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UPDATE: The day after this story published, the Honolulu Police Department provided beat-level data on domestic violence incidents and said that it would fulfill our request for information on call volume and response times. Civil Beat will analyze that data in the coming days.

In the month since Honolulu Police Chief Joe Logan announced a major surge in policing on the Westside, patrols in the area have been staffed at 100% — but a spokesman for the state police union says that’s mainly because existing officers worked overtime.

It’s a patchwork strategy that could undermine the long-term viability of efforts to address crime in the area following a shooting that left four dead.

Additional officers from divisions such as traffic and narcotics are supplementing operations in the area, the department says, but it has repeatedly declined to provide key details about how many officers have been assigned and exactly how it is staffing the surge expected to last at least through the end of the year.

The department has also resisted sharing how quickly police respond to calls in the area — one of several unfulfilled public records requests Civil Beat has made to the department since the Labor Day Weekend shooting on Waianae Valley Road.

While officers on the ground appreciate the additional support, police union spokesman Dustin DeRollo said, it’s unclear how sustainable the solution is for the island’s second busiest police district, which has historically been understaffed. 

Residents on the Waianae Coast, meanwhile, have continued to note a limited visible police presence in their community, aside from what they say has been a spike in traffic officers pulling people over and giving them tickets.

“I feel like if people really knew what we were working with, it would blow their minds.”

Police sergeant and union member Debra Maioho

Before the recent push to increase the police presence in District 8, which stretches from Ewa Beach to Kaena Point, staffing hovered at around 70% of budgeted positions, according to DeRollo.

Debra Maioho, a sergeant in District 8, said in her 15 years working on the Westside it’s been rare to see the district have a full staff. Maioho, who emphasized that she was speaking as a union member, not as an HPD official, said surges have often been temporary. And when there aren’t enough patrol officers on the road, it’s hard to keep up with the onslaught of calls.

Nine of the 23 murders recorded by the police on Oahu in 2023 were in District 8, an area with only 13% of the island’s population. While violent crime on Oahu is down 6.4% so far this year, it has increased substantially in pockets of the Waianae Coast and 10 of 19 homicides on Oahu this year have occurred in that one district.

One Shooting Victim’s Story: Family Seeks Justice

“I feel like if people really knew what we were working with,” Maioho said in an interview last month, “it would blow their minds.”

Conflicting Stories On Police Staffing

Details on exactly how the Honolulu Police Department is boosting patrols on the Westside have been murky for months.

The first surge in officers was announced before the shooting — on Aug. 16 — when Gov. Josh Green and Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi held a press conference pledging additional law enforcement resources to the Westside. The department would only give a wide range of how many additional officers were in the field that weekend — 12-48 depending on the day and time.

The surge didn’t last though. Just two weeks later, Logan acknowledged that the district had not been fully staffed over Labor Day weekend, when the shooting on Waianae Valley Road occurred.

Logan and Blangiardi then announced a plan on Sept. 16 to send in additional reserve officers. Logan said between eight and 20 reserve officers per shift would be deployed to crime hotspots on the Westside, including beach parks, shopping centers and the Waianae Boat Harbor.

The actual number has been about two reserve officers per 13-hour shift, and the most has been four, DeRollo said. The reservists, who are fully sworn volunteer officers, usually park their cars at Keaʻau or Makaha Beach Park with their police lights on for visibility, he said.

The department later clarified that it was also sending officers from non-patrol divisions for special assignments. Spokeswoman Michelle Yu said in an email that “at any time there may be an additional 8 to 20 officers working on different assignments in the district,” including officers from the traffic and narcotics/vice divisions.

Those officers, though, are not supplementing the ranks of patrol officers or responding to 911 calls, DeRollo said. 

What has been making a difference is the decision by Maj. Gail Beckley, who oversees District 8, to tap into overtime. For the past three weeks, DeRollo said shifts have been fully staffed with 23 patrol officers, four sergeants and two lieutenants. 

“The officers are very appreciative that she’s decided to staff at 100%, and they feel it is working,” he added.

But that strategy has flaws. In addition to the higher cost, overtime can burn officers out, especially since the department pulls officers for overtime from the pool assigned to District 8, not from other districts around the island.

“That’s why we’ve been focusing so hard for the last few years on the staffing crisis,” DeRollo said, “specifically on retaining officers.”

Longstanding Issues

Neighborhood board members have said the biggest change they’ve seen during the surge is an increase in traffic officers assigned to the district.

“It almost seems as if our community is being punished,” Waianae Coast Neighborhood Board member Kalei Wilbur said at an Oct. 1 board meeting.

Cpl. Roland Pagan responded that the traffic division isn’t assigned to the Westside to punish anyone. Having extra traffic officers in the district frees up patrol officers to respond to 911 calls, he said, adding that the board would be surprised at how many crimes can be solved by a simple traffic stop.

“It almost seems as if our community is being punished.”

Waianae Coast Neighborhood Board member Kalei Wilbur

Residents have questions about the unfinished Waianae police substation and plans to divide District 8 into two. Logan has said the department lacks the staff necessary to create a ninth district.

One sergeant and one detective are currently assigned to the Waianae substation, according to Yu.

Maioho said the substation often used to be closed because no one was available to staff it, but with the recent uptick in violent crime, it’s been a priority to keep someone there. That takes away a supervisor, though, who could help patrol officers. 

“It makes it worse for us on the road because we have to put somebody at the station,” she said. “And we didn’t get any extra staffing for that.” 

It doesn’t take many calls to tie up multiple patrol officers, and traffic and the district’s sprawling geography, which spans 128 square miles, can make it difficult to get backup, she said.

If a major incident happens in the far western part of the district — such as Makaha, seven miles from where the road ends — officers on the North Shore can’t come around Kaena Point to assist. So if backup is needed, officers in Makaha have to wait for help from the eastern part of the district. Traffic along Farrington Highway can delay response time, and she said traveling from Kapolei can take 25 minutes or more.

Maioho said she’s also frustrated with how much time patrol officers have to spend responding to mental health and homelessness-related calls. 

“When EMS is short, when social services is short, they kick it to us to handle,” she said. “So our ability to focus on what we’re supposed to do, which is enforcement, gets muddied.” 

It also takes time away from community engagement and other measures that can prevent crime from happening in the first place, she said. 

“I love community policing. I think community policing is great, but if we cannot do the basic enforcement, we’re too short-staffed, we’re too burned out,” she said. “All those nice things are extra.”

Most officers work 13 ½ hour shifts three days a week, but some pick up overtime and work five, she said. The workload combined with the grueling schedule, she said, is leading to more officer burnout.

Little Transparency On Policing

While increased police staffing is among the highest priorities for many community leaders, it’s one of several areas where a lack of answers and data makes it difficult to get a clear picture of what’s really happening on the Westside.

Civil Beat asked for the police report on the Waianae Valley shooting on Sept. 3. It is not yet complete, according to Yu, the HPD spokeswoman. The department also is still waiting for the medical examiner’s office to finish autopsy reports.

The department’s media relations team did not make the police chief or the commanding officer of District 8 available for interviews, or respond to an inquiry about the status of bystanders injured in the September shooting.  

And the department acknowledged — but has yet to approve, deny or fulfill — Civil Beat’s Sept. 11 public records request for beat-level data on the number of calls the department receives each year and the average time it took for officers to respond to those calls. Those statistics are essential to determine whether a lack of officers is affecting how fast people get help.

Civil Beat also requested beat-level data on domestic violence, something neighborhood board members said could signal where more resources are needed.

Neighborhood board members have long argued for details about what’s happening in their communities and how police are responding. The department says it is trying to address that with a recently launched data dashboard that provides yearly trends and up-to-date statistics for multiple categories of crime — including aggravated assaults and robberies — at a more granular community level than in the past. 

“Maybe a different district is next. This is not something that’s going to go away.”

Honolulu Police Chief Joe Logan

At a police commission meeting Wednesday, Logan said the department has received positive feedback from the community about the staffing surge, though again he did not share specifics on the number of officers or overtime costs.

Deputy Chief Keith Horikawa added that the supplemental officers have made 230 arrests and issued more than 1,800 citations over the last month. The increased enforcement efforts, he said, have been focused mainly in the area between Nanakuli and Kaena Point.

Logan characterized the efforts in District 8 as a “pilot program” for how to temporarily increase resources to an area.

“Maybe a different district is next,” he said. “This is not something that’s going to go away.”