On April 15, 2026, the Hawaii County Council held budget hearings for multiple public safety and government support departments. The hearings covered the Hawaii Police Department (HPD), the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney (OPA), the Animal Control and Protection Agency (ACPA), the Hawaii Fire Department (HFD), the Department of Information Technology (DIT), the Office of Corporation Counsel (OCC), and the Department of Liquor Control. Discussions focused on departmental budgets for Fiscal Year 2027, staffing challenges, new initiatives, and public safety concerns including mental health response, dangerous dogs, and communication infrastructure.
Chief, when you're ready, you have a PowerPoint presentation to run through. Please introduce yourselves. Remember to turn on your green button on your mic. So it goes red. Yep, there we go. And then I'll introduce your team behind you if you need to. And run through your PowerPoint, and then we'll go to questions from the council. All right. Thank you guys very much. We're happy to be here. I'm Reed Mahun, I'm the police chief. Next to me is my deputy chief Sherry Bird and Hawaii Iona, who's in charge of our finance section is here as well. Fiscal year 2025 program measure outcomes. We filled at least 85% sworn and 74% of our civilian position. Department personnel received 60,005 hours of training. We processed 3,843 firearms permits within uh within two weeks or a 98%. We cleared 1,734 auto theft cases, 40%, and conducted 792 hard drug investigations. Our objectives for fiscal year 2027 is to upgrade computer equipment and software to comply with federal and state requirements, create a recruitment team to counteract staffing shortages, reduce high overtime and improve services, increase community engagement through events like talk stories and coffee with a cop, research and identify locations for a permanent cold storage facility, and increase efforts to actively research and apply. Federal and state grants. We transitioned to a new emergency call center, the new 17,000 127 square foot facilities on Mohouli Street and operates a unified call center, housing and dispatch for police and fire departments. We have a new uh voice over internet protocol uh phone system uh for the Kona and Kao police stations. Uh new uh HPD public safety counselor. Um again, uh this is a this is a first ever for our department, and uh the feedback that we have so far is tremendous uh the work that um she is doing. Essentially, you know, she's a counselor that our personnel and their families can avail themselves of. Uh we don't know who's going or what's happening. It's completely out of our uh our supervision, other than to know that she is you know seeing people. Uh and um, you know, it takes time for somebody like that to you know gain the trust of uh first responders, but um so far uh we've had um very positive feedback, and I think it's a important step uh for officer wellness. It's also available for fire department personnel as well. Uh we received 18 uh new Ford expeditions and three new uh F-150 pickup trucks. Um again, very important for us uh because we have vehicles that are well past their end of life that we continue to um support because there's really no other alternative. Uh the last time that vehicles are purchased, I believe, was in 2020 or 2017. Uh so we have vehicles that are 2008, 2009 vehicles that we are in the process of phasing out. We also have our new VersaTerm uh community connect. So this particular um this particular um software system, what it does is when what we constantly get is we constantly get calls from people that hey, we call the police, are the police coming? And if the police do come, you know, what is our what do we reference here? What is our report number? What is our uh you know, what is the status of this case? Well, in this particular this particular program, what it allows us to do is that when somebody calls the police, they're able to get a text message that lets them know the police are on the way, and this is the number that they can reference. And as their cases move throughout the system, whether it be to the prosecutor's office or to the to uh our CID or detectives, they're made aware of where it's going and who the new contact person is for their case. Um so far we've had a lot of positive feedback regarding it. Uh and you know, of course, there's some some cases that you know we don't send the text messages, sensitive cases, cases involving, you know, um, where we think that the victim uh somebody other than the victim may have access to that cell cell phone, but for the most part, yeah, we've had very positive feedback. Our department, we have 664 position uh positions. Uh we have 70 sworn vacancies, uh which is roughly about 15 percent, 35 uh civilian vacancies. Um, we have four main bureaus, and of course, challenges that we face are recruiting and staffing. Um we have uh a different different plans moving forward with a recruitment section that is dedicated to recruiting uh people uh to fill our vacancies, and those are things that we're moving forward with uh in the department. But again, um I think vacancies, especially in the sworn positions, is gonna be a challenge for police chief, police chiefs and executives, you know, in the foreseeable future. Uh we just we just need to never take our eye off of the off of the ball there and and don't get complacent uh because we need to we need to focus on that no matter what our fiscal 27 uh budget overview uh about 74 million dollars or roughly 75 percent or salaries and wages um changes into our OCE, their status quo, uh changes in equipment budget. Uh we're we are increase of 350,000 to purchase 75 mobile data terminals. So these are uh the computers that officers have that they can put in their cars and that they can take out at the in the station and that they use to complete their reports and do checks. Um basically we're in a situation where we have to we have to move them out basically annually, certain numbers of them have to get moved out annually because they're at their end of life.