Kristi Chun has never felt so unsafe on Oʻahu. 

Since Covid, the Pauoa resident said she notices more people on the streets who are mentally ill or unstable. She no longer feels comfortable walking around, even during the day, and doesn’t allow her 9-year-old son to take the bus. 

“I’ve never felt this level of insecurity,” said Chun, who works as a financial advisor in downtown Honolulu. “When I was younger and starting my business, my assistants used to walk home from downtown all the way to Waikīkī, and now I would never tell them that it’s safe to walk home, or even to catch the bus, for that matter.”

Chun isn’t the only one feeling this way. In testimony at the Hawaiʻi Legislature this year and in social media posts, dozens of people are expressing concern that crime in the islands is rising. Multiple candidates for office are campaigning on rising crime and say public safety is a top concern of community members. Gun control advocates, too, are concerned that recent changes to gun laws, including last month’s Supreme Court decision allowing guns to be carried in more public establishments, could lead to an uptick in gun violence. 

But there appears to be a gap between public sentiment and what local statistics show: Violent crime and property crime have been going down since the pandemic.

In 2024, violent crimes were down 3% from 2021 and property crimes were down 20% in Hawaiʻi, according to the most recently available numbers on the state Attorney General’s data dashboard. More recent data from the Honolulu Police Department shows a similar downward trend.   

“Perceptions don’t often meet reality when it comes to crime trends,” said Dave Hatten, a program manager at Crime Index, an organization that aggregates crime data from law enforcement agencies across the U.S.

Crime has been trending down throughout the country in recent years, and the same is true in Hawaiʻi, Hatten said. Violent crime has been declining since the 90s, ticking up slightly during the Covid-19 pandemic, he said, and now is dropping back to pre-pandemic levels.

“We’ve seen nationwide a drop in every major category of crime for the last almost three years now,” he said. “I think that it’s likely to continue.”  

Brazen crimes reported in the media, whether through traditional news outlets or social media, can contribute to people’s sense of unease, he said. Some of Hawaiʻi’s most popular Facebook and Instagram accounts, like Stolen Stuff Hawaii and the Hungry Hungry Hawaiian, frequently publish crime content, from posts about shoplifters to videos of violent fights on the beach. Both are popular: Stolen Stuff Hawaii has more than 200,000 members on Facebook and the Hungry Hungry Hawaiian, whose handle is @hhhnews, has 335,000 followers on Instagram. 

Politicians also often campaign on messages about rising crime because it can resonate more viscerally with people than talking about other issues, like inflation, Hatten said. 

“It’s always legitimate for people to feel like they’re less safe,” he said.  “One of the things that we try to do is just communicate the data in the most valid way possible, so that you can kind of reconcile that with what you’re seeing on a daily basis.”

Perception Vs. Data 

It’s not just one type of crime that’s gone down. Statistics show a decrease in most categories throughout the islands in recent years, according to the AG’s dashboard. And total offenses — all reported crimes combined — are down 15%.  

From 2021 to 2024, reports of aggravated assaults, which are defined as attacks with the intent of causing serious bodily injury, dropped by 10%. Motor vehicle thefts and robberies are both down about 20%. Burglaries declined 38%. Narcotics violations 13%.

Honolulu’s statistics show a similar downward trend in crime. On Oʻahu, the number of aggravated assaults went down nearly 20% between 2021 and 2025, according to the police department’s 2025 annual report. 

Homicides in Honolulu declined substantially during this time period, dropping by nearly 40% from 2021 to 2025, according to the annual report. Of the 13 murders reported in 2025, six were committed with a firearm and two with a knife or cutting instrument. The report doesn’t specify what weapons were used in the other five. Homicides in Honolulu went up in 2024, in part due to violence on the West Side, including a mass shooting that left four dead, but fell again in 2025.

Between 2021 and 2025, robberies decreased in Honolulu by 42%, according to HPD’s annual report. 

It’s important to note that the data only shows reported crimes, said Ben Moskowicz, former police chief on the Big Island. Some people may choose not to report crimes if they don’t trust the police department or feel that police won’t take action to help them. Or, in some cases, officers may not document crimes appropriately, he said. 

Moskowicz described social media as an “echo chamber” that spreads imagery of violent or bad things happening in a user’s area over and over again, leading to an elevated sense of fear. 

Some categories of crime have increased, too. From 2021 to 2024, murder cases in the islands ticked up slightly, from 28 to 34, and those involving a firearm increased by two cases, from 15 to 17. Still, the  homicide rate in Hawaiʻi was the eighth lowest in the nation in 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.   

Arson increased by 2%, the data shows. Shoplifting, generally considered a crime related to poverty not violence, was up 32%.  

The data reported on the AG’s site are numbers police departments are required to report to the FBI. Numbers are only available starting in 2021 because that’s the year the federal agency transitioned its reporting system from the Uniform Crime Reporting program to the National Incident-Based Reporting System. 

The new reporting system changed the way crimes were reported and classified and allows for a higher level of detail to be collected. For example, under the old system, if multiple offenses were linked to one incident, such as a robbery that ended in a murder, only the most serious offense would be reported — in that instance, the murder. Under the new system, both the robbery and the murder would be counted. 

Under the old reporting system, crimes overall were down 20% compared to a decade prior, although the violent crime rate was up nearly 3% over the same time period, according to an AG’s Office report from 2020. 

Residents Feel Uneasy

What the numbers don’t show is what people are feeling on the ground. 

Teri Savaiinaea, chair of the Waiʻanae Coast Neighborhood Board, worries about the safety of her grown sons, ages 24, 27 and 33. 

“I leave my phone 24/7, you know, charging, on,” she said. “I don’t turn it off, because I need to know where my sons are. Are they okay?”

She sees videos of fights on social media, like the one recently that went viral of teens attacking another teen boy on the North Shore, and worries that her sons could get caught up in something like that — not as the aggressors but because they’ve always been the type to stand up for others. 

For Savaiinaea, the concern is not so much that crime is worsening, she said. It’s more of a frustration that not enough is being done to address it. Community members feel there are no consequences for the perpetrators, she said. In some cases, suspects are never caught. She cited, for instance, the case of Richianna DeGuzman, a teen shot and paralyzed in Māʻili in 2023 and whose case remains unsolved.

The root causes of crime are not being pursued, she said. 

“It’s not the gun. It’s not even the knife. It’s the minds of the people,” she said. “You know, there’s so much poverty, so much pain and suffering. We need more mental health.”

For Chun, even if the data shows crime is going down, it doesn’t mean that people feel safer. Chun was one of more than a dozen people who submitted testimony to the Legislature this year against a bill that would have required defendants charged with petty misdemeanors to be released on their own recognizance before trial. The testifiers, who included small business owners and local residents, expressed a sense that crime is rising. The bill was voted down on its third reading in the Senate. 

Grant Woo, a former Honolulu game shop owner, wrote in testimony that crime “already increased significantly in the last 5 years.”

“We don’t need it to get worse,” he wrote.

“Crime in Hawaii is already on the rise, particularly in categories that affect everyday life such as property crimes, theft, and certain misdemeanors,” wrote Kaneohe resident Ian Bishop. “Recent resident surveys show that a majority of Hawaii residents now rank crime and safety among their top concerns, with many perceiving violent crime as worsening.”

“You know, there’s so much poverty, so much pain and suffering. We need more mental health.”

Teri Savaiinaea, chair of the Waiʻanae Coast Neighborhood Board

Chun said even if the numbers of aggravated assaults have gone down, what she sees as an increased number of people suffering from mental health issues on the streets has led her to feel less safe. In April, while on her way to a yoga class in Ward Village area before 5:30 a.m., she said a fellow classmate was followed by a strange man holding a knife.

“I just found it shocking that it was in Ward, which touts themselves as kind of a safer area,” she said. “To me, that’s very symptomatic of it spreading and being more prevalent.” 

Some candidates for political office are harnessing this sentiment in their campaigns. 

“Crime continues to rise across (House District) 46, and many families no longer feel safe in their own communities,” says a campaign ad for Rocklin Youngstrom, a candidate for House District 46, which includes Wahiawā and Whitmore Village on the North Shore. “Illegal gambling houses, drug activity, theft, and repeat offenders are becoming a growing concern for local families.”

Honolulu police annual reports show crime in District 2, which includes Wahiawā and the North Shore, fell by nearly half from 2020 to 2025. Aggravated assaults were down from 77 in 2020 to 62 in 2025, murders went from one in 2020 to zero in 2025, and burglary was down from 268 in 2020 to 96 in 2025 — a decrease of 64%. 

Youngstrom said she’s seen the data showing crime going down, but it doesn’t reflect what people are experiencing in her community. She thinks many crimes go unreported, in some cases because people are afraid to come forward or because they may feel police will take too long to respond.

“Just from speaking with constituents, but also things that I see personally, there’s so much crime that goes on,” she said, referencing an illegal gambling house that police raided in March just down the road from where she lives on Mala Street. “We have the proper resources, but we don’t give our police officers the proper resources to do it, and it ties in with cost of living.”

Other candidates have also mentioned rising crime as a concern for community members, including Ian Ross, a candidate for State House District 26, and Nani Brown, who is running for Senate in Hawaiʻi’s 17th District. 

Ross did not respond to requests for comment. 

Brown said her comments about being concerned about rising crime stemmed from community concerns about plans for a nearly one-mile pedestrian bridge that would connect Wahiawā with Whitmore Village. One end of the bridge is located on North Cane Street in Wahiawā. A man was stabbed to death at an apartment complex on that street in May. Another man was assaulted with a deadly weapon on the same street in June. 

“The area of Cane Street is already kind of well-known to be a bad spot of town,” she said. “So when you have people easy access in and out of the bad part of town, it’s easy to spread it, right?” 

Even if data shows a drop in crime, Moskowicz said the most important metric is how people in a community are feeling. 

“Even if I can statistically prove to you that crime rates are down,” he said, “none of it matters unless you feel safe.”