The Honolulu Police Commission appears cautious about some proposed changes to its structure and its oversight of the city's police department.
Next year Oʻahu voters could be asked if the city’s mayor should be given the ability to hire and fire the chief of the Honolulu Police Department, which is currently something only the commission can do.
Commission Chair Ken Silva has been open to changes to the oversight body, but warned that giving the mayor that ability could have its downsides.
Silva, a former chief of the Honolulu Fire Department, said other fire departments with that structure were stuck in an “election cycle” that made the work difficult.
“The mayor changes, they get rid of the department head. So then what happens in a bad system, a department operates in spite of — not because of — the chief officer,” Silva said in a commission meeting Wednesday. “How do you get any meaningful change accomplished? Because it is going to take you a couple of years just to get your feet and get your strategic plan established.”
Some commissioners also questioned how the group can express itself if it no longer has that authority over the chief — one of its few substantial oversight tools.
But one of the arguments for changing how the commission operates is that its authority over the police chief makes it less willing to be critical, because it’s also invested in making sure that the chief succeeds.
Brian Black, executive director of the Public First Law Center, submitted the proposal to change the structure of the police commission to the Honolulu Charter Commission, which is in charge of city charter amendment questions presented to voters.
In the police commission meeting he said previous iterations of the group have been more willing to criticize the chief if necessary, but that’s often not the case.
Former commission Chair Loretta Sheehan was well-known for being tough on the chief, but Black said once former HPD Chief Susan Ballard was chosen to lead the department, “ there was a retraction from that level of oversight. If you go back further, the commissions were far more hands-off than that.”
Black added that the intention of the proposal is “to remove that level of concern and give this commission more independence and more ability to do what I think many of the community expect and want to do.”
The restructuring does make other changes that give the commission more oversight abilities. For example, even though mayors would be given more authority to fire the police chief, they wouldn’t be able to do so without the commission’s approval first.
It would also remove language in the city charter that says that the commission can’t “interfere” with HPD’s administrative affairs.
Another change would be who gets to select the commissioners. Currently the mayor nominates commissioners who are then confirmed by the Honolulu City Council. The council would be given more authority to choose the commissioners, under the proposal.
Hearings for city charter amendments are scheduled to start in December.
