The only local candidate for Honolulu Police Chief wants to invest in the department’s officers.
Mike Lambert, director of the state Department of Law Enforcement, is one of three candidates for Honolulu Police Chief under consideration by the Honolulu Police Commission. If selected, he told Aloha State Daily, his first priority will be to make officers at the police department feel more valued.
“We have to create an environment where people don’t leave early,” Lambert said. “The department has seen people leave before hitting retirement age, either for other agencies or to outright change careers, and I believe that has to do with the work environment.”
Lambert, who was with HPD for 21 years and reached the rank of major before joining the DLE, said small problems like a broken water fountain not being fixed efficiently lead officers to feel like their work isn’t valued or respected. And that feeling, he said, reflects in officers’ police work.
“When I was an officer, when I got a beat-up car, I would get really upset because I had a 3-12 schedule, three days a week, 12-hour shifts, and for 12 hours [I was stuck with] this beat-up car that has a funny smell, and I know for a fact that I was grouchy,” Lambert said. “Versus when I get lucky and the vehicle dispatcher gave me a newer car, I felt great … I felt proud about the car I was driving and I believe that I probably gave better service that day.”
Moreover, poor conditions in the department contribute to poor officer retention rates. Lambert said the department has lost more officers than it has recruited for the last four years, but not for a fault in recruitment — in fact, Lambert said recruitment lately has been high.
“They’ve turned the corner on getting people in,” Lambert said. “It’s just a matter of making people want to stick.”
Lambert said he believes quality of life improvements to the department will help begin to fix other problems facing the department: “I think we need to focus internally first, cleaning up shop internally, and then I think that the other things will kind of naturally fix themselves in time.”
By improving HPD’s working conditions and thereby improving retention rates, officers will be able to perform better in the field. By performing better in the field, public trust in the department as an institution will improve, something Lambert said is sorely needed following the public disgrace and arrest of former chief Louis Kealoha.
Lambert said he knows his own image as chief must remain spotless: “if the chief is dirty, then the whole department is dirty.”
Lambert’s lifetime on the island will help bolster his trustworthiness among the public, he said. Compared to his competitors for the chief position — San Franciscan David Lazar and Georgia resident Scott Ebner — Lambert said only he understands the department and the community enough to hit the ground running.
“I have at least a two-year head start if I were chosen,” Lambert said.
At the same time, his ties to the community means Lambert has nowhere to run if he fails.
“When you come from here, you have a sense of shame if you fail, right? It’s a legacy thing,” Lambert said. “I don’t want that for my kids, where I fell short or embarrassed them and now for the next 10 years, 15 years, it’s like ‘wasn’t your dad that failed police chief?’ I don’t get to just pick up stakes and go somewhere no one knows me.”
That said, Lambert’s retirement became a matter of public discussion last month, when he announced his intention to leave the DLE and return to HPD when it became clear that remaining with the DLE would jeopardize a sizable chunk of his retirement benefits.
Because of a quirk with the state’s retirement system, the benefits he had accrued while working as an HPD officer would be lost to him if he remained in the state. While a bill in the state legislature this year could have allowed him to retain those benefits, it failed to pass.
Lambert said he would have stayed on with the DLE if he could keep those benefits — about 11% of his pension, or some $20,000 per year — “but I have a family and that penalty was just too much to ask.”
“That’s what they offered when I took the job,” Lambert added. “It’s like, ‘hey man, you come in, you get a good retirement,’ and that was one of the things that attracted me to the job. So to be kind of shamed for it is a little disappointing.”
Beyond improvements to the department’s operations, Lambert said he wants to pursue greater technological solutions in order to improve the department’s effectiveness at actually solving crimes. He pointed to a pilot program in Waikīkī that coordinates public-facing video cameras, license plate readers and drones to more efficiently track a crime once it is reported.
“Whenever a person delays their reporting, the likelihood of identification [of a suspect] is low without any other witnesses or technology opportunities,” Lambert said.
Lambert acknowledged that HPD’s clearance rate — the rate at which cases are resolved — is low compared to the national average. According to the Hawai‘i Office of the Attorney General, HPD’s clearance rate in 2024, the most recent year with available data, was about 22%.
However, Lambert also said Hawai‘i has some of the most stringent protections against self-incrimination or search and seizure in the nation, which makes comparisons to Mainland agencies difficult.
And while several Mainland agencies have established policies recently fully separating local law enforcement from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Lambert said he can’t commit to such a hard stance.
“The chief of police can’t be trendy,” Lambert said, adding that he does believe HPD has no business assisting ICE in administrative-only situations, such as if somebody has an expired visa. However, he said, “to say ‘never’ is not wise in the law enforcement community.”
Lambert said that, when he was an HPD officer, he arrested a man who was running several illegal gambling operations, who had attempted to bribe him. The man was sentenced to only seven years in prison, Lambert said, but what destroyed the man’s criminal enterprise was the fact that he was deported after leaving prison.
“If the individual has a nexus to sex trafficking, drug trafficking or organized crime, on a case-by-case basis, we may assist in that person’s recovery,” Lambert said.
Whether Lambert will become HPD chief will be revealed next week. The Honolulu Police Commission will conduct final interviews with the three candidates on May 19, and will make its final selection on May 20.
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