The Honolulu Police Department will shift 100 officers to patrol duties beginning November.
HPD Chief David Lazar announced Thursday that the department will move 100 officers from duties throughout HPD as a shift to get as many officers back on the road as possible.
“It means more officers on the road,” Lazar said. “It also means officers are available to respond when someone calls for help. It means we’re working to reduce response times and getting officers to those who need them sooner, and it ultimately means we can continue providing emergency police services without having to reduce our response capabilities.”
Lazar added that the move will also reduce overtime expenses. He said HPD’s overtime budget is about $6.8 million each quarter, but in the first quarter of 2026, that budget was exceeded by another $6 million.
“We just don’t have enough officers in patrol to do the work,” Lazar said. “We have beats, we have shift work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and so a lot of that overtime was spent to make sure that we have enough officers to do the work.”
The officers to be on patrol will be reallocated from throughout the department, from the chief’s office and the criminal investigations unit, to the traffic unit, training division, human resources, the narcotics and vice unit and more. Furthermore, where officers who finished field training would previously go to an additional training unit called “fourth watch,” they will now be put on patrol alongside another officer.
“Make no mistake, we still will investigate narcotics crimes,” Lazar said. “We’ll still go after gambling houses. We are still going to investigate every single type of crime that’s occurring.”
But while Lazar said the shift will not “sacrifice any ongoing investigation,” he also said that patrols are the primary focus for the time being, and investigations are secondary.
The shift does not have a specific end date. Lazar said the new state of affairs will continue for the time being as officer recruitment continues.
“There’s really no time limit on it, other than that we have to keep this in place until we have enough officers in patrol, and then we can start looking at … other elements that we need to refill again,” Lazar said.
But Lazar said officer recruitment is strong, with a class of 32 new recruits expected to graduate at the end of the month. Nonetheless, he said officer numbers are still some 200-300 short of the 2,177 officers the department is budgeted for.
The response from the rank-and-file is still unknown; Lazar said Thursday that he had informed the department as a whole about the change only about 15 minutes before the media were informed. Nonetheless, he said that “officers wanting to leave or retire [because of the change] have not crossed [his] mind.”
Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi commended Lazar on his “flexibility [and] willingness to think differently,” and said his decision simultaneously addresses a financial challenge while improving public safety.
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