KAILUA-KONA — Upcoming retirements add to the increasing number of vacancies impacting the Hawaii Police Department, officials reported to the Hawaii County Police Commission on Friday morning.
During the commission’s monthly meeting, Assistant Chief Marshall Kanehailua told commissioners at the West Hawaii Civic Center that in the next month there would be close to 20 retirees, including eight ranking officers.
In September, officials said, more than 55 officers had enough time on the force where they could retire.
“This is unusual — this amount of retirements,” Kanehailua said. “We’re going to lose some really, really good officers. The department is going to have to recover from this.”
The assistant chief added there are a number of lieutenant vacancies.
Kanehailua told commissioners the recruitment classes 25 years ago were large. Now, those recruits are up for retirement.
On Friday, Maj. Samuel Thomas projected there would be 21-23 vacancies by the end of the year.
“You hope that many don’t retire, since we have such a shortage already,” said Keith Morioka, commission chairman.
Thomas has been with the department 35 years. He has seen large vacancies within the department before and said when the economy is good, not a lot of people apply to be a police officer.
“We’ve seen this cycle happen many a time,” Thomas said. “When the economy is real poor, then we’ll get a lot of applicants.”
About 23-27 years ago, Thomas said the department was hit with a large number of vacancies.
“At one point we had 100 vacancies for sworn officers,” Thomas said. “We only caught up when the economy went bad.”
Back then, Thomas said, it was continuous recruitment. At one point there were three recruit classes a year.
Like in the past, the department is working to fill the current vacancies by focusing on recruitment and the upcoming 87th class.
“We are feverishly working on another background check,” Thomas said.
Applicants for the 87th recruitment class already have gone through the written and agility tests. They now face a background check, which Thomas said is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 1.
The past two recruitment classes only graduated a handful of recruits. The 85th class started with 14. Four officers remain.
The 86th class started with 17. There are currently 12.
There are various reasons why recruits don’t stay with the department. Thomas attributed the dropouts to the physical requirements and the class of Arrest Control Techniques, where officers learn self-defense.
Email Tiffany DeMasters at tdemasters@westhawaiitoday.com.
