Honolulu police will pull 100 officers off desk jobs, investigative units and specialty assignments and send them out on patrol starting in November, a move Chief David Lazar says is meant to keep emergency response times steady while reining in a department budget that is hemorrhaging overtime cash. Lazar informed HPD rank and file of the shift roughly 15 minutes before he told reporters about it.
The reassignment, as reported by Aloha State Daily, aims to put more officers on the road so they're available to respond to calls for help and to reduce response times across the island. Lazar said the shift would let HPD keep up emergency police services without losing response capability, even as the reassignment is also expected to cut down on overtime expenses. The department's quarterly overtime budget runs about $6.8 million, and HPD blew past that budget by $6 million in the first quarter of 2026 alone, according to the same outlet's reporting.
Lazar said the overtime had been necessary to keep enough bodies covering round-the-clock patrol beats and shifts, a dynamic that has plagued HPD for years. An HPD Staffing and Retention Task Force report submitted to the Honolulu City Council in December 2025 found 465 uniformed officer vacancies and 228 officers eligible to retire out of a roughly 2,200-officer authorized force, according to Police1. HPD is currently budgeted for 2,177 officers but is short by 200 to 300 positions, per Aloha State Daily's reporting.
Where the Officers Are Coming From
The 100 reassigned officers are being pulled from patrol-adjacent and specialized roles including the chief's office, the criminal investigations unit, the traffic unit, the training division, human resources, and the narcotics and vice unit, along with other parts of the department, according to Aloha State Daily. Graduates of field training will also go straight into patrol alongside another officer rather than into the additional training unit known as Fourth Watch.
Lazar said HPD will continue investigating narcotics crimes, gambling houses and other categories of crime, and that the reassignment will not sacrifice any ongoing investigation, per his own account to Aloha State Daily. For now, though, the department is prioritizing patrol coverage over investigative staffing. The reassignment carries no specific end date and will remain in place until HPD has enough officers in patrol while recruitment efforts continue, Lazar said, adding that the department would then look at what else needs to be refilled.
HPD expects to graduate 32 new recruits at the end of October, according to Aloha State Daily's report. The department has also rolled out financial incentives to draw in new hires: HPD set base starting pay for a Metropolitan Police Officer at $87,108 annually, or $95,012 including differential pay, and offers a $2,000 referral bonus to employees who refer candidates who are hired and complete early service milestones, per HPD's recruitment page.
A Financial Squeeze Years in the Making
The overtime crunch predates Lazar's arrival. HPD records examined in September 2025 showed 125 officers logged more than 1,000 overtime hours in a single fiscal year, with some doubling or tripling their base salaries; a 2022 audit found HPD overtime drove city pension costs up by as much as $6 million over five years, according to AP News. In 2026, Resolution 26-119 authorized a $5.5 million internal budget transfer, including shifting $4.3 million from Administrative Services into Patrol, to cover overtime and payroll shortfalls caused by officer vacancies.
Lazar, sworn in as Honolulu's 13th police chief on July 2 after a 33-year career with the San Francisco Police Department, is the first chief hired from outside Hawaii in more than 90 years. He was selected by the Honolulu Police Commission in May over internal candidates. Since taking office, Lazar has also moved to terminate an agreement that had let the Internal Revenue Service access HPD's license plate camera data more than 2,000 times, as Hoodline previously reported.
At the end of August, Lazar selected 27-year veteran Brandon Nakasato and 16-year veteran Parker Bode as HPD's permanent deputy chiefs, assigning Nakasato to field operations and Bode to Administrative Operations, according to the Honolulu Police Department. Bode, at 39, became one of the youngest deputy chiefs in HPD history.
Mayor Praises the Move; Staffing Pressure Persists Islandwide
Mayor Rick Blangiardi commended Lazar's flexibility and willingness to think differently, saying the decision addresses a financial challenge while improving public safety, per Aloha State Daily. Lazar himself said that officers wanting to leave or retire over the change had not crossed his mind.
Chronic staffing shortages have hit some districts harder than others. HPD's District 8, covering Kapolei and West Oʻahu, has long relied on mandatory overtime and temporary personnel shifts from other units just to maintain basic beat coverage, a dynamic Hoodline detailed in its coverage of an Ewa Beach shooting earlier this month. HPD has also leaned on technology to stretch its thin ranks, including a Drone as First Responder pilot program launched in August covering District 1 (Downtown, Chinatown and Ala Moana) and District 5 (Kalihi) to assist 911 dispatch and track suspects remotely, according to Hawaiʻi Public Radio.
Involuntary reassignments out of specialized units have sparked labor friction before. When then-Chief Susan Ballard moved police union officials from specialized units back to midnight patrol shifts in 2018 to address staffing shortages, the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers filed a formal labor complaint alleging contract violations, according to Honolulu Civil Beat. SHOPO represents more than 2,700 officers statewide.
