CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / MAY 7 Sandy Beach Park is one of the areas in the mobile video surveillance camera pilot program. HPD officers are helping people file a police report after their vehicle is broken into in the park.
1/1
CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / MAY 7
Sandy Beach Park is one of the areas in the mobile video surveillance camera pilot program. HPD officers are helping people file a police report after their vehicle is broken into in the park.
Video cameras mounted on at least four mobile security trailers will be used by Honolulu police to prevent car burglaries, thefts, vandalism and other crimes at popular scenic points in East Oahu.
As part of a multi-year, $64,000 pilot project starting July 1, HPD will roll out mobile video platforms — replete with flashing blue lights and possibly audio speakers — to parking lots near the Makapuu Point Lighthouse viewpoint, Kaiwi State Scenic Shoreline trails and Halona Blowhole . viewpoint and Lanai viewpoint, near the Koko Head Shooting Complex.
The viewpoints are often visited by tourists and are highly susceptible to property crimes, according to HPD.
Although car burglaries are seasonal — with more incidents during the summer when visitors arrive on the island — police receive an average of about 50 car burglaries each month, HPD says.
To combat these crimes, HPD wants to lease portable trailers with cameras mounted on top of a mast-like pole. Video footage from the mobile cameras will be used to identify suspects. The cost to the city will be about $3,000 per month per security trailer, HPD says.
But not everyone in the community wants more police enforcement in public spaces.
“I don’t want to live in a society where we have government cameras everywhere,” Hawaii Kai resident Natalie Iwasa said during the June 5 city council meeting.
In response, Councilman Matt Weyer said he broadly agreed with Iwasa, but noted that “it’s a very common practice, and it’s for a very specific purpose.”
“I know a lot of our city parks have cameras, and when I was a prosecutor, we had camera evidence for an Ala Moana strangulation case that we wouldn’t have had if there wasn’t a security camera there,” he says. added. “Given that it is for a very specific purpose, I think it is appropriate.”
The Council voted to approve the pilot program, following Council President Tommy Waters’ Resolution 64, which states that 225 car burglaries were reported at lookouts in East Honolulu in 2023 alone.
In May, HPD Major Brian Lynch told the Council’s Public Safety Committee that “the majority of the victims of these crimes are tourists.”
But as for HPD’s sought-after camera technology to catch suspected thieves or prevent crimes, Lynch says it’s nothing new. “It’s the same as Chinatown and Waikiki,” he added.
The main benefit of the project is that HPD will not use any city-owned equipment, he said.
“We’re going to lease them,” Lynch said earlier. “And so, if they get damaged or stolen or whatever… that’s the leasing company’s responsibility. … If it’s broken or damaged, they take out the old one and bring us a new one that’s ready to use. So we don’t have to worry about maintenance, repairs or repairs or anything like that.”
Lynch noted that recorded video footage would only fog during the day.
“Part of the lease is that someone is sitting there looking at the footage, not one of us,” he said, referring to HPD’s ongoing staffing shortage of more than 400 officers. ‘It is someone from this leasing company we are dealing with. That is an attractive option for us in the sense that it is cheaper to let this person do that than (for the police). And then there are rules about how we can look and things like that.’
HPD’s mobile camera program could eventually be rolled out to other places on Oahu, he said.
The end date for the pilot project is set for June 30, 2028, “or 18 months after HPD or its designees begin overt video monitoring, whichever comes first,” the resolution said.
