Three years after a city audit revealed rampant overtime at the Honolulu Police Department allowed some officers to increase their pay by more than $100,000, the number of officers filing more than 1,000 hours of overtime a year has increased by almost 500%.
More than 40 Honolulu police officers logged enough overtime last year to double their base salaries, according to HPD records obtained by Civil Beat.
Sgt. Darren Cachola, who retired last month after a turbulent two decades on the force, collected more than 2,400 overtime hours in his last year on the job. Cachola supervised DUI checkpoints that are now subject to a lawsuit claiming HPD officers arrested drivers with no alcohol in their systems.
Officers running these checkpoints had a “one and done” policy, allowing them to shut down a checkpoint after making a single arrest and head home but still be paid for their full shift, according to the lawsuit.
HPD has opened an inquiry into Cachola’s extreme overtime hours, which interim Chief Rade Vanic said raises questions about what he was doing during those hours, who approved them and whether there had been sufficient attempts to see if anyone else was available.
