Big Island police chief outlines strategic plan in talk story session

Hawaii Island police chief Ben Moszkowicz met with residents in a talk-story session and laid out the department’s strategic plan as a public test of whether the county’s largest law-enforcement agency can deliver on staffing, response and transparency. For communities from Hilo and Puna to Kona, Kaū and Waimea, the practical question is whether the plan changes what residents see on the ground over the next year.

Moszkowicz, who was selected by the Hawaii County Police Commission in January 2023, came to the job after 22 years with the Honolulu Police Department and was described then as an outsider to Hawaii County policing. The department’s own Five-Year Vision Plan 2023-2027 says its mission is to preserve the spirit of aloha, work cooperatively with the community, enforce the laws, preserve peace and provide a safe environment. It also says the vision is to provide the highest quality police service and build partnerships with the community to achieve public satisfaction and make the Big Island a safe place to live, visit and conduct business.

The scale of that promise is large. A University of San Diego Online Degrees profile said the Hawaii Police Department serves more than 4,000 square miles of the Big Island and oversees 496 sworn personnel and 162 professional police staff members. That is the backdrop for the plan’s emphasis on staffing, patrol coverage and problem-solving, especially in districts where geography shapes how quickly officers can reach a call.

Moszkowicz’s pitch also fit a pattern of trying to make the department more visible to the public. In November 2023, Hope Services Hawaii said he was working in his first year on transparency, staffing shortages and other issues. Two days after the Sept. 23, 2023 shooting in Puna, he released video showing officers’ actions before and after the incident, a rare move that put department decisions under direct public review.

For residents, the clearest benchmarks are straightforward: whether response times improve, whether staffing shortages ease, whether patrols are distributed more visibly across the island’s districts, and whether the department can show stronger case clearance and clearer communication about its work. The talk-story format matters only if it leads to those measurable changes, district by district.