HPD Chief talks about how he plans to deal with violent crime

HONOLULU (KHON2) — Honolulu Police Department Chief Joe Logan’s, five year plan touches on everything from crime to improving communications. KHON2 spoke to the chief to ask him how he plans to implement his goals.

In the last week alone, there’s been a triple shooting Ewa, a shooting at a gas station in Kaneohe and early Monday morning the body of an unknown female with a stab wound was found inside a burning car in the Mililani High School.

Violent crime is just one of many things Honolulu Police Chief Joe Logan is addressing in his five year plan. And he’s doing it by collecting data.

“Using tools and techniques and software to analyze the data so that we can say, okay, there’s crime, high crime areas in these specific spots during these specific times. Okay, so how do we as a law enforcement agency, project, or target to those areas with law enforcement officers,” Logan said.

From there they can decide how best to move forward, by adding blue light patrols or undercover, covert operations.

Police Commission Chair Doug Chin, agreed that crunching the numbers will benefit HPD in many ways.

“This will be a lot more helpful for the community and the department to know how better to allocate their staffing, resources,” Chin explained. “And the reason why data is so important is because it helps people in whatever community they live in to know whether things are feeling better or worse, or whether they’re actually better or worse.”

With 360 vacancies at HPD, recruitment has been a major issue and Logan has been very focused on fixing it.

HPD is now holding more frequent, but smaller recruiting classes to lower attrition rates.

Logan also talked about going into high schools and colleges to recruit. He’s even discussed offering bonuses of up to $10,000.

“The police department needs to be able to find different ways to be able to reach out directly to each part of these communities so that people who are looking for a job, get excited about joining the police force and becoming a guardian in our community,” Chin said.

The Chief is also working on improving HPD’s communication with media and the public.

“So we are looking at plans of hiring or designating people within the department who can be spokesperson people, whether that’s evening hours on weekends,” Logan explained.

HPD communications are currently only available Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“It’s really all about government transparency,” Chin said. “It’s really about making it easier for the public to be able to know what is happening in my community in real time, rather than on a delayed basis.”

Chin said the commission will be asking Logan about many of these issues in its meeting Wednesday, March 15.

For more information about the meeting click here.