In his State of the City address last week, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi proposed a $25,000 signing bonus for new recruits at the Honolulu Police Department, which is short some 400 officers.
The Conversation talked to the mayor Monday morning about improving the officer shortage and the Department of Planning and Permitting.
RICK BLANGIARDI: Keeping the public safe today is very challenging work. And it's challenging for the men and women who are charged with that responsibility. And, you know, quite honestly finding the people who have the courage to want to be police officers isn't quite like it used to be before. And so they need everything and anything in their arsenal, if you will, in order to try to recruit people. And that's what this was designed to do.
CATHERINE CRUZ, HOST: We did talk to a former homicide detective, and she explained to us that you can't really prepare an officer for a scene that we had there in Mānoa. She said a patrol officer is writing traffic tickets one minute and then going to a scene like this and it's tough.
BLANGIARDI: It's extremely tough. And I've talked with police officers as well about that very thing. In fact, even when it's not as horrific — believe me, I'm not trying to trivialize at all what happened in Mānoa, I can't even start to imagine that — but even when it's not as horrific as that, they still deal with a lot of difficult situations through the course of every day in the line of work. And look, we're all human and after a while that can wear on you. So it takes a lot of, a lot of strength and commitment. And so look, $25,000 as a signing bonus in and of itself is not going to trigger that decision. But we wanted to give our police department every tool we possibly could to help them recruit. And that's what, that was behind that. Because candidly speaking, while we will never have enough police officers, you know, to be there to stop things that happen. You know, we do need more, we want to have more police on patrol in areas and trying to do anything and everything we can to deter. So we're focused on supporting our police department. And as I've said repeatedly, you know, we have an unwavering commitment towards that end because we, public safety, when you consider all the priorities that we deal with, above everything else, if there's anything that is more equal than the rest, and not by a little bit but by a lot, it's keeping our public safe.
CRUZ: Well, mayor, you know, is that going to come out of HPD's budget? Does it come from another party?
BLANGIARDI: You know what, it's not about where the money comes from. It comes from our budget, you know, you know, that's the last thing I want to hear from people talking about, you know, what's it gonna cost, what's it gonna cost. You know, this is designed, right now, it's the definition of a cynic, it's somebody who knows the cost of everything, and the value of nothing. We're trying to build. What's it costing us to be down 400 police officers? That's the problem. People who have gotten locked into things before or historically, they get in the way of getting the desired result. So in this particular case, we've created the money. I said at the end of my State of the City speech, it's taken us three years to be in a position now where our budget is reflective of our priorities. If public safety is a top priority, you put money into that to make sure it happens.
CRUZ: Well, we have seen other counties come to Honolulu to recruit our officers for higher pay and benefits. Clark County (Nevada), you know, those places. So how do we deal with pay once we have these new recruits sign on?
BLANGIARDI: Well we are competitive right now, you know, for somebody coming in, you tell me another job in town where a high school graduate could start out at $67,000 a year, now we have a $25,000 bonus at the end of three years, could start off at $67,000, complete the academy, graduate, get a $10,000 bump to $77,000. If, in fact, they're willing to work 10 hours of overtime a week, which is a 50-hour week, by the time they're 21, without any burden, debt burden from college or anything else, they're at the six figures. We're competitive in that regard when you consider what jobs pay in this town. So you know, now we've added a bonus on to that. And in fact, one of the first things we did is we've approved a couple of years ago, two years ago now, you know, a 5% raise for three years in a row in our police department, which equated to a compound effect of 22%. So while I can't necessarily compete with a Clark County per se and what they may be paying or the cost of living or whatever else, we've taken up our compensation dramatically here in order not to have that be something that we were vulnerable to. It may not be dollar for dollar, but I will say this, irrespective of the amount of crime we have here right now, we're still one of the safest cities in America. And a lot of those places that people are going to do police work, and we know this from actual conversations, it's not a garden spar, it's not at all. In fact, in some cases, you know, it's even more dangerous and more difficult. So, you know, there's a lot of factors that we ask people to weigh in that decision. But what we're really trying to do is show what a really good career this is, good career opportunity, good paying job for somebody to stay and be a vital part of our community. That's what we're trying to achieve.
CRUZ: I talked to a couple whose son signed up recently, and they were concerned because they felt he didn't have enough firearms training, and they worried for his safety.
BLANGIARDI: Wow, well that's the first I've heard of that.
CRUZ: Will there be additional training? I don't know. You know, is that in the cards for these new recruits?
BLANGIARDI: Well, before I say there'll be additional training, I need to find out and determine, you know, whether or not our police officers, you know, based on — I'm not taking anything away from what you said in this couple's observations, because I don't know what their standards might be — but my understanding is nobody, nobody gets sworn in unless they're properly trained, and they're doing so according to standards that have been established, that are met based on national standards, as well as local. I mean, you know, it's pretty rigorous to actually get through the course, which is the other challenge in recruiting. It's a demanding job. And there's a lot of, a lot of expectation there. So that's the first I've heard of somebody even indicating that somebody might not be trained well enough on their weapons. So I'll find out about that, get back to you. But I don't believe that's the case. I really don't. I think that if anything, they're all properly trained.
CRUZ: Well mayor, you know, given the case involving the homeless man and the acid attack, I know that the city did have a win in court over how it can deal with these homeless encampments. I mean, I never thought all the years in covering stories about the homeless, I never really thought that was even a possibility of someone doing something so horrible as just a random attack on somebody. But, you know, you want to talk about the city's ability to enforce rules when it comes to the homeless?
BLANGIARDI: Well, let me ask you this, right, Catherine, you're a smart woman. Do you think when you talk about random attacks, that you can necessarily prevent something like that, especially something that's horrific, in your own words, something you couldn't even imagine? That's not, it's not a matter of police. But did we enforce that? Yeah, you know, a year ago, there were 26 murders on Oʻahu, all 26 were arrested and behind bars. Those people were apprehended right away. It's about the enforcement. That is such a horrific act. We want to do everything we possibly can through our police action to establish the fact that if you do something like that you're going to be caught. But as I understand it, the Mililani attack actually now, and the police work that's gone on going back to what I just said, was not necessarily random, just so you know, but the fact that they did that — you can't have, you would not have enough police officers standing next to everybody anywhere out there that could prevent something as bad as that. It's what happens in the aftermath. And our police operated and worked very effectively at apprehending now what I think it turns out to be is two people.
CRUZ: Yes. And we have to give credit where credit's due. But at the same time, there may be people that think well, okay, so you can have signing bonuses, and you can, you know, try and enforce rules, but if there's something in the fabric of our community that's lacking or if someone has serious mental health issues, we've got to deal with that.
BLANGIARDI: Well, we are dealing with that. Just last week or two weeks ago, we signed a deal with the state for the first time ever and created a crisis hub in Iwilei. If you listen to my State of the City the other night, we talked a lot about the governor's program on tuition loan repayments to keep physicians, mental health practitioners, and health care workers on island — rebates up to $50,000 a year. They already awarded in December 492 grants. That's going to be vital at creating that kind of workforce that quite honestly has been missing from the landscape. And you know, at the end of the day, you need people like that to provide the treatment. The city is going to work with helping with respect to our CORE program. We have five ambulances and six SUVs, soon to be 50 staff islandwide, and picking up people. We've adapted shelters, we're doing more so places d to take them. And if we can populate those buildings with those kind of health care workers and mental health practitioners, that's going to go a long way. But you know, Catherine, you start talking about the fabric of society and what's wrong, these are complex issues that are not easily solved. But we're doing our very best to try to make people feel safe against that. I'm going to say it again, Honolulu is still regarded — I'm not just telling you statistically just the facts — as one of the safest places to be and, you know, and so we want to uphold that and make it even better. That's where we're coming from.
CRUZ: I know that you proposed some changes also to DPP. We've got a new software system that you're trying to go online. Is there anything you want to say about the Department of Planning and Permitting and where we're at?
BLANGIARDI: Thank you for the question. I appreciate that. I think one of the things we talked at length the other night about was the Department of Planning and Permitting from the standpoint of what it absolutely means to communities and to people everywhere, from large commercial projects to home remodeling, and everything in between. It's absolutely vital for us to get that department corrected. And that's not a, that's not a linear equation. So we've been at work for the last couple of years. I talked a lot about the analysis we did on the organizational structure, we said, we're not going to divide it, we're going to focus on people, processes and technology. To that end, we're doing all of that. We've negotiated with HGEA for supplemental pay agreements to improve the pay of our engineers, we're replacing our POSSE system that's older than your iPhone, that's been for more than a couple of decades into a brand new system that we spent a year and a half evaluating different systems. Had to go through procurement. It's called Clariti, where it's a self-certification on projects — I can go on and on. One of the things that I said the other night in a very strong way, and I want to say it again on your show, is that I said that one year from now, it'll take two to four weeks for a permit to be reviewed by DPP — and same time commercial parties within the next year following that will be six months or less. Both of those are dramatic improvements and where I cited and used was the pre-screen backlog. When we came into office, there was 3,600 applications in the backlog that took six months. A year ago, after we started to use AI, we got to a place where our reporter was five weeks, five weeks, down from five months. Now it's three days and there's no backlog. It's the same evolution, if you will, as we incorporate people, we're doing some things in the interim, and hiring some code readers — that's been part of the problem, the complexity. I could go on and on on the subject. This is decades in the making. It was broken for decades. There's been a lot of frustration. We are making huge gains. I know that there's a lot of unrest out there in the public about that. We understand the urgency of it. We understand the pain, the aggravation, everything else. But we are now on our way to solving this because we fully understood the problem. We've taken all the appropriate steps and measures that we need to do. We've made the right investments. We'll continue to hire people, but we're focused on again people, processes and technology and that will get us there.
The mayor will kick off a second series of town hall meetings this Thursday night in Kapolei. Blangiardi announced this month he is seeking reelection.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 18, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
