2022-12-12 Police Commission Regular Minutes

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Hawaii Police Commission Special Meeting Minutes December 12, 2022 Page 28 department and making it like some other department. The Hawaii Police Department has its own unique character and history, he would want to preserve that. he would assure his commanders by setting his direction, by letting the commanders command and make decisions and he would support those decisions, which is very important. He would be fair, and consistent, always follow the policy and treat everyone with respect. ➢ Sherry Bird stated that she is an internal candidate however, as mentioned earlier, all of her career was spent in Area II or the west side of the island. We're a big island, we're a big department, she would take steps to get herself seen, and engaged with personnel on the east side of the island. Communication is very important, she would want to get out there and establish that face-to-face contact with everybody in each district, in each section and get that dialogue going and start establishing that trust because even though she is in the department, there are officers on this side that don't know what she's about. They don't know her or her work character. Getting herself out there, getting herself established as a trusted, capable leader that cares about what happens in this department. One of the things that she would do is put out an internal survey for the employees, so she could get a baseline gauge of where they stand as a department and see how the employees feel. She knows they have a lot of suggestions and ideas that could help make their job easier. Taking a look at those surveys and see how can we use some of those results and act on some of those suggestions. If we could find the ones that we can do something about that would help to improve trust within our department. As the chief you're going to have your commanders, everyone has their responsibilities, so you have to empower them to make sure that they know that they can make these decisions and make sure, as the chief you're backing them up when they're making decisions for the right purpose for their areas of responsibilities. Vice Chair Brown asked if any of the commissioners have any comments they would like to address to the candidates. There were none. Recess was called at 2:23 p.m. The meeting reconvened at 2:29 p.m. Commissioner Toci stated all candidates thoroughly answered all the questions, therefore that's why they don't have any follow-up questions. The commission will be meeting with all candidates tomorrow on the west side of the island and they'll have more questions then. Vice Chair Brown thanked the candidates for coming and stated they are looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. Commissioner Springer thanked the candidates and apologized for the intrusion via zoom earlier. Commissioner Andrion thanked all candidates as well.