arresting 33% of the crime. So the argument could be made that maybe you’re showing bias toward them, you’re targeting them. … Someone is telling us they are the individual that committed the crime. A lot of these instances is based on what is being reported to us.”

Vanic said a standard part of responding to a complaint is asking for details about a suspect, and that is where the race information is often provided.

There are seven levels of resistance that officers encounter that correspond to levels of force they may employ documented in the “Hono­lulu Police Department Levels of Control” — the most critical being the “Aggravated Active Aggression” category, where a suspect may be involved in an “assault involving weapons or techniques that could result in death or serious or substantial bodily injury.” That level of resistance allows an officer to use their firearm or other deadly-force tactics.

“Passive Resistance” occurs when a suspect’s actions “do not prevent officer’s attempt to control but requires officer to increase physical contact.”

Botticelli asked whether the reports that document the incident and the kind of force employed because of the subject’s resistance permit HPD leadership to “go back and counsel officers who maybe … displayed more force than was warranted under the situation.”

“Correct,” said Hernandez. “We can address the issue if needed.”

HPD’s policy outlines a use-of-force continuum and describes levels of resistance corresponding with the recommended level of force and specific force options within each level.

According to HPD, from lowest to highest, the seven levels of force in HPD’s policy are verbal command; physical contact; chemical agent; physical confrontation; intermediate weapon — conducted electric weapon — specialty weapon; less lethal ammunition; and deadly force.

The 2022 report, prepared for Logan in March, is different from the study by David T. Johnson, Nicholas Cha­gnon and Daniel Jeong of the Department of Sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Johnson is a professor of sociology, Chagnon is a lecturer in sociology and women’s studies, and Jeong is a graduate student in sociology.

Their finding showed use-of-force incidents involving officers increased from 706 in 2010 to 2,646 in 2021 but still represent a “very small percentage of all police interactions.”

The State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers panned the study as an “op-ed written by anti-police activists.”

HPD leadership attributed the increase to a change in reporting requirements in 2011 that mandated documentation of each incident and say the study didn’t accurately track with what the department tracks.

“The numbers that they used and the way they presented it, it almost seemed like they presented it in a way to support their conclusions,” said Vanic, who acknowledged he understood what they were trying to do. “To me, that’s irresponsible reporting. If you look at it from a different point of view, you can paint a completely different picture.”