The Honolulu Police Department has an unfortunate history of resisting public access to its records, most notably those related to disciplinary files of errant police officers.
Still, it’s baffling that HPD has shown little interest in providing the public real-time location data on violent crimes — a common practice for police in other jurisdictions, including Maui County. Instead, HPD provides an online mapping site limited largely to property crimes: theft, burglaries, vandalism, car break-ins and the like.
As reported by the Star-Advertiser’s Rob Perez and Rob Shikina, several neighborhood boards have expressed frustration that HPD seems unwilling or uninterested in providing as much information as possible about crimes in their neighborhoods.
“You gotta figure people are a lot more concerned about crimes which threaten their safety as opposed to property crimes,” said Dale Kobayashi, chairman of the Manoa Neighborhood Board. “It makes no sense at all for HPD to exclude the most important crimes from the site.”
It’s true that the public has a justifiably high interest in property crimes, which affect far more people than violent ones. But that’s not an argument to exclude crimes.
The interactive online map HPD provides shows where certain crimes have been reported (not necessarily the location of the alleged crime). The map identifies the location by street block, but not specific addresses.
The map does not include violent crimes such as assault, sex offenses, robbery and homicide. This makes HPD somewhat of an outlier. Perez surveyed more than 150 police departments across the country; all of them provided violent-crime mapping. Maui County’s police department website provides a link to a map that displays similar information.
HPD has offered various reasons for its reluctance to simply provide the data. William Axt, HPD assistant chief, said that locating where sex crimes took place could make victims reluctant to report them. Fair enough, but that problem can be remedied by providing less specific information, such as providing only the street name rather than the block.
As for reporting the location and circumstances of other violent crimes, Axt warned of unintended consequences, such as hurting foot traffic at nearby businesses.
This is not HPD’s concern. The police department is not the Chamber of Commerce or the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Its foremost duty is public safety, and providing the public with easy access to detailed information advances that goal.
The police cannot be everywhere and solve every crime. Timely dissemination of crime reports helps citizens be vigilant and proactive against criminal behavior where it counts — where they live. Furthermore, that information belongs to the public. HPD should adopt a presumption of full disclosure, withholding certain information only for compelling reasons, and not for vague concerns about unintended consequences.
It also would be a modest but encouraging first step toward participating in what is becoming a broad national movement for greater police transparency. Many police departments are joining the White House’s Police Data Initiative, which aims to foster community trust and better analysis of crime and policing trends through public dissemination of detailed data sets.
HPD has said it is open to releasing more information, and will approach neighborhood boards and other groups to seek input.
“We have nothing to gain by withholding any information,” Axt said.
He is right. But there’s no need to drag out the process. Since at least 2014, the neighborhood boards and the public have been raising concerns about the lack of information provided by HPD. The department should move swiftly and firmly toward correcting this problem, starting with providing violent-crime mapping data to the public.
