LAHAINA — The day after Steve Fisher’s home survived the Aug. 8, 2023 Lahaina wildfire, in the mostly destroyed town, looters swiped his tools and some whiskey.

From then on, Fisher was so determined to protect his belongings that “I was sleeping in a hammock on my property.”

Now, nearly three years later, Fisher and his neighbor Roland Tanner voluntarily alternate patrols around the community, keeping a watchful eye out for trespassers and squatters on vacant lots, thieves targeting stacks of lumber, and abandoned vehicles waiting to being stripped for parts. 

With more than 200 homes rebuilt and another 300 under construction, Lahaina’s population is slowly returning. But with many lots still empty and police resources limited, residents are working to stay vigilant until their neighbors can come home.

The Maui Police Department has seen a growing number of calls for service and reports in the Lahaina burn zone this year. From Jan. 1 to April 30, the department received 1,322 total calls for service and 667 total reports, compared to 1,009 calls for service and 330 reports during the same period in 2025, according to data provided to the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative.

That includes 232 citations (MPD did not specify what the citations were for), 53 personal assistance cases, 46 motor vehicle accidents and 21 abuse cases. During the same period in 2025, the most common incidents included 44 motor vehicle accidents, 26 personal assistance cases, 21 suspicious cases and 18 abandoned vehicles. 

Thefts have gone down slightly, with 16 reported during the first four months of 2025 compared to 14 reported in the same period this year.

Lahaina only has five patrol officers and one sergeant per shift, compared to about a dozen in Wailuku, said community police officer Tazminey Cremer. They can’t be everywhere at once, and sometimes they have to respond to incidents in other parts of the island.

That’s where residents like Fisher and Tanner come in. They’re part of a neighborhood watch program known as Nā Maka ‘O Lahaina (meaning “The Eyes of Lahaina”). It is described as “a community-led safety and resiliency initiative where residents collaborate to prevent crime and create safer neighborhoods.”

This year, residents started meeting monthly at the VFW Hall on Fleming Road to keep each other up to date on current issues.

Tanner doesn’t go out as often as he used to when he first started the neighborhood watch in September 2024 when the Wahikuli area reopened to residents. Instead of patrolling daily, he goes out three days a week in the afternoons and late evenings with his wife. Fisher also patrols a few days a week, going out at all times of the day, including as early as 2:30 a.m. if he hears commotion in the middle of the night.

But lately, a big problem has been happening in broad daylight with cars speed through the often empty streets of the recovering neighborhood. Fleming Road used to be a dead end before the fire, but now, it’s a direct connection to Kilohana and Ka La‘i Ola, the temporary housing projects built to house fire survivors. And now that the road is freshly paved following work to install a new sewer line last year, cars often surpass the posted speed limit of 20 mph.

Lahaina resident Kekoa Mowat said that some of the culprits are community members, including his own classmates’ kids who are “not bad people, it’s just they do bad things.”

“I like go to the parents and say, ‘talk to your kids,’” Mowat said during a meeting of Nā Maka ‘O Lahaina last week. “They’re driving like maniacs. They going kill somebody.”

During his patrols, Fisher sometimes parks at the top of the road, trying to wave down speeding cars in the hopes they will slow. A few residents on electric wheelchairs sometimes motor down the road to go to the store, and Fisher worries they could be hit by a reckless driver. 

From January to April, MPD recorded seven speeding crimes in the burn zone versus three during the same time last year. 

In March, community concerns prompted the Lahaina District to conduct speed enforcement operations on Fleming Road, MPD spokesperson Alana Pico said. One speeding citation was issued and no other traffic violations were observed. Pico said MPD “will focus enforcement efforts in specific areas when concerns are reported.” 

“Since the March enforcement operation on Fleming Road, no additional concerns regarding speeding in that area have been brought to our attention,” Pico said. “Our CRS section who oversees citizens on patrol/neighborhood watch has also not received any requests or concerns regarding the area.”

But residents say it’s still happening, and they fear the solution they want most — more speed bumps — will be foiled by a recent dispute in Ha‘ikū. Earlier this year, 1,000 residents signed an online petition complaining about the “distressing daily ordeal” of 31 new speed bumps in Ha‘ikū and calling for a moratorium on the installation of new ones. In April, Mayor Richard Bissen temporarily halted future speed bumps in the area.

Bissen, who pointed out that the project was approved several years ago in the fiscal year 2022 budget shortly before he took office, asked Public Works Director Jordan Molina to review existing speed humps to ensure they meet county standards. Any that don’t “will be removed and evaluated for replacement.”

“As residents continue rebuilding in Lahaina and neighborhoods become more active, we understand the concerns being raised about speeding on Fleming Road and in other areas experiencing increased traffic,” Bissen said in a statement on Friday. “The County will continue working with residents and neighborhood groups to identify appropriate solutions where safety concerns exist.”

Cremer said she submitted a proposal to the department chiefs to request more speed-control measures in the area. She said the best solutions include more lights, more cameras and fewer trees to increase visibility. 

“The hope is we can get some kind of measures that are permanent to discourage the speeding because our presence cannot be there all the time,” Cremer said. 

Residents said they planned to start a petition in support.

“In other instances, they’re catching cracks for speed bumps, and in ours, we’re begging for speed bumps,” said Jordan Ruidas of Lahaina Strong.

Maui County spokesperson Laksmi Abraham said residents can report traffic safety concerns and request traffic-calming measures through the Department of Public Works at mauicounty.gov. She said that “requests are evaluated based on roadway conditions, traffic patterns and community input.”

Trespassing is another key public safety concern. While MPD hasn’t recorded any trespassing cases this year or last, residents say they still see people in places they shouldn’t be.

Lehua I‘i and her husband live at Ka La‘i Ola not far from their Fleming Road home that is being rebuilt. Every day her husband goes to check on their property and water the plants. They hope to move back in July.

A little over a month ago, her husband was pulling up to the property when he spotted a stranger in the driveway. He asked what she was doing there, and the woman claimed she had come to pick some plants that the couple didn’t even have on their property.

I‘i said the woman tried to call the cops on her husband and get him arrested for kidnapping because he was blocking her in. They talked it over with the police, and he avoided arrest, but it left the couple frustrated.

“You just worry because we’re not physically here,” she said. “We don’t know what they’re thinking, what they’re scoping. We have material on the property like everyone else.”

I‘i said the area always felt safe before the fire. Now, people are urging her to install cameras once she returns, and she’s planning on it.

“I don’t think we even worried about that,” she said of neighborhood watch programs. “We always looked out for one another. But now, we have to. We really do.”

At the Kilohana housing project, Courtney Lazo of Lahaina Strong said her dad has twice had break-ins in the middle of the night, including the day he moved in. 

In a recovering town that has lost so many familiar faces, it can be a challenge to keep tabs on who’s allowed to be where. Roads have reopened to the public. Construction crews come and go. Some owners are off island or living outside of Lahaina and unable to regularly check on their properties.

If residents suspect someone is trespassing, the easiest thing to do is take a picture and send it to police, Cremer said. Officers can check with the owners and ask if the person is authorized to be on property. 

“If they’re not somebody that’s supposed to be there, then I can let the patrol guys know, and we can make checks and try to work with the owners … to kick them out of the area,” Cremer said.

Since officers can’t arrest people for misdemeanors such as trespassing if it didn’t happen in their presence, Cremer pointed out that residents can place someone under citizen’s arrest if they witness a crime. That doesn’t mean physically detaining someone and putting them in cuffs, Cremer said. It requires filling out a form confirming they want the crime prosecuted, and police can take the person into custody.

“I think that would really empower a lot of residents,” Ruidas said. “Just having that deeper knowledge, having them feel more comfortable with what can and cannot (do). Because I feel like a lot of times, they don’t even feel comfortable with doing a police report because they don’t really know their rights as a property owner.”

Tanner and Fisher said they’re working to get authorization from owners who aren’t on island to check suspicious activity on their properties so they can more easily report trespassers or other issues.

Fisher said after the fire “there wasn’t anything really to steal” in much of the burn zone. The town was decimated and nobody had started rebuilding. But with so many homes now under construction, they’ve got to keep a closer eye out. A friend’s generator was swiped. Another had his truck stolen while he was painting a home.

As he drives around town, Fisher especially monitors properties where construction has paused and no one is regularly checking on the site. He looks out for the homes that survived the fire but sat empty until their owners could return.

Fisher stores a bullhorn in the front seat that he pulls out when he really wants to get peoples’ attention while avoiding direct physical confrontation. Once, he used it to stop people who were setting off illegal fireworks near newly built homes. 

Fisher also hands out neighborhood watch signs to anyone he can in hopes of putting would-be thieves and trespassers on alert. When asked if he thought the community would be safer as more people moved back in, he said, “I sure hope so.” That would mean more people to call out speeders or snap photos of offenders.

“It’d be really nice to have more of the local presence,” he said.