2017-02-17 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes — February 13, 2017 makes $20,000.00 more than a seasoned officer. Currently, we're only hiring lateral officers. They have to come from another agency that's already invested time and money for them to be trained properly. We're looking at mitigating that but the earliest is probably January 2018. This would mean running basically a resource oriented police academy so we can fill those vacancies with some entry level folks who don't have law enforcement experience and haven't been employed as a police officer before. TL: Two years ago we testified on behalf of DOCARE on your retirement plan and I kinda lost sight of whether or not that had changed — but the issue there was that they had to work until they were like 70 in order to have a livable retirement. Is that still the case? RF: Yeah, so retirement for police officers throughout the nation generally is a little bit different than other public sector workers — you usually have an enhanced retirement plan. DOCARE does not have that, however, the good news is that last year they just got a new bargaining unit so that's gonna be a little bit easier to negotiate certain things because it's peace officers and safety personnel only — we're lumped in with a larger group of non -enforcement, non -regulatory folks before — so now we have a smaller bargaining unit that has a little bit of more specialized people in it and then the good news is because of that they did get a little bit of a bump in pay this last year — so that's a good thing, however, their retirement and some of the other benefits remain the same as a normal state worker. TL: Are you folks bringing more officers to the Big Island? RF: Each island right now has between five and seven vacancies. For the Big Island, we actually have two in the hiring process right now and I believe they will be coming here to Hilo. They probably won't be on the street for at least another three to four months. They have to complete an initial training. We've never done that before — it's a field training program — all the police agencies do it here in Hawaii and throughout the nation. DOCARE hasn't have one for a very long time so we're getting some of our more experienced officers to go through the training and then when the new officers come on they'll be riding with them on an individual basis and doing this field training program — so you'll see some more knowledgeable guys out before they just get cut loose and start patrolling. DY: I'm interested in knowing what happened to the volunteer program? RF: There was a bill that was introduced, I believe it was from Representative Yamane this year for a half million dollars to outfit and revamp the volunteer program. It's still in place but understanding that volunteer officers take the same amount of training as a regular officer. If I'm gonna 4