Should the Honolulu Police Commission have the authority to hire and fire the chief of the Honolulu Police Department?
That question has become increasingly important over the last few weeks as Chief Joe Logan’s tenure with HPD comes to an end.
After the announcement that Logan would retire at the end of June, the commission appointed Deputy Chief Rade Vanic to serve as the department’s interim chief, despite Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi publicly endorsing Hawaiʻi County Police Chief Ben Moszkowicz for the role.
At the same time, Blangiardi has also shown interest in giving the mayor’s office more authority to appoint the chief.
Currently, the commission is solely responsible for hiring and firing HPD’s chief, so giving that ability to the mayor could mean taking it away from the commission.
However, the mayor’s office is exploring alternative methods that could include both the commission and the mayor.
“There are many ways that could be accomplished – one idea, for example, is that the members of the Honolulu Police Commission could solicit applications and evaluate candidates and then provide a list of finalists to the mayor, who would have the power to select a new Chief of Police from the list of finalists provided by the commission,” the mayor’s office said in an email to Hawaiʻi Public Radio.
The commission’s power over the police chief is one of its few real oversight tools.
In its current state, the commission is mostly an advisory body. It can only review and make recommendations on HPD’s budget and internal rules and regulations, and the commission’s own budget is determined by the department.
But the commission’s rules say it cannot “interfere in any way with the administrative affairs of the Department.”
Commission Chair Ken Silva, following the commission’s decision to appoint Vanic as interim chief, said he’s open to changing how the chief is chosen.
“The way that it is now, it works. But we've been in that model for quite a while. It’s always fair to look at how other jurisdictions are doing it,” Silva said.
The current model does have some problems, so there could be a case for moving the commission’s hiring and firing ability to another entity.
Tasking the commission with choosing a police chief is supposed to make the appointment less political, but the mayor appoints the commissioners, so it’s likely to be politicized anyway.
Additionally, the commission’s hiring process can make for a more transparent chief selection, but that hasn’t necessarily been the case.
“With the police commission … that hiring process technically is part of a Sunshine Law process that would be open to the public, and theoretically you would see more of how someone is selected in practice,” said Brian Black, president and executive director of the Public First Law Center. “The Honolulu Police Commission has done things to try and reduce the amount of public access to that hiring process.”
The heads of most other city departments are selected by the mayor and approved by the Honolulu City Council, and Black said that process is about as transparent as the commission’s in practice.
Finally, the commission’s authority can, and arguably has, hurt its willingness to be critical of the police chief.
“One of the things that seems to have developed historically with the Honolulu Police Commission is that when it selects a chief, the commission will have a tendency to become invested in the chief's success. And because it is invested in the chief's success, it will not necessarily provide the level of oversight that the community expects,” Black said.
He said that strengthening the commission in other ways and assigning another entity to hire and fire the police chief could be a potential solution.
Whether the mayor’s office should have the responsibility is up for debate
Camron Hurt, director for Common Cause Hawaiʻi, said reassigning that power wouldn’t be helpful because the mayor picks the police commissioners, and, by extension, already has authority over the chief.
Instead, he, like Black, focused on the “culture” of the commission.
“Some of our most overpoliced populations are our Micronesian community, yet what is the Micronesian makeup of the police commission?” Hurt said. “I would ask how much of our police commission presence is made up of west side voices, is made up of kanaka voices, is made up of voices that are usually the most impacted by policing?”
A more representative commission could help it better address relevant problems facing HPD and its interactions with the public.
“If you change the culture and the way that we look at these people … I think you could see a very big shift,” Hurt told HPR.
Hurt supported giving the Honolulu City Council more authority over the police chief.
Meanwhile, Black said a possible solution to the commission’s issues is to give it more oversight powers but assign the hiring and firing of the chief to another entity.
Mayor Blangiardi supports an amendment to the City Charter that would give the mayor’s office more authority to choose HPD’s chief.
His office said it’s working with the Honolulu Charter Commission to come up with a proposed amendment. It would then be up to Oʻahu voters to choose whether they want to approve that amendment.
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