Making history: Sherry Bird is Hawaii Police Department’s first female deputy chief

“We’re all community policing officers, whether we’re assigned to Community Policing or not.”

During a conversation with the Tribune-Herald earlier this month, Deputy Chief Sherry Bird, who was sworn in on March 20 as the Hawaii Police Department’s second-in-command, said she “would hope that’s the philosophy that all of our staff takes.”

A 28-year veteran of the department, Bird, 52, graduated in the same recruit class as Chief Reed Mahuna. As assistant chief of the department’s Administrative Services Bureau since February 2025, Bird was already the highest-ranking woman in the department’s history prior to taking the penultimate step upward.

“I feel like our department, we have very strong community partnerships, but there’s always room for improvement,” Bird said. “On the command staff level, we can make ourselves more available to the community, and the chief has already started doing that with his monthly talk-story sessions. I accompany him on those, and I think those are really valuable.

“The communities islandwide have their own community meetings, and we’re going to get our command staff more engaged, more visible, present and available. We will improve in that area.”

Bird said she and Mahuna “work well together” and said they share a commitment to recruitment as the “number one priority.”

“We’re about 69 or 70 sworn positions short … and that’s not taking into account the number of personnel that can retire, should they choose to now or in the very near future,” she said.

To fill open positions, HPD engages in “continuous recruitment,” Bird said.

“We give the written and agility tests once a month. We’re running three recruit classes simultaneously at any point through the year,” she said. “We started a class March 6 which has eight recruits, if memory serves me correctly. We’re starting a new class in July. We have approximately 12 in the queue for that. But what’s promising is the class we’re working on that will start in November. Right now, we have 33 applicants, and we have one more group to plug in … so we’re hoping that will be a big class.

“We’re looking at creating a recruitment unit that deals strictly with recruitment — getting our brand out there, promoting our department. Their sole focus will be recruitment and getting more people into our department.”

In March 2021, Bird and Aimee Wana — who has since retired — simultaneously became the second and third women promoted to rank of major in the department’s history. Neither Bird nor Wana had joined the department when its first, Maj. Cheryl Reis, retired in 1994.

Bird said the art of policing “has changed a lot” since she joined the department in 1998.

“I can say back in the day, it was more of an ‘us versus them’ kind of mentality. And it’s changed a lot,” she noted. “We are part of the community. We work together in partnerships, problem solving. We couldn’t be functional or efficient if we didn’t have the community on our side.

“Technology has definitely changed our policing style, as well. And we can’t talk about everything, but nowadays, we try to be more transparent and informative than back in the day. It’s just how the times are. We can’t take a police officer for their word now, unfortunately. That’s why we have body-cams, to help protect everybody involved in an incident.”

Bird had an opportunity to see first-hand national standards of policing, graduating from the prestigious FBI National Academy in 2012.

Asked if she’s ever felt the so-called “glass ceiling” as a woman police officer, Bird replied, “I can’t say that I have.”

“I’ve always just focused on me and doing the best that I can. Don’t get me wrong. There’s been situations and comments. It’s there. I know it’s there. But I’ve always been of the mindset that I’m going to do the best job that I can, work hard — work harder than the males,” she said and laughed.

“And I feel that any promotion I got was because I deserved it, and not because ‘you’re a girl.’”

Bird said that currently, there are about 40 sworn officers who are women, “a little less than a tenth” of HPD’s ranks.

“It’s much more than what it was when I first came in, but we can increase them. And I would like to see those numbers increase,” she said.

As the department’s highest-ranking woman officer, Bird understands that she and her career are historically significant.

“I want to do something to help promote our women in leadership in our department. And that’s something that I’d like to take on as far as an initiative within our department,” she said.

“I don’t know what that will look like yet, but I do want to do something in that realm and show other women that it’s possible.”

Email John Burnett at john.burnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.