2022-12-12 Police Commission Regular Minutes

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Hawaii Police Commission Special Meeting Minutes December 12, 2022 Page 14 Much like the police officers, if we're having dispatchers approaching that retirement age and we don't want to lose them, can we look at the possibility of retention bonuses for them? ➢ Benjamin Moszkowicz stated they kind of went through a rebranding of their own in Honolulu with their dispatchers. They used to refer to them as dispatchers. Some dispatchers felt kind of apart from the rest of the department operationally. They preferred the title Police Communication Officer. It allowed them to go through their job description, refresh that, create new positions, and rebranded them. With the increase in job responsibilities, their pay was slightly altered to align with the duties that they were actually doing. He has experience with this and would consider bringing it over here if that's an issue. It's important to look at police communications officers the same way you look at police officers. They're doing different parts of the job, but doing the same job. It's important that they train together and communicate well. We need to remember that officers are not the only ones who experience traumatic incidents. Talking to someone on the phone who's experiencing an emergency is a stress and anxiety-inducing situation and it happens multiple times a day. As an officer, he would go to 5-12 calls a day. The dispatchers are sending out hundreds of calls a day. He's curious what the impact is on wellness and mental health. He would look at contacting a company that creates branded wellness apps that takes all the information specific to your department, peer support, chaplains, critical information, and policies and puts it with best practices that work at other places. They have clients from around the world. Give that access to everyone; police communication officers, police officers, recruits, retirees, family members, police commissioners, and anyone who falls under the umbrella of your organization that could potentially benefit from it. Hawaii is a state that doesn't have deferred retirement options for state and county employees and that's certainly not something that a chief could do by themselves, but it's absolutely something that a chief here could spearhead a collaboration with other chiefs, state, and local law enforcement, and legislatures to make changes to allow a program which creates a huge incentive to those who are in that 25-30 year range to last another 5-8 years. ➢ Edward Ignacio stated dispatchers want a better quality of life. Part of that is a better work environment. It comes down to communication. We need to be able to start those conversations with the dispatchers. He believes that they feel like leadership does not recognize the challenges that they face on a daily basis. He believes they feel high stress with low pay, underappreciated, and undervalued, which also relates to the patrol side. Patrol and dispatchers are the backbones of the department. They should be cared for the most and we should be making sure that they have what they need. It also comes down to leadership and training. Do they have the right leaders in place, are their