Council Meeting - Regular Meeting

Aloha and good afternoon, everybody. It's 1 p.m. on Thursday, June 25th, 2026. I call the Committee on Public Safety and the Economy meeting to order. I'd like to welcome Council Members Nishimoto, Okimoto, and walking in, Council Member Tupola and Vice Chair Kiyaina. All right, pursuant to section 92-3.7, the Hawaii Revised Statutes, this meeting will be conducted as a remote meeting by interactive conference technology with the following procedures in effect for the meeting. Members of the public will be allowed to provide oral testimony on all items on the agenda in person in the council chamber and remotely when each agenda item is taken up. As both English and Hawaiian are official languages of the state of Hawaii, pursuant to Article 15, Section 4 of the Hawaii State Constitution and Section 1-13 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, members of the public may testify in either language for a testimony offered in Olelo, Hawaii. Additional time, as may be necessary, will be allowed for the testifier to provide an English translation of their testimony. Before testifying, each person shall state their name. Each speaker may not have anyone else read their statement and is limited to a one-minute presentation on each item. All persons who have registered to testify in person will be called upon first. When the timer goes off, please conclude your remarks promptly. Persons who have not registered will be given an opportunity to testify following the registered testifiers. Once in-person testimony is concluded, I will proceed to remote testimony. All persons who have registered to testify remotely by video conference or telephone will then be called upon. When your name is called, please monitor your screen and activate your audio feed when prompt. For persons who are testifying by telephone only, I will identify you by the last three digits of your phone number. When your number is called, please listen for the prompt to unmute and press star six. When I call anyone else standing by remotely, please utilize the Zoom raise hand button to indicate your desire to speak. For those joining us by telephone only, please press star nine to indicate your desire to speak. Some friendly reminders and tips, video conference from a quiet location if possible. If you are watching the proceedings on Olelo, please mute your television when you are called to testify. When the time on the screen reaches zero, please conclude your remarks properly. HRS section 92-3.7 requires that all votes at remote meetings be conducted by roll call unless anonymous. Therefore, our first call for objections, and if there are any, I will call a roll call vote. Within testimonies included, The testifier's email address and phone number will be available to the public as desired on the posted agenda. As a courtesy, please turn off all cell phones for the duration of this meeting. All right, members, moving on to agenda item number one, resolution 26-142. This resolution accepts a gift of 3,700 calls, valued at $3,700 to the city from Asagi Hatchery Incorporated, the animal consumption at the Honolulu Zoo. And here to testify is Director Dina Holyfield.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Chair. Good to see everybody. We are very appreciative of the hatchery. We have to feed a lot of animals, obviously, and one of the things that when we can save money, something like this where we can reuse certain animals to sustain the larger animal collection at the Honolulu Zoo. The $3,700 we're feeding probably at least 12 to 20 times a year. So it becomes something like $60,000 that we're saving and that's a whole nother person that we could hire at the Honolulu Zoo. We are grateful to them and we are grateful to the Honolulu Zoological Society who also make sure that the gifts can come through appropriately. So thank you for consideration.

Awesome. Okay. Any questions for the director? All right. Let's see. Okay. We now proceed with in-person oral testimony in the Council Chambers. Clerks, do we have any in-person testifiers on this item?

Chair, there are none.

I think, yeah. Go ahead. First and your last name, press the.

Aloha, my name is Guy Yoshimura. Once again, thank you to Councilmember Toba. Aloha to all the other Councilmembers and everybody here. I just want to speak in behalf of Resolution 26142. As somebody that works in the livestock industry, I understand what it takes to cut costs. I understand that the city is always saying we can't find stuff in our budget. What are we gonna do? They have more questions than they have answers. And the opportunity right now to give you guys options and answers, I think it'd be really sad to turn this down. My thing is I worked in the trash industry out here in Oahu for over 20 years and we understand when dealing with livestock or animals, there is a special handling charge when you dispose of it. You can't just throw me in the trash. The human society does the same thing. Why are you gonna spend extra money to dispose of them when you can save money and possibly help the city out in their budget? So once again, I wanna thank everybody for the opportunity to share my thoughts.

Members, any questions for the testifier? Thank you. All right, we'll move on to remote.

Okay.

All right, members, we're in discussion. Okay. All right. All right, the chair recommends that resolution 26-142 be reported out for adoption. Any discussion? Any objections? Any reservations? Hearing none, so ordered. Okay. Moving on to agenda item number two, informational briefing update from the Honolulu Police Commission on the selection process for the next chief of the Honolulu Police Department. Joining us in the council chamber is Chris Magnus for the Honolulu Police Commission who will be providing a brief presentation. For your information, the presentation is available online as Department of Communication 432-2026. Mr. Magnus.

I guess here we go. Thank you very much, Chair Tolba. Council members, it's really nice to be here. I'm here on behalf, obviously, of Chair Lori Foster, my fellow vice chair, Janine Zucchi, and of course, all the other members of the Police Commission. So let's get right to it here. Happy to talk about this selection process because, you know, to get a high quality police chief, you gotta conduct a professional selection process. And there are very few cities, especially the size of Honolulu, that don't involve getting some expertise to help them with something like this. You need a professional search leadership group, and we got one through a process that I'm happy to talk to you a little bit about. Last summer, and it's hard to believe it's been just about a year ago, last summer the police commission began the procurement process to get a search firm. And we worked with the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services, other city departments to develop an RFP, a request for a proposal. And we worked with them pretty closely to, you know, figure out what did we want in terms of any prospective agencies or providers that might apply. So then in October, the RFP was released with a November 13th deadline for interested firms to submit their proposals. And we got a number of proposals. And after thoroughly reviewing those, we selected a company called Public Sector Search Consulting. And they were awarded the contract on December the 31st, again, of this past year. Now, just by way of a little background on, and I'm going to just call them PSSC here to make it easier, a little background on them. Since 2017, PSSC has completed more than 110 police executive searches in jurisdictions across the country. So some of these include Dallas, San Jose, Seattle, Oklahoma City, Aurora, Colorado, Fresno, you get the idea. There have been a lot of other jurisdictions, very diverse jurisdictions that they've worked with. Now, look, the timing of the city's procurement process was largely out of our control, but we completed our part of this work as comprehensively, as thoughtfully, and as efficiently as possible. So I have the dates up here. You can see again deadline to submit the proposal, date that we awarded the contract, and then I'm going to just talk to you a little bit about the different phases of the project that happened next. So. PSSC helped us develop the criteria to evaluate, I guess, what you'd call ideal candidates for this position. And that was done based on a thorough review of the department's needs. We got input from really all the key stakeholders. And we looked at the stated goals and initiatives that were identified in the department's strategic plan. We gathered input from council members, other city staff, HPD members, community members, many others. And this was done through community surveys, department surveys, focus groups, and community forums. We really wanted to make a serious commitment to get as much input as possible because we recognize this is a really important position. We got 600 survey responses and we involved a broad group of leaders and stakeholders who work with the police department. So what did stakeholders tell us that they wanted? They said they wanted Okay, transformational and strategic leadership. They didn't want just the maintenance of the status quo. They wanted greater steps towards modernization, especially around best practices and technology. They told us they wanted a chief who would prioritize officer wellness and improve communication within the agency. They wanted increased community trust, stronger community engaged policing, greater transparency and accountability, and of course, they wanted a greater focus on recruitment and retention. So PSSC helped us to develop what was a widely distributed, I think very attractive, comprehensive, professionally designed and detailed brochure that they distributed. to inform potential candidates about the position. And of course, this got on the web as well. And this was advertised on all the key websites for attracting law enforcement professionals. So they worked with the major city chiefs, police executive research forum, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, National Organization of Women in Law Enforcement, National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Leaders. You get the idea. We tried to be as diverse as possible of getting this information out there. And then the firm helped us with screening applicants and basically narrowing them down based on qualifications and experience. We talked about this as a commission recognizing the seriousness of our job. And we started to identify things that were especially important to us. And those, you'll see a little duplication here. Willingness and capacity for the new chief to step away from the status quo. Someone who was aware of best practices that were being used throughout the country and who were willing, someone who's willing to try new things. Someone who was aware and frankly savvy in implementing new technology. There's so much there that has to be addressed. Someone who had experience in leading a large complex organization in a very diverse jurisdiction like Honolulu. and someone who would focus on developing and recognizing new talent within the agency, really, to develop a good succession plan. So with help from Gary Peterson, who was the lead from PSSC, really it's his company and he's very well regarded, the commission considered then a smaller group of candidates and narrowed it down eventually to six semi-finalists. So there was sort of a sifting process that he and his firm did. You get a number of applicants. Of course, not all of them are qualified. You have to gradually work it down to a group that deserves serious consideration. And so this was brought down eventually to six semi-finalists. Now, these candidates were interviewed by stakeholders who were organized ultimately into four panels. And some of you may be very familiar with this because we had council members and staff that participated on at least one of these panels. So the panels were first diverse state and local governance leaders, community advocates, which was a very, very diverse panel, first responders, and Oahu district representatives or their designees. And so we also made sure that the stakeholders were gonna be very involved in developing the interview questions. Now on each of these panels, there was an HPC commissioner who served as a facilitator. Actually, it was really a pleasure to facilitate the community advocates panel. So there was a facilitator, and then another commissioner who just helped make sure that the feedback that we were collecting ultimately would come back to the full commission. Those interviews took a full day. So for those of you who either participated or had staff participation or just learned about it, you know that we can't overstate the commitment that was shown really by all members of the community who participated in this process. So We then received really a detailed account of how each of the six semifinalists were evaluated by the four panels that I just mentioned. We used this information, this feedback, to start to really inform our own evaluation of these candidates. We'd already been learning a lot, but now we incorporated all that feedback from the different panels plus other information that we'd already gleaned from the outreach to the community that was done by PSSC. Ultimately, and it was not easy, I will tell you that, we determined who the three finalists would be. That was a very rigorous discussion. At that point, we facilitated interviews with the local news media for the three finalists. As some of you probably were aware, that included a live PBS TV interview that included questions from the public. And as members of the commission, all of us watched that entire program because we wanted to gather as much information as we could about what each of these candidates were, what they were really about. Groups of us, groups of two of us then conducted our own interviews with each of the three finalists. It was a long day because these were lengthy interviews. So the candidates went from one pair of commissioners then to another pair of commissioners. And it's like they really, they were asked a lot of questions. They provided us with a lot of important information. And we got a lot out of those discussions. So we brought back that information and finally, ultimately had a very rigorous discussion about, okay, out of those three candidates, who would be the best selection for the community at this point in time, based on all of the feedback we had received from community, from surveys, from focus groups, all of those kind of things, we tried to, how do we match this up to get the right person at the right time? Because there's no question, we had some really good people. And so the issue isn't, you know, is somebody good or bad? These were good people. But we had to figure out who was the right person at the right time for the department. And ultimately, as you know, we selected David Lazar to be the chief. He's already been working very hard, hasn't even been sworn in yet, and he's been basically working full-time on his own time since the day that he learned he was selected, working very closely with Interim Chief Fanik, reached out to many, many people in the department. He has already moved here. And at least I think as somebody who went through this kind of transition myself as a new chief in several communities, I think he's doing all the right things. But ultimately, that will be for the community and, of course, you all to decide. So that is the process. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you, Mr. Magnus, and I appreciate you doing this because a lot of people wanted to know, and I hope that the millions that are watching right now on Olelo see that it was a lengthy process and that we wanted to be, I know, make sure that transparency happens and they understand. And not only that, but you want to, again, see the new chief be successful at his job. So with that, I'm going to open up for questions. Okay, Council Member Tupola.

Just briefly, one of the questions I get from everyone is, was there input or any type of solicitation for the rank and file in this process?

Yes, yes, absolutely. And in fact, this is a good opportunity to, you know, we recognize the importance of both internal and external stakeholders. And, you know, we had heard all of these kinds of things that you can see up here that were important to those stakeholders. So there was considerable discussion in terms of...

I just need to know if any of the police officers were asked. Absolutely. How many?

They were engaged in surveys. Our consultant reached out and had specific discussions and interviews. We talked to Chopo. They were on our committees. So we did everything we could to get that kind of engagement.

No, I understand. I just need to know how many rank and file officers, so not SHOPO president. I know they're part of the stakeholders, but we have over, I mean, we have close to 2000 officers, not including like some of our civilians. So they ask me all the time, how come our voices weren't heard? So obviously some weren't in the stakeholders. So how many officers were asked their opinion? Just so I can give an idea.

Yeah, so there was, I don't know if you're referring to the survey that was done of officers.

Well, so it says there was 600 survey responses, but then the survey responses underneath of it says prosecutor's office, business district leaders, ACLU. So those guys aren't officers. Yeah, no, for sure. I just need to know how many officers' voices were included. That's it.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't know the exact number. I do know that there were several hundred that participated in the survey, but then there were others that we spoke to directly through this consulting forum. He knows how important that was, and we conveyed that. So, you know, we wanted that outreach.

Yeah, thank you so much. You guys did a lot of hard work and I already met with the chief and he's great. We had a great first meeting. I just think for accountability's sake, it's one of the most important things that every rank and file officer asks me is in this process, where was our voice? So I think this is good that there was multiple voices because there needs to be, right? We need to make well-rounded decisions, but these are the guys that have to deal with the leadership. So thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Chair.

Council Member Okimoto?

Thank you, Chair. Aloha, good afternoon, Commissioner. Thank you for being with us and thank you for the presentation and breaking down of the steps that you guys took to get to how we got the selection. You did mention the stakeholders and you have on here a list, I think I saw a list. How were the stakeholders Chosen I know that there was a panel where some of us sat on but prior to that I think it was phase two I guess in number eight recent in-depth applicant screening and there were three to five stakeholders groups Prior to the ones that we sat on who chose these stakeholders. How are they selected?

Yeah, that's a great question councilmember we You know, one of the great things about the commission is that different members, you know, you have a diversity of members and they have contacts out in the community and in a variety of places. And they know if they don't know the best place to reach out for somebody, they know the right people who do know. So we did our best to really talk about how could we get the voices that would be, you can't have everybody, you can't have every group that you'd like to have, but how do you get voices that will be a good representation of community groups, faith groups, neighborhood organizations, et cetera, And we kind of shopped around a lot and then we talked to different people. Some were available to participate in panels, others were not. The nice thing was even if somebody wasn't available, they had suggestions of someone else who could be helpful. So I guess the key word here is networking and then looking for diversity.

And the commissioners, you got together and you just decided at least three to five, that's how it was done, based on what you just said, trying to find out. That's right.

We wanted to make sure, I mean, that we were getting the right diversity of people who could be really representative of different parts of the community and the department as well.

Thank you. I am interested. I hope to meet, I haven't yet met with the appointed chief, but other than the process of the interview where we were included, I look forward to that. But I will say that some of the things where you said you got feedback, I don't know if that's indicative of my community or even where I see census. So that's why I was curious that when you said the feedback that you got were focused on these areas specifically more than others or certain stances where I thought that's interesting. I don't know where that feedback would have come from. So I look forward to meeting with you guys more. So

We, feedback here included Institute for Human Services, Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Reimagining Policing, Domestic Violence Area, Chamber of Commerce, We had, obviously, I mentioned first responder representation that included all the other fire department, emergency management, National Guard, Department of Law Enforcement, representation from the council. And then sort of a mixed bag of governance representation, ranging from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Office of the Public Defender, Prosecuting Attorney, Governor's Office, etc. So, you know, without getting into all the names of those people, because... those varied and sometimes somebody could or couldn't participate or they referred us to somebody else in that same general category of work. But the idea was to have that input. I know with the community panel that I had the chance to facilitate, let me assure you, the questions that people, we didn't just give them a bunch of sterile questions to ask. We took their questions and they got to ask all the follow-ups and people really were, I think they felt they were heard. I hope so because that was our, we worked hard to do that. But those panels were only one part of the larger process that involved other focus groups, surveys, other kinds of outreach, right from the start of this entire process. It's been long, but a lot of that's been used to gather community input and to help guide us into what kind of chief do you want?

No, and thank you for explaining that. And I look forward to, again, seeing how this continues to unfold. I do have the same thoughts along of Council Member Tupola. I probably haven't spoken to as many rank and file as she has, but the ones who did reach out, they were disheartened because they felt like their voices weren't heard. Especially, and I'm not sure how that survey went out, where it was like 90% of them chose a specific candidate. And so I think... At some point we have to address the needs of the department. We understand that a lot went into this. We are part of that process. But when, I always go back to my days of being a teacher, when we feel like the people on the ground aren't being heard, they feel like they're not being heard, I think there's something that has to, be considered there. And so hopefully we can show that the right decisions were being made and we can get the confidence of the men and women on the ground. I'm hoping that we can do that. I was one that was uncertain initially about I'm not even sure if you're on the commission at that point when we had passed the funding for, agreed to funding to have a consultant come on. I think at that point I was uncertain if the commissioner should just do that or if we should pay a consulting firm and we did and in the interaction that we had with, it was Mr. Peterson, I felt that he was a good, he was really thorough and he was prepared. I appreciated him kind of at least on Zoom how he orchestrated going between the rooms that were that were being held during the application or the interview process. But I'm not familiar with how this works. I was wondering how much input did he have after all of this? Does a consultant then give his input or was he just orchestrating? After we were all done, we don't see what happened until we saw on the news the three finalists and then the selection. So how much influence does a consultant have in this process?

Well, a good consultant is one who listens first and foremost to the community and gathers information about what are you looking for in a chief? What is it that you want? What kinds of change? Are you looking for a status quo or change? And if it's change, what kind of change? So he then used that to guide the selection process. You get, you know, we did our best to get the word out there of here's what we're looking for and we hope you'll apply if that's what you're interested in. Of course, you always get applicants who are just, well, I just want to put my name in to be a chief and boy, Honolulu sounds like a great place. And it doesn't mean that they're necessarily qualified even or that they're they really want those kinds of things. So his job was then to sort of narrow it down so that we could make decisions among candidates that were really serious and that could potentially be that right fit. His job was not to tell us, oh, I think you should pick so and so or this is the best. His job sometimes did involve saying, here are things that were expressed by the community, by officers that we talked to, by others. And so these are candidates who you can see through their work experience and history they look like they could match up in a number of these ways. So that was kind of, his job was to facilitate, not to pick. But he was a good facilitator, and when we asked for more information or guidance, he always provided it. He was timely, I thought he was very fair. And as you can see, he has a lot of experience doing this, so I think he probably wouldn't have the business if he wasn't known for getting good chiefs through.

Thank you for sharing. That's really good to know. Like I said, I had positive experience in that day of our interviews, but I was just wondering how it works. I appreciate you being here, and thank you for explaining it. We look forward. We know that your volunteer positions are not easy ones, and so we look forward to continuing the process and working with the new chief

Thank you, Sharon. Just in response to your one other point about officers, look, again, having gone through a chief selection process and then working with officers in each of the departments, here's the reality. What do officers want the most? They tell you they want change. What is it that they're most apprehensive of and sometimes even opposed to when they get it? It's difficult, you are never going to, whether it's in a selection process or whether it's the decisions and actions that a new chief takes, you are never gonna satisfy everyone. And there are people who are going to feel that if a candidate that they wanted or a particular outcome that they thought was important. If that didn't happen, it must have meant they weren't heard, that they weren't listened to. I'm sorry if anyone feels that that's the case, because we did listen. We did hear. But we also listened to a broad spectrum of voices in the community. And we tried to incorporate, even from a survey that was done of officers, what are the things that were most important to them Those were the things that we incorporated in terms of making our decision. So we don't do it in terms of necessarily, it's not a popularity contest, but we did listen, we did hear, and I think the new chief will do a lot of that because I know he really cares about the voice of the rank and file.

Thank you for that follow-up. Again, I remain optimistic. We hope that these changes will be evident, and I just will encourage all parties involved to continue to listen to each other and work together. I know how it is when you have people set in their usual comfortable ways, and it's hard for change, but good change is good. Good change is always a positive thing, but we don't want to ignore the men and women in the department for sure. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Magnus, do you know how many people apply for a job because... the top three finalists, two were finalists in the last election. So do you know how many people in total applied for the police chief job?

Don't hold me to this number, but I think it was around 50 something, 52 strikes me as a number that I've heard before. But part of the reality is there are only so many candidates that meet the criteria that are on the islands and that applied. So you have that limitation. And then there are only so many candidates who are serious applicants from the mainland that are really willing to make the sacrifices and that would be the right fit for coming into this. And it is a complex and special environment. And sometimes people think, again, you know, oh, How great, Honolulu, but maybe what they're really looking for is a retirement job or something. They think Honolulu is just Waikiki or whatever. You got to be really someone who gets it, who has experience, who could be the right fit, who values and has worked in a diverse environment. So gradually, that number of candidates got whittled down because there was also checks into background, whether people really had the credentials that they said they had. You work your way down and eventually you get a smaller number. Then from that, we picked, I guess what you could say, the semi-finalists and then ultimately went from there.

Awesome, thank you so much. We'll go on, proceed with in-person testimony. Clerks.

Chair, there are none.

Okay. Anybody remotely? Chair, there are none. All right. Well, I really appreciate you guys taking the time to put together this presentation, and I wanted to make sure that the public gets an opportunity to see, and I was hoping that maybe some would come because of when the selection was made, a lot of people were concerned, but I hope and and i will remain optimistic that you know uh you we did make the right choice because in the five years that being on the city council i've been through two been through two police chiefs and i'm hoping that uh we made the right pick in this one and i and uh and i wish him well so thank you you and you and me both i think i speak for the full commission when i say

We hope and we believe we've picked a good person to run the department, and what he needs now is the support and the willingness of everyone to work with him and give him a chance, because I know he's very committed. Thank you, Mr. Magnus. Thank you.

All right. There being no further business, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.