The Honolulu Police Department is still investigating a couple of dozen cases of possible misuse of body-worn cameras and abuse of overtime.

In reports to the Hono­-lulu Police Commission on Wednesday, HPD’s brass said it’s still looking at 11 officers possibly involved in overtime abuse and 17 officers who may have violated body-worn camera policies.

Police Chief Susan Ballard in November suspended HPD’s COVID-19 enforcement teams after an internal audit found officers had violated an overtime policy that had allowed officers to work up to 20 hours in overtime for COVID-19 enforcement.

On Monday, HPD published a video reporting the findings of the investigation in which Ballard said 263 officers had violated the overtime policy between late September and November. Those officers averaged more than 9-1/2 hours of overtime, she added.

Commissioner Richard Parry noted the video on Wednesday, but asked what led officers to thinking they could work the extra overtime.

“To be very blunt, their commanders told them it was OK to do it,” Ballard said.

Pressed further, Ballard said that, for a couple of supervisors, they were trying to fill shifts for the teams.

“There were a lot of people who did not sign up to work (the COVID-19 enforcement teams), and they still needed to fill those slots. And if they couldn’t fill them with people who had not signed up or didn’t want to sign up, then they went back to the people who were already working it and were doing good enforcement,” she said.

All violating officers, including the supervisors who allowed the overtime, will be receiving divisional counseling, Ballard said in Monday’s video. Ballard told the commission on Wednesday that, to stop overtime abuse, supervisors are getting weekly overtime reports for their officers, and she said the department is considering broader overtime ceilings for the department.

Deputy Chief Aaron Takasaki-Young told the commission that 65 officers were investigated in 2020 for body-worn camera violations relating to “activation issues” and that corrective actions have been taken on 39 officers.

Several of the police commissioners noted the importance of footage from the cameras for evaluating complaints about police officers and expressed concern that they are used appropriately.

“We don’t want officers to be faced with a choice where they realize they’d be better off turning off the camera and taking whatever small discipline that would occur because they turned off the camera,” commissioner Doug Chin said.

Based on HPD’s annual disciplinary report, it appears that body-worn camera violations result in, at most, a one-day suspension. Chin advocated a larger penalty for body camera violations.

Takasaki-Young said HPD is looking into online training to reinforce department policies regarding the body cameras and implementing training that would make camera activation “muscle memory.” He also said “signal devices” in police vehicles to automatically activate body-worn cameras could be installed once the last remaining officers are outfitted with cameras in March.

Over 1,000 officers have been provided with cameras so far, Takasaki-Young said. HPD is scheduled to finish its rollout of 1,200 body cameras to patrol officers by the end of March.