In its effort to shut them down, the Honolulu Police Department has uncovered illegal game rooms all over Oahu.

Recently, HPD shuttered a gambling den next to legitimate businesses on Kapiolani Boulevard, closed another across the street from a Kalihi Valley elementary school, and rooted out yet another concealed within a Palolo Avenue laundromat.

They’ve even stopped operations at a gaming parlor run out of a tent, hooked up to power-producing generators, erected on a Nanakuli beach.

“Almost every other week there’s a bust somewhere,” Council member Tyler Dos Santos-Tam said during a Tuesday night town hall meeting in Nuuanu. “But these game rooms seem to be proliferating, and continue to spread.”

Police agree, noting Oahu’s problem with illegal game rooms — lucrative operations using electronic gaming machines that look like video games, garnering hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars in gambling profits daily — is hard to stop.

On any given day, police say at least 100 game rooms are active on the island. Of those, HPD admits only 20 such establishments are shuttered each year.

“This is not what we picture as a sort of mini-Vegas casino,” Dos Santos-Tam said. “These are places where drug activities are happening, where guns and others weapons can easily be found, and the fact that they’re in our residential communities is particularly troubling to me.”

To further discuss new ways to aid HPD’s problematic quest to end game rooms here, the Makiki Neighborhood Board, in collaboration with the Downtown-Chinatown and Hawaii Kai Neighborhood boards, hosted a joint in-person and virtual meeting at Oahu Country Club.

The event, moderated by Makiki/Lower Punchbowl/Tantalus Neighborhood Board Chair Ian Ross, presented a panel discussion that included Dos Santos- Tam, Council member Calvin Say and HPD Maj. Mike Lambert, who is attached to the narcotics/vice division.

That evening, the main topic of discussion surrounded the Council’s pending legislative package to tackle game rooms: Bill 57, Bill 58 and Resolution 228.

Introduced earlier this year by Council members Dos Santos-Tam and Andria Tupola, all three measures target landlords and property owners where suspected game rooms are sited.

If approved, Bill 57 would allow the city Department of Planning and Permitting to impose significant fines, and see the city Department of Corporation Counsel take legal action against property owners who house game rooms on their premises.

“It allows the prosecutor or Corporation Counsel to pursue measures against the landlord where these conditions are found,” Dos Santos- Tam said, adding a notice of violation can be issued to properties found with an active game room on site. “And that has to be abated within 30 days.

“If it’s not abated by the landlord within 30 days — that means kicking (game room operators) out, that means things like tearing out wiring, walls and security doors, and all the things that they need to make the game room — then they can go back and escalate the fines further,” he added.

According to Lambert, it’s a “cumbersome process” to investigate and amass evidence against game room operators — detective work that can take months, even years to complete.

“What happens is in the amount of time it takes to take down a game room, they’ve amassed enough income to replace all of the games, or to entice the landlord to look the other way,” Lambert said. “So the issue is if we can kind of cut down the network through fines, if we can look through other state legislation that allows us to perhaps look at the landlord who rents out illegal space in (a) money laundering fashion, because we know that the rent is very likely paid for through illegal proceeds, those are the type of pathways that can discourage it.”

Likewise, Bill 58 seeks greater collaboration between HPD and DPP in terms of building code violations, including exposed electrical wiring or unpermitted construction of game rooms. Similarly, Resolution 228 would encourage better coordination in enforcing current laws for illegal game rooms.

Dos Santos-Tam said this legislative package — which has passed first Council reading but awaits further committee review, likely not till next spring — is no cure-all for the island’s illegal game room problem.

“I’m not going to promise that this legislation is going to shut down every single game room the moment that it’s passed, but by tightening the noose, particularly around landlords who seemingly turn a blind eye to the game room activities happening on their properties, we can hopefully cut the head off the serpent that’s invading our neighborhoods,” he said.

Lambert agreed, noting Bill 58 would allow HPD to “easily pass evidence” to DPP without having city building inspectors actually be at the location of a suspected game room.

“The reality is we need additional tools in the form of laws to get it done,” Lambert said, adding only a few state-level laws deal with gambling as a felony crime. “Just by the fact that we keep having recurring game rooms close and open, in my opinion, means we don’t have enough tools at our disposal.”

Still, he noted “you cannot have a game room without a room.”

“By having laws that allow us to go after irresponsible property owners, and that’s really the root of this, we could actually eliminate game rooms,” Lambert said.

Although supportive of the new city legislation being proposed, Say said more involvement from state legislators needed to occur to stem game rooms.

“They are the ones that have the penal code, they are the ones that have the gambling offenses,” he added. “The Legislature has much more influence in trying to support law enforcement.”

Later, many at the town hall — most of whom were Neighborhood Board members — asked the panel questions.

Among them, Amanda Ybanez, Kalihi-Palama Neighborhood Board chair, asked about bringing more resources toward the mental health treatment of those suffering from gambling addiction.

“That’s why there’s a need, that’s why people go there, that’s why it’s so profitable,” she said.

In response, Say said such treatment would have to involve state-level resources — likely the state Department of Human Services — to curb gambling addiction.

Lambert agreed that removing gamblers from the equation could “undercut” illegal gambling operations. “If no one is going to patronize it, then it wouldn’t exist,” he added.

But others, like Hawaii Kai Neighborhood Board member Herb Schreiner, wanted more done, and sooner, to end game rooms.

“I’m not a fan of we need to do this, we need to do this, we need to do this — do it, OK, do it!” he said.

Meanwhile, police say they also need the public’s help to stop the growth of illegal game rooms.

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HOW TO HELP

>> To report a game room, the public can contact HPD’s narcotics/vice division online at honolulupd.org or by phone at 808-723-3933

>> Anonymously contact Crime Stoppers Honolulu at 808-955-8300 or at honolulucrimestoppers.org.