An Analysis Of Honolulu Police Department (HPD)

Honolulu Police Department (abbreviated as HPD) is the lead agency for law enforcement in Honolulu City and County in Hawaii. Its headquarters is the Alapa'i Police Headquarters within Honolulu Census-designated place (CDP). This paper aims at highlighting its size, history, and departmental composition. It will also describe patrol area, various units of operation, and one controversy about the police department.

Honolulu Police Departments’ mission is establishing a law enforcement system based on constitutional rights for all people that also promotes a high degree of respect across the public and police officers. This provides for an expeditious apprehension for those violating the law. The department also focuses on maintaining meaningful and effective complaint procedure systems (Phillips & Land, 2012). The department seeks to enhance public confidence in terms of trust and support for its respect, fairness, and integrity, especially its employees and officers.

Officially, Honolulu Police Department has been recognized as a Hawaiian government’ agency since 1846. The department serves the O'ahu Island and is co-extensive to the Honolulu City and County. It covers more than 600 square miles of ground (equivalent to 1,600 Km2) (Scaramella, Cox & McCamey, 2010). The area caters for over 900,000 nationals excluding military members. It also caters for more than four million visitors annually. The island is divided into eight distinct patrol districts, which are further subdivided into sectors and beats. As of December 2012, the Department had around 2486 employees. Of these, 1906 were sworn officers, 106 were recruits, and the rest (474) were civilians (Honolulu Police Department, 2012). Previous Department of Justice Reports ra...

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One of the main controversies about the police department has been the permission granted to undercover officers who, during investigations, can have sex with prostitutes so that the lawbreakers can be caught in the act. Other stakeholders have condemned this provision of the law. However, the police department argues that prostitutes would insist on having sex to recognize undercover officers. On the other hand, Assistant Chief General Dowsett said that they have never authorized this practice and would never do that. One of the human rights’ activist said that the undercover officers have to be given the permission to agree or offer to pay for sex services by prostitutes as an undercover operation. However, they argue that the officers cannot violate the dignity, sanctity and physicality of anyone by sexual penetration (Cunningham, 2014).