Volunteer policing bill advances

By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Staff Writer

A program that will allow citizen volunteers to issue parking tickets and cite abandoned vehicles is likely to be approved at the City Council's Dec. 4 meeting.

The proposal sailed through the five-member Public Safety Committee yesterday, with support from the Honolulu Police Department and a volunteer with the existing disabled-parking enforcement corps.

Under Bill 62, the police department will be able to use volunteers to handle parking enforcement and abandoned and derelict vehicles to free police officers to deal with more serious cases.

"The bottom line is that this will increase the productivity of the police department," said Councilman Gary Okino, chairman of the Public Safety committee.

The law would enable screened and trained volunteers to issue tickets ranging from $30 to $255. Volunteers would be subject to background checks and will have to complete at least 20 hours of training on how to identify violators, issue citations, use communication equipment, deal with confrontations and provide testimony in court.

The police department issues more than 80,000 parking tickets a year, while the city dealt with more than 24,000 abandoned vehicle cases during the last fiscal year.

Only one person expressed reservations yesterday about the program. Wai'anae resident James Manaku worried the volunteers would target homeless people, who use their vehicles for shelter and as a place to keep their belongings. "That's the only protection they have," Manaku said. "They don't have a home to lock it in the closet or keep it in a safe deposit box inside their room."

Okino said he believed the police department will train volunteers to show the same compassion for the homeless as regular officers do.

George Fox, who volunteers to help police enforce disabled parking violations, assured the council the volunteers will not be striking out at their neighbors.

"You find that the group as a whole is above average intelligence, highly motivated to do a job well," he said. The volunteers include retired military officers and school teachers, he said. "It's not your average group. They're not the kind of people that are going to run berserk in the neighborhood."

The community volunteers spend five hours a week enforcing the law on parking illegally in disabled stalls, issuing about 3,200 citations a year.

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.