HPD: Law Doesn鈥檛 Apply to Us
As part of its effort to share government records that are required by law to be public, Civil Beat has requested the names, positions, and salaries of all City of Honolulu employees, including the Police Department, as provided for by Hawaii Revised Statute 92F, sections 12 thru 14:
Disclosure required. (a) Any other provision in this chapter to the contrary notwithstanding, each agency shall make available鈥:
(14) The name, compensation, 鈥 job title, business address, business telephone number, job description, education and training background, previous work experience, dates of first and last employment, 鈥 of present or former officers or employees of the agency; … and provided further that this paragraph shall not apply to information regarding present or former employees involved involved in an undercover capacity in a law enforcement agency.
鈥淵ou鈥檒l probably need to go to court to get that,鈥 we were told by Carrie Okinaga, the city鈥檚 corporation counsel, at a meeting last week.
The city’s Human Resources Director Noel Ono had sent Civil Beat a letter raising concerns that complying with the law would 鈥渢hreaten the ability of the City to conduct operations, or endanger lives,鈥 despite the fact that the law explicitly reflects legislators鈥 concern about undercover operations and makes a specific exclusion for 鈥減resent or former employees involved in an undercover capacity.鈥
In other words, legislators have already balanced the need to protect undercover operations versus the need to provide for public scrutiny of public employees.
Yet we met with Okinaga and Ono last week because he had asked in a letter (see below) whether we would be “willing to discuss” their concerns. The events leading up to the meeting were outlined in an earlier article.
Research after our meeting revealed that HPD routinely publishes the names and photographs of hundreds of HPD officers, in and in it makes available online. We also found that law enforcement departments on the mainland routinely on the Web the names and salaries of their officers, either by complying with open records requests from news organizations or by .
It seems clear that HPD is attempting to avoid complying with a law that unambiguously applies to them, and Civil Beat has told the city it will continue to insist that our police department comply with the law.
