Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s inner autocrat is showing as he plots to remake the Honolulu Police Department to his liking.
If the law doesn’t give you what you want, try bullying and see if anybody stops you.
Hey, it’s working in Washington, D.C.
But this isn’t Washington, and there’s good reason for Honolulu’s long-standing practice of separating politics from policing by leaving the hiring and firing of the police chief to an independent Police Commission.
The seven-member commission should now assert its authority and take full charge of the decision-making on replacing Chief Joe Logan, who retired after relentless arm-twisting by Blangiardi.
The mayor is pushing to install Big Island police Chief Ben Moszkowicz to replace Logan, first on an interim basis and then permanently.
Blindsided police commissioners, appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council, haven’t had a full discussion yet, but members have rightly indicated they’ll open applications for both the interim and permanent jobs to all interested candidates.
Moszkowicz, a former HPD major and one of four finalists for the job when Logan was hired in 2022, is a highly qualified candidate, but others also should get fair consideration if HPD is to have the best possible leadership.
If Moszkowicz is asked to quit his Big Island job for the interim position in Honolulu, he’ll appear greased for permanent appointment and it’ll smell foul to a public tired of municipal BS.
It makes more sense for the commission to take the traditional path of making a current command officer interim chief while doing a thorough search for a permanent HPD leader — a search in which Moszkowicz would be a serious contender, but not a lock.
Blangiardi has advocated for a City Charter amendment to have the mayor appoint the chief instead of the commission.
He said he expected to have a voice in the 2022 hiring, despite the Charter giving him none, and has seemed miffed after the commission hired Logan without his blessing.
Now he’s jumping the gun in the wrong way — disrespecting his own commission appointees — and at the wrong time for playing politics with police.
It’s horrifying to watch the politicalization of law enforcement in Washington, with top officers installed and removed at the whim of the administration and ordered to persecute enemies of the administration while giving passes to its friends.
I don’t think that’s who Blangiardi is; I take him at his word that he thinks HPD is in need of more effective crime-fighting. But usurping powers the law gives to others isn’t the way.
If he had problems with Logan over communications, union relations and filling vacant positions — a challenge facing most city and state agencies — he should have had an open discussion with the commission.
With political turmoil and paranoia on the rise, the best path forward for the commission in hiring Honolulu’s next police chief is to do it by the book without scent of political influence.
There are members with the community standing and backbone to do their difficult jobs honorably.
Hopefully, they can do so a lot faster than the year it took to hire Logan after Susan Ballard resigned.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
