Honolulu Weekly

Honolulu Police have a bit of a reputation for traveling in packs. Anyone who’s ever been pulled over for speeding knows this, as do those of us who find ourselves around Fort Street Mall at breakfast time.

So we got to thinking, what about off-hours assignments? You know, like the eight gazillion events that go on in and around Waikiki any given weekend–the ones that require road closures and traffic directors like last Sunday’s Tinman Triathlon. We counted five uniformed officers standing on the corner of 22nd and Kilauea avenues shooting the breeze (and just one actually directing traffic). You can’t blame the officers for taking an easy assignment but we had to ask: do these guys get paid time-and-a-half with our tax dollars to be overstaffed on every corner? HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu assures us that the answer is no.

“There’s overtime, like when you finish your shift and you’re not done with your reports or you’re needed to do something else,” said Yu. “And then there’s special duty, which is when a vendor actually hires an officer or officers directly.”

Special duty services, as detailed on the HPD Web site, include security, traffic control and escorts–although there are some limitations: Officers won’t be assigned to special duty for union gatherings, on behalf of those involved in labor disputes, in cases that would imply partisan politics, at places where the primary business is selling alcohol, solely to provide body guard services or in some other cases. The officers get paid at a rate consistent with what they earn from the Honolulu Police Department during regular hours.

So does the City ever chip in for the cost of manning events that take place on the roads it oversees? Perhaps surprisingly, not much.

“There may have been a time when that was done more,” said City spokesman Bill Brennan. “As a rule, I think given the reality of the budget, the feeling is that maybe since this is an event that a promoter or vendor wants to put on, they have to pick up the tab for that.”

A representative at the Hawaii Tourism Authority confirmed that the agency did not help fund any facet of the triathlon. And this is true, too, for events even as big as the annual marathon in December.

“For the marathon, it’s the biggest number of off-duty officers for any event–between 400 and 500,” said Pat Bigold, communications director for the Honolulu Marathon. “The city does not pay for anything, the state does not pay for anything, we don’t get any assistance for those costs.”

So, for now at least, we’ll stick to complaining about the traffic (and the jaywalking tickets) and be happy for our local police officers for padding their income while the rest of us are reading the Sunday paper.