Editor’s note: The arrest last month of Mike Miske by federal agents, coming in the midst of a years-long public corruption investigation that is still playing out, has captivated many in Hawaii, especially those familiar with Miske’s reputation and history of high-profile bad behavior. Miske has been at least tangentially involved in the federal investigation into former Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha, his deputy prosecutor wife Katherine, other Honolulu police officers, the elected prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro and top city officials like Corporation Counsel Donna Leong and Managing Director Roy Amemiya. In this piece, longtime Honolulu investigative reporter Ian Lind has painstakingly researched court and police records for a look at Miske’s early steps on a path that could lead to the death penalty, a rarity in Hawaii. 

The federal indictment of Michael Miske Jr. and 10 others for allegedly operating a violent criminal enterprise has focused public attention on the 46-year-old Honolulu businessman.

Miske is best known to the public for his Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control, which has advertised itself heavily for years, and his part-ownership and management of the popular M Nightclub in downtown Honolulu’s Restaurant Row, which opened in 2012 and closed in 2016 after a series of highly publicized assaults on or near club premises.

Federal prosecutors allege that while the exact origin of Miske’s racketeering conspiracy is unknown, it was already up and running as a criminal gang “by at least in or about the late 1990s.”

A review of court records, newspaper archives, and other available public documents from that period confirms that by the time Mike Miske was 21 years old, he was a felon, a multiple offender, and well on his way to a criminal career.

This is, of course, not the end of the story. It is just the beginning. But it is undoubtedly a disturbing and potentially revealing first chapter.

Michael John Miske Jr. was born in Honolulu on Feb. 15, 1974. He was named after his father, who had arrived in Honolulu a decade before when his father, Walter L. Miske — Mike Miske’s grandfather, a jeweler by profession — relocated his family from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to begin a new job in the islands.

The senior Mike Miske, who attended Kalani High School, died in 1980 at age 28, when Michael Jr. was just 6 years old. He was an only child.

After his father’s death, young Michael and his mother were folded into her extended local family and had less contact with his Miske relatives. His mother, Maydeen (Lau) Miske, remarried and the family moved into a house near some of her relatives in Waimanalo. Another son, Michael’s step-brother John B. Stancil, was born when Miske was 13. He is a co-defendant in the current federal case.

As a teenager, Miske reportedly had trouble with his new stepfather and they often tangled, eventually causing him to leave home.

“When his mother remarried he struggled to find a place in his new home,” recalls his cousin and business partner, Allen Lau, in a character reference letter filed in court by Miske’s defense attorneys. “He would often stay at my house sleeping on my parents’ couch or even at the beach.”

Although people recall Miske attending Kailua High School, he does not appear in the school’s yearbook or list of graduates for the year his class graduated.

“After high school Mike was determined to make something out of himself,” Lau wrote. “He started a few small businesses before approaching me about opening one together.”

That may be true, but court records show Miske was well on his way to a busy career in crime by the time he was 21.

A Year In The Life

Mike Miske turned 19 years old on Feb. 15, 1993.

Shortly before his birthday, Miske was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault and criminal property damage (a petty misdemeanor). He was arraigned in Honolulu’s 1st Circuit Court on Feb. 16, represented by a court appointed attorney, Reinhard Mohr. 

Miske pleaded not guilty, asked for a jury trial, and his case was set for trial in August. These were the first charges to appear on his criminal record after becoming an adult.

Court records show prosecutors were unable to contact their complaining witness, and when she failed to appear for the trial, the charges against Miske were dismissed.

On Feb. 5, 1993, just a week before Miske’s 19th birthday, police seized his car in connection with a burglary and theft case, according to a legal notice published later when the car was designated for forfeiture and sale.

In April 1993, Miske was charged with tampering with physical evidence, a misdemeanor, and again represented by Mohr in the Kaneohe District Court proceedings. These charges were thrown out after prosecutors acknowledged exceeding the 180-day limit for providing a “speedy trial.”

A Tale Of Two Cars

Then sometime around midnight on June 12, 1993, a red 1988 Honda Prelude was stolen from the Waikiki Theater parking structure. Several hours later, around 4:45 a.m., police found the car at Kainalu Elementary School in Kailua, where witnesses reported seeing two men drive up in another car, enter the school property, then remove the stolen car’s tires and rims, which they stacked next to the cafeteria. Along with the tires and rims, valued at over $2,000, they also took a CD player, about 40 CDs, two dozen cassette tapes, and a matching Hawaiian gold bracelet and ring valued at $800.

Soon after the two suspects left the scene, a responding police officer stopped their car. The driver was a 17-year-old male student at Kalaheo High School, and the getaway car belonged to his mother. Mike Miske was in the passenger seat. Their fingerprints were later found on the rims and wheel covers of the stolen car. Both were subsequently arrested and charged with theft in the second degree, with the younger man being referred to family court.

At the time of this arrest, the 19-year-old Miske was described as 6 feet tall, 150 pounds, with a slim build and tan complexion. He reported being employed at Honolulu Gold Werks in “jewelry maintenance.” Honolulu Gold Werks was a trade name registered by one of his father’s brothers, state business registration records show.

Just five days later, on June 17, 1993, Miske bought a red 2-door 1983 Honda Prelude from a private owner in Kailua. The following day, a similar 1986 red 2-door Honda Prelude was stolen from a car lot on North Nimitz, according to a Honolulu police report later filed in court in an unrelated proceeding.

And on June 20, the older car was found abandoned on Kapaa Quarry Road with its license plates and serial number removed. Although Miske was identified as the man who had purchased the car, it had been registered to another man, Bodie Suter.

The following month, Miske met a local man in a Mapunapuna parking lot and sold him a 1986 red Honda Prelude for $5,300 in cash, apparently using an altered version of the older car’s title to transfer the stolen car to the new buyer. Police records show Miske had already left the area with the cash before the buyer noticed the title misidentified the car as a 1983 model.

In August 1993, while the case of the switched red Honda Preludes was still being investigated, Miske and a cousin were charged with attempted theft, criminal property damage, and being in possession of burglary tools. Both defendants were represented by Mohr. 

When the case came to trial in July 1994, nearly a year later, Mohr again argued prosecutors had exceeded the deadline for holding a “speedy trial,” and the judge agreed. The charges were dismissed. Prosecutors were given 30 days in which to refile the charges, but elected not to pursue the case.

But in December 1993, the investigation of the red Hondas moved forward when police were finally able to trace the stolen car to the man who bought it from Miske. The car was searched, and police found its serial number had been removed. Police confiscated the stolen car, and the unhappy buyer was out both the cash and the vehicle.

Before the police moved in, Miske was indicted for the theft and fraudulent use of credit cards, and charged with second-degree theft, a Class C felony. It was his first felony in a quickly escalating string of charges. The indictment landed just a month before his 20th birthday.

In February 1994, just a week after his 20th birthday, Miske and Bodie Suter were arrested for their buy-steal-and-switch scam involving the two red Hondas. Both men were unemployed at the time. Both were charged with second-degree theft.

Just two months after those charges were filed, on April 14, 1994, Mike Miske’s son, Caleb, was born, according to a birth notice published in a local newspaper. Miske and the child’s mother were not married.

Meanwhile, the cases involving the two red Honda Preludes dragged on in court for more than a year. Miske, now 21 and with an infant child, finally copped a plea in May 1995 in return for a lighter sentence. The plea included both the credit card theft and the theft and sale of the red Honda.

Prosecutors told the court Miske would qualify as a multiple offender and therefore be eligible for “enhanced” sentencing, but they agreed they would not seek any enhancement in the case.

In return, Miske entered a plea of no contest to all charges. He was then found guilty of fraudulent use of credit cards, and several counts of felony theft. He was sentenced to five years probation and 200 hours of community service, and ordered to pay $5,300 in restitution, the amount of cash he received when he sold the stolen car.

Out Of The Frying Pan

Despite receiving what in retrospect looks like a very lucky reprieve — probation instead of prison for his multiple convictions — Miske almost immediately got himself in serious trouble once again.

On May 17, 1995, just two days after his plea deal on the earlier charges was approved in court, a police officer stopped a black 1992 BMW four-door sedan seen speeding near Castle Medical Center just after 8 p.m. The officer asked the driver, later identified as Miske, for his license, registration and insurance card.

“The driver opened the glove compartment and a package fell out. The driver hid the package, removed the key from the glove compartment lock and began to start the car,” HPD Ofc. David Alices recounted in a later police report on the incident.

Alices said that when he went to the driver’s side of the car, the driver grabbed his arm and drove away, dragging him about 20 feet before he fell. The officer was treated at Castle for “a deep contusion to his left shoulder” which was considered by the examining doctor “to be a serious bodily injury,” case notes show.

The registered owner of the car, Rick Calhau, showed up at the Kaneohe Police Station about 2:30 a.m. to report the car had been stolen from behind his home. Calhau was a 28-year-old car enthusiast and the owner of The Tint Shop, an auto glass tinting company.

Calhau told police Mike Miske was “a good friend.” Calhau said Miske had driven the car before, but did not have permission to take the car that night.

Calhau told police Miske had left Oahu, but that he might know who had been driving the car. He refused to name the driver, and declined to take a lie detector test as suggested by police.

Calhau then said he wanted to speak to his attorney before making any further statement. He “then called a person named ‘Bodie’ to get the number of his attorney,” according to a police report on the incident.

The attorney was Reinhard Mohr, who explained to police he was representing the driver of the car and not Calhau.

“Bodie” was identified by police as Bodie Suter, “a known associate of Calhau” as well as the same person charged with Miske in the car theft and switch of the red Hondas two years previously.

After police positively identified Miske as the driver who had dragged officer Alices, a Crimestoppers news release was circulated which included the 21-year-old Miske’s photo. Miske was arrested early in the evening on May 26 at a home on Maunawili Road. He told police he was now a “self-employed glass tinter.”

On June 14, 1995, Miske was indicted on charges of kidnapping, a Class A felony, the most serious category of criminal offenses which carry the most serious potential sentences; first-degree attempted assault, a Class B felony; and speeding, a violation. He was released on $25,000 cash bail posted by his mother, Maydeen Stancil, court records show.

These were the most serious charges Miske had faced to date. The case was set for trial in September, and Mohr, his lawyer, began working on another plea deal.

On Aug. 25, 1995, while awaiting trial on the kidnapping and assault charges, Miske was arrested again for second-degree terroristic threatening. Arrested in the same incident, but charged separately, was Rick Calhau, the tint shop owner whose BMW Miske had been driving.

Charges against both men were eventually dismissed once again when the complaining witness, not identified in court records, failed to appear.

‘Best Interest Of The Defendant’

Meanwhile, after several weeks of negotiations, Miske agreed to another package deal, pleading guilty to all three charges, kidnapping, assault and speeding. He was formally sentenced in January 1996 to serve five years probation on each of three counts, to run concurrently. His mother’s bail was returned.

Miske was required to obtain and maintain full-time employment or educational/vocational training as approved by his probation officer. He was also required to submit at reasonable times to drug testing, and to allow searches of himself, his residence, his vehicle or other property under his control. In addition, he agreed to enter drug or mental health treatment if ordered to do so by the adult probation department and to remain until clinically discharged.

Mohr went back to court the following year and asked to amend Miske’s guilty plea to a no contest plea.

“No contest plea (is) in the best interest of the defendant,” the court minutes noted. The amended plea was approved. Court minutes do not reflect any further comment.

Miske complied with the terms of his probation by landing a job with Oahu Termite and Pest Control, a well-established termite treatment company. Miske learned the pest control business from the company’s owner, Harry Kansaki, according to Miske’s sworn statement filed earlier this year in an unrelated lawsuit. The job provided the experience that would eventually allow Miske to start his own company, Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control, several years later.

And at that point, Miske faded from the public record for most of the remaining term of his five-year probation.

Some of his associates weren’t so lucky.

Six months after the court allowed Miske to amend his guilty plea to no contest, his friend, Tint Shop owner Rick Calhau, suddenly went missing.

On Nov. 21, 1996, Calhau left home in Kaneohe shortly after 10 p.m.

“He told his wife he was going to visit friends in Kalihi and would return in an hour. But he never returned,” the Honolulu Advertiser reported.

Calhau’s family posted 4,000 “missing person” fliers and offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to his return. The money was not claimed, and police considered his disappearance to be suspicious.

Calhau was never seen again. He was declared legally dead in 2004 by then-Circuit Court Judge Karen Radius.

With Calhau missing and presumed dead, his registration of the trade name of his business, “The Tint Shop,” expired. In November 1998, Miske registered the same trade name, state business registration records show.

The following year Miske registered a new company, The Tint Shop Inc., at 916 Queen St. and before long the tinting business moved to 940 Queen St., the building where Kamaaina Termite has operated for 20 years, and that federal prosecutors allege “served as a headquarters for the planning of criminal activities.”

Then in February 1997, Bodie Suter, who had been arrested with Miske in the case involving the two red Honda Preludes, was charged in federal court with the sale, distribution or dispensing of narcotics. Court records indicate he had been previously considered a known drug dealer.

Suter ended up pleading guilty and was sentenced to 135 months imprisonment (11-1/4 years), followed by five years supervised release. He was released from federal prison in April 2006, according to federal inmate records.

And in December 1999, another of Mike Miske’s cousins, Craig Ivester, was charged with conspiracy to distribute narcotics and money laundering. Ivester’s mother and Miske’s mother are sisters, and the families lived close to each other in Waimanalo.

On the fourth day of Ivester’s trial, a discussion was held regarding “the jury’s concern for their safety,” court minutes show. Following questioning of the courtroom manager and jury clerk without the jury present, members of the jury were questioned, and the judge then addressed the jurors before the trial proceeded. Defense attorneys asked for a mistrial to be declared based on the jury’s concerns about their own safety. The motion was denied.

After a six-day trial, it took the jury less than a full day of deliberation to convict Ivester on two counts. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison on one count and 20 years on the other, court records show. He was finally released from federal custody on April 7, 2017.

Meanwhile, Reinhard Mohr was allowed to give up his law license in 1999 in lieu of facing disciplinary proceedings. Miske, now represented by attorney Michael Ostendorp, was back in court in December 1999 with a request to end his probation several months early. Miske’s probation officer told the court he had complied with all the terms and conditions, and she recommended early release. He was cut loose from court supervision just a few months later.

Miske, now 25 years old and with no visible financial resources, had just registered The Tint Shop Inc., a business using the same name as the one formerly owned and operated by his now-missing friend, Rick Calhau. And six months later, he registered Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control Inc., the company that federal prosecutors allege is at the center of a web of businesses used to promote and conceal his gang’s illegal activities for the last two decades.

Illustrations by John Pritchett.

The post From Early On, Miske Was On The Path To A Life Of Crime appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

The federal prosecutor leading the years-long corruption probe in Honolulu says attorneys have agreed to sentencing dates for Louis and Katherine Kealoha and others convicted in the case more than a year ago.

The effort to control the spread of coronavirus in Hawaii has delayed sentencing in this case as well as many others.

Now, according to a letter to U.S. District Court Judge J. Michael Seabright from Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat, lawyers representing Louis Kealoha and Katherine Kealoha can be available for sentencing on Nov. 3. Lawyers for two Honolulu police officers convicted in the case — Derek Hahn and Minh Hung “Bobby” Nguyen — can be available on Nov. 4.

Former Honolulu police chief Louis Kealoha, his former deputy prosecutor wife, Katherine, and the two former officers were convicted on a number of felony charges in June 2019 in connection with the theft of the Kealohas mailbox, a federal crime that the couple tried to frame her uncle for with the help of police officers. The Kealohas also pleaded guilty to other felonies related to misuse of funds and bank fraud stemming from money Katherine was overseeing for two children as their financial guardian.

Federal prosecutors have recommended a sentence of 14 years for Katherine and about seven years for Louis. She has been in custody in the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu since the trial; he has been out on bail. Louis filed for divorce from Katherine in October.

Read Civil Beat’s coverage of the ongoing federal corruption probe here.

The post Kealoha Sentencing Could Be Nov. 3 appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

Former Family Court Judge Michael Broderick and former Lt. Gov. Doug Chin are officially members of the Honolulu Police Commission after the City Council unanimously voted to confirm them on Wednesday.

“Both appointees withstood rigorous questioning by the committee on public safety,” said Councilman Tommy Waters, who chairs the committee. “Their answers were forthright, honest and direct, which I appreciated very much.”

Attorneys Michael Broderick and Doug Chin are joining the commission at a time of heightened scrutiny of police officers.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The commission has the power to hire and fire the chief, investigate complaints, review the budget and annual report, and review policy.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell said he appointed both commissioners keeping in mind the police reforms demanded by people worldwide who have protested brutality and racism. Both Broderick and Chin said they want to bring more accountability and transparency to the Honolulu Police Department.

In addition to experience as a judge, Broderick was also the director of the Hawaii State Judiciary and the Judiciary’s Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution. He is currently the president and CEO of the YMCA of Honolulu. However, he plans to step down by the end of the year to “open his own business offering services in mediation, arbitration, facilitation, neutral fact finding and executive coaching,” the nonprofit said in a news release on Thursday.

“Michael Broderick truly comes to the Police Commission with a great deal of experience,” Waters said.

Before serving as the lieutenant governor in 2018, Chin was the state’s attorney general from 2015 to 2018. Prior to that, he worked as Honolulu’s managing director under Mayor Peter Carlisle and as a prosecutor for nearly 15 years. More recently, he worked as a partner at the law firm Carlsmith Ball.

Chin’s nomination created some pushback from activists who pointed to his past anti-gay views, for which he has apologized, and his work lobbying for private prisons.

“There was some written testimony in opposition, however, through rigorous questions from the committee that lasted almost an hour, I believe he addressed all of those concerns,” Waters said. “I’m satisfied that he will carefully and fairly conduct his duty as a commissioner to the best of his ability.”

Broderick replaces Karen Chang, who resigned from the commission as her husband Rick Blangiardi prepared to run for mayor. Chin is filling the seat of Loretta Sheehan, who stepped down in frustration with the commission’s lack of power to affect change. The seat of Steve Levinson, who resigned alongside Sheehan, is still vacant.

The post Two New Honolulu Police Commissioners Confirmed By City Council appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

A Honolulu police officer facing charges for domestic violence and criminal property damage is among the defendants whose trials are delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. 

Ofc. Michael Rourke’s case is one of several domestic abuse cases involving Honolulu police officers referred to the prosecuting attorney’s office in 2019, although only four were accepted for prosecution.

Rourke, 34, was arrested last September following a July 2019 incident with a 42-year-old woman in which he allegedly shoved her by the neck and destroyed her cellphone, according to the police report.

The woman told police Rourke later “manipulated and harassed” her to the point that she was hospitalized for three days with acute stress disorder, a condition brought on by trauma.

“In the past, Michael has threatened to make cases against me, and threaten (sic) that he would ruin me,” the woman, whose name is redacted, said in a written statement to police. 

Officers who are arrested for domestic violence are stripped of their policing powers, HPD said.

Anthony Quintano/Civil Beat

HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu declined to discuss Rourke’s case but said in a statement that an administrative investigation into his conduct is continuing.

“Officers who wear the HPD badge are expected to maintain the highest standards of conduct at all times,” she said. “All allegations involving domestic violence are fully investigated. Possible disciplinary action ranges up to and includes termination.” 

Rourke pleaded not guilty in September. In February, a judge dismissed the case because the prosecutor, Emlyn Higa, wasn’t prepared to go to trial, court records show. Higa said he was sick that day. 

Honolulu Police Ofc. Michael Rourke was charged with abuse of a household or family member and criminal destruction of property.

Honolulu Police Department

In February, the prosecuting attorney’s office refiled the charges against Rourke, and he pleaded not guilty again in April. A trial scheduled for July was postponed because of coronavirus-related courtroom closures. It was then slated for September, but all jury trials have been pushed back again because of high COVID-19 case counts. 

“Just like every other criminal defendant, he is presumed innocent unless and until the government proves that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” said his attorney, Megan Kau, who is also running for prosecuting attorney.  

The complainant in this case alleges that in July 2019, he pushed her into the headboard of a bed, causing bruising, and threw her phone at her. A few months later, he took her phone again, threatened her and harassed her, she said.

Nine cases of Honolulu officers accused of domestic abuse were referred to the prosecuting attorney’s office in 2019, according to HPD. Four were accepted for prosecution, Yu said.

Two cases went to trial. One was dismissed and the other resulted in a not guilty verdict. The other two are pending cases, according to Yu.

This year, HPD referred one case to the Attorney General’s Office, but it was declined, Yu said.

“Police use power and dominance as tools in their work life and it can become a part of their identity,” said Nanci Kreidman, chief executive officer of the Domestic Violence Action Center. “Power and control are the central, foundational features of abuse.” 

Civil Beat requested an interview with HPD to discuss how the department handles cases of domestic violence in its ranks. Instead, Yu pointed to HPD’s policy which states when officers are arrested for domestic violence, they are immediately stripped of their police powers, including their service weapon. 

Rourke is now working desk duty in the IT division, Yu said. 

Last year, Chief Susan Ballard announced a new “resiliency training” program to help officers get a handle on their mental and emotional states. The announcement came after a number of officers were arrested on abuse charges.

But the curriculum isn’t really about domestic violence. Extensive and meaningful domestic violence training should be required for all officers on a periodic basis, according to Kreidman. 

“This is community crime that does not discriminate, impacts us all, costs us all a great deal, and we must take it seriously and see it as a priority for the wellbeing of our community,” Kreidman said. “We need the police to say those words, believe those words and act according to that language.”

Many other police departments are the first to share the news when their own officers end up in handcuffs, but that’s not the case at the Honolulu Police Department. HPD never announced the arrest of Rourke, who has been on the force for seven years. It took six weeks for the department to share the police report after Civil Beat requested it. 

HPD is required to provide basic details about officer misconduct to the Legislature. Although names are not listed and the information is often vague, the reports show one domestic violence case in 2019, two in 2018, none in 2017, seven in 2016 and 10 in 2015.

State lawmakers recently passed a law that would require public disclosure of detailed police misconduct records. The bill is waiting for Gov. David Ige’s signature.  

The post Honolulu Police Officer Awaiting Trial For Domestic Abuse appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

A federal civil rights lawsuit that included claims of malicious and retaliatory prosecution by Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro and Katherine Kealoha, who was one of his top deputies, settled in federal court last week, although the terms of how much the city will pay out remain confidential.

The case stems from a series of police raids conducted in 2012 and 2013 of suspected illegal game rooms around Oahu.

Nearly 200 arcade machines believed to be gambling devices were seized, and prosecutors, led by Kealoha, secured a 414-count indictment in 2014 against several defendants, including Hawaii businessman Tracy Yoshimura, the owner of PJY Enterprises, a company that used to distribute sweepstakes machines around Oahu.

Tracy Yoshimura has taken a series of legal actions against Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro in recent years, including an attempt to remove him from office.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The case was fraught with problems, including allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, and was eventually dismissed. But in 2018 Yoshimura and several of his former co-defendants filed a civil lawsuit, saying they were the victims of overzealous prosecutors who were trying to settle a score.

Yoshimura, in particular, said he was targeted by Kaneshiro and Kealoha after he publicly criticized the prosecutor’s office and filed a lawsuit against the city and Kealoha’s husband, then Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha, to get the devices back.

Yoshimura was firm about his innocence from the beginning, declaring in a TV interview in 2013 that Kaneshiro had nothing on him and was abusing the power of his office.

“I’d like to publicly challenge Keith, to charge us or leave us alone and release the equipment he is holding,” Yoshimura told Hawaii News Now. “I compare him to John Gotti where if John didn’t like somebody he would go in and shoot up the place and destroy everything in the business and walk away hoping that’s the end of you. In this case, Keith comes in, takes our equipment and claims he’s doing it in conjunction with an ongoing investigation.”

Keith Kiuchi, an attorney representing Yoshimura and the other plaintiffs in the recently settled lawsuit, said he could not comment at all about the agreement because of a confidentiality clause.

Nicolette Winter, an attorney from the Honolulu Corporation Counsel Department, similarly said she could not comment on the details of the case or how much it would cost taxpayers to settle.

Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro is under federal criminal investigation.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The legal settlement must be approved by the Honolulu City Council before it can be finalized. Once the matter is placed on a public agenda, the amount of the settlement should become public.

The settlement comes as prosecutors with the U.S. Justice Department continue their grand jury investigation into Kaneshiro and other city officials suspected of public corruption. Kaneshiro went on paid leave in March 2019 after he was named a target of the investigation, and has been collecting his $176,688 salary since.

Both Louis and Katherine Kealoha have already been found guilty of a series of federal crimes related to their attempts to frame a family member for the theft of their mailbox. The couple has also pleaded guilty to charges related to bank fraud. They are scheduled to be sentenced in November.

Yoshimura, meanwhile, is still pursuing the impeachment of Kaneshiro. The Hawaii Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on Sept. 18. The arguments will center on whether electronic signatures collected by Yoshimura to support his impeachment petition are valid.

The post Honolulu Settles Malicious Prosecution Case Involving Kaneshiro, Kealoha appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

Honolulu police issued a record number of citations in recent weeks, straining the court system, frustrating residents and further calling into question the city’s approach to dealing with the public health crisis.

In the last month alone, the Honolulu Police Department has issued approximately 44,000 citations related to the mayor’s pandemic rules and arrested 65 people for violations.

It’s more than double the total of all criminal cases the District Court handled in 2019. 

“A lot of people think we need to do more warnings,” Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard told the Honolulu Police Commission Wednesday as she recited the numbers. “Well, we did warn from March until August, we had over 11,000 warnings. We actually had more warnings than we did citations. It did not work. The numbers kept coming up. So we switched to more enforcement.”

HPD is handing out thousands of citations for pandemic-related violations.

Claire Caulfield/Civil Beat

It’s a massive escalation. For comparison, from March through July, HPD issued only 9,465 coronavirus-related citations, according to the court’s log. The busiest month was April with 5,648 citations.

Fast forward to now: Officers handed out 5,000 citations just last weekend, Mayor Kirk Caldwell said this week. 

The mountain of citations illustrates how Caldwell has embraced the police department as a tool for addressing the pandemic. However, his strategy is causing anger and stress among residents.

“This is very abusive,” said Patrick Steinemann who was cited in Kailua last month when he was riding through a park by himself. “This is detrimental to people’s health, and it makes no sense.”

A review of court records yielded numerous citations that seem to have little to do with protecting public health. 

Officers have issued citations to individuals walking alone outside, parents at the beach with their own children and to homeless people who live outdoors. One man was pulled over for an alleged traffic violation, his citation shows. When officers asked him where he was going, he said he was just “driving around.” He was cited for engaging in nonessential activity. 

The narrative descriptions on some citations document innocuous activity.

“While on routine patrol, I observed a female exercising inside Waipio Neighborhood Park,” one officer wrote. “Female was stopped and cited for park closure.”

Everyone who receives a citation gets a court date, which can be attended via Zoom. People found in violation are guilty of a misdemeanor, which is punishable by a fine of up to $5,000, up to a year in jail or both.

The prospect of a criminal record is a scary experience for those who have been cited.

Last month, Chief Susan Ballard announced a hotline for residents to report alleged violators.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

“It’s not a fine,” Steinemann said. “You’re talking about criminal activity. That is shocking in itself.”

In July, there were only 255 citations issued, according to the court’s data. But in August, there was a major shift in strategy. 

Mayor Kirk Caldwell announced on Aug. 6 that he would shut down parks, beaches and trails for the second time. At a press conference, Ballard said officers would be taking a new tack and announced the formation of a 160-officer team that would patrol the island seven days a week for “strategic enforcements.” HPD also introduced a phone number and email address citizens can use to report scofflaws. 

“The increase in the number of citations is largely due to the creation of COVID enforcement teams,” said HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu by email. “These teams follow up on information that’s called in to the hotline and check areas, such as beaches and parks, for violations.”

The current order restricts visits to beaches and parks to solo activity, but the mayor has indicated he may allow gatherings of up to five next week.

Shortly before the beaches and parks closed last month, at least one of HPD’s eight districts implemented a citation quota. 

A July 23 memo titled “DISTRICT 7 MOVING FORWARD” said that effective immediately, the 18 officers in East Honolulu would be expected to meet a “daily performance goal” of two citations per day, according to a copy of the notice obtained by Civil Beat.  

Yu declined to be interviewed about the quota. By email, she said it applies to all violations, not just those related to the mayor’s pandemic orders.

Asked if other districts have ticket quotas, she said there are no particular goals for each district but that officers are supposed to take action when they observe violations. That could mean a warning, citation or arrest. 

“Each district commander has expectations of the officers under his or her command, and the District 7 command staff stated its expectations in several areas, including promoting public safety through proactive patrol and enforcement,” Yu wrote. 

Civil Beat requested an interview with the chief on Tuesday. Yu said on Wednesday that Ballard was unavailable.

‘The Issue Is Congregating’

The Caldwell administration has allocated over $30 million to HPD in federal CARES Act funds – more than has been budgeted for rent, utility and child care relief for residents. 

A spending breakdown shows, among other things, nearly $15 million in overtime and other differential pay, $4.6 million for police service officer contracts, $1.6 million on new trucks and over a half-million dollars on ATVs and UTVs. 

It’s all part of a strategy to heavily police the outdoors despite the fact that scientists have said for months that the virus spreads mostly indoors, either person to person or through breathing in droplets hanging in the air. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually encourages people to use outdoor spaces while following social distancing guidelines about staying at least 6 feet apart. 

People are at high risk of COVID-19 in congregate indoor environments like prison.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

“The environmental conditions of sun, breeze and dryish air mitigate against virus survival,” Keith Neal, emeritus professor of epidemiology at the University of Nottingham, England, recently told the Wall Street Journal.

Hawaii’s own data backs that up. 

As of this week, the Department of Health identified cases associated with 21 long-term care homes, including the Avalon Health Care Group in Hilo where at least 68 residents and 30 staff have been infected and over a dozen veterans have died.

There have been over 300 cases among inmates and staff at the Oahu Community Correctional Center. Cluster totals released last month showed at least 31 cases related to “health plan offices, 20 cases at a homeless shelter and 75 linked to a large funeral.”

Among the positive cases are the city’s own employees at Honolulu Hale, firefighters in at least three stations and police officers themselves. DOH said last month that nearly a dozen cases could be connected to a July potluck on city property. 

The DOH has not publicly identified a single case of COVID-19 that it believes was spread in a beach or park.

In Honolulu, Caldwell’s latest order prohibits a family from visiting the beach together but allows them to go shopping as a group at Target. This week, he acknowledged people’s frustration.  

“For the most part I’m grateful for what folks have been doing to comply with orders that sometimes don’t make sense — but it’s all about enforcement and trying to manage the spread,” Caldwell said.

Policing ‘Theater’

Stewart Taggart has been cited twice in Kailua while passing through a park to access the ocean by himself – an activity the city has explicitly said is allowed. Taggart said he understands and agrees with many of the rules about sheltering in place during the pandemic, but he feels the city has gone too far. The second time he was cited, it was by an officer on an ATV, which Taggart considers an unnecessary show of police “theater.”

“There was nobody else around in the park,” he said. “I got a ticket nonetheless.”

Other jurisdictions have come up with ways to facilitate social distancing while allowing households to enjoy the outdoors.

For instance, a town in Belgium adopted “beach bubbles” – lines in the sand showing the boundaries of 32-square-foot boxes, Reuters reported. The country also implemented a system to use mobile data to provide live information to the public about beach crowds so they can reroute to less busy areas.

In Thailand, workers count people as they enter beaches to ensure the area doesn’t become overcrowded, the Washington Post reported.

HPD’s approach is not in line with best practices outlined in “Policing in a Time of Pandemic: Recommendations for Law Enforcement,” a white paper written by Rosa Brooks and Christy Lopez, co-directors of the Georgetown Law School’s Innovative Policing Program.

“To maximize the public safety impact of stay-at-home orders, enforcement should focus on education and assistance, fueled by heavy doses of compassion and courage,” they wrote. “These efforts should include plans for seeking out vulnerable people, assessing their needs, and connecting them with the services and resources they need.”

‘We Are Not Going To Stop’

The flurry of new cases is overwhelming the Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney’s office, according to spokesman Brooks Baehr, who put the blame on rule-breakers, not HPD.

“Those who disregard emergency orders are placing a tremendous strain on the prosecutor’s office, the broader law enforcement community and the judicial system,” he said in an emailed statement.

In the week of Aug. 24 alone, deputy prosecutors assigned to the District Court handled approximately 5,250 new and previously continued cases, most through virtual hearings, he said.

There are so many citations that court’s staff is struggling to input them fast enough into the court’s database – a process that is done manually.

“At the Honolulu District Court, we normally have three employees doing this work full time,” Kagehiro said. “Because of the recent influx in citations, another seven employees are temporarily assigned to create criminal citation cases on a full-time basis. In addition, thanks to the teamwork in the Legal Documents Branch, other employees are pitching in when their regular, essential work is completed.”

The increased workload is happening at a time when court resources have been reduced due to budget constraints, Kagehiro said.

Hundreds of cases have been dismissed so far, according to the court’s data. In some cases, prosecutors are filing motions to the court stating they don’t wish to press charges against those cited.

Honolulu police have been using these four-wheelers as they issue citations for violating the mayor’s emergency orders.

“We are handling the unprecedented number of criminal citations the way we have always handled them,” Baehr said. “If there is sufficient evidence to prove the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, we charge. If not, we must decline to charge.”

Some people are pleading guilty in exchange for a lesser punishment of a $100 fine. That money goes to the state’s general fund, Kagehiro said, not city coffers.

The large volume of cases is a challenge for everyone, Baehr said.

“We are taking an ‘all hands on deck’ approach to ease the burden faced by our Misdemeanor Division,” he said. “We remain prepared to handle these cases as timely and efficiently as the system allows. We are in meetings with stakeholders to discuss the challenges posed by the extraordinary number of emergency order citations and to find a fair and workable solution for all involved in the handling of these cases.”

Despite these difficulties, Ballard said at Wednesday’s police commission meeting that HPD has no intention of slowing down. She said representatives of the police department, prosecutor’s office and judicial system will be meeting on Friday to see “if something can be done” to move cases along.

“Obviously, we are not going to stop issuing citations, warnings or arrests if necessary,” she said.

The post Honolulu Police Are Issuing An ‘Unprecedented’ Number Of Pandemic Tickets appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

If you are the victim of a crime in Honolulu, odds are that charges will never be filed in the case.

FBI data released Monday shows that the Honolulu Police Department is far below the national average when it comes to “clearing” cases –  when officers make an arrest or otherwise close a case. 

In fact, data kept by the FBI and Attorney General’s office going back nearly 40 years shows the overall clearance rate was the lowest it had ever been in 2018. And 2019 was only slightly better.

HPD made an arrest or otherwise solved only one violent crime for every four that occurred in 2019, according to the FBI data.

Of the 2,866 cases of homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault reported last year, HPD cleared only 735 cases – a rate of 25.7%. The average percentage for a similarly sized city is 35.6% and is 45.5% across all police departments, according to FBI data. 

“More than one third of the time in Honolulu, you’re not solving a homicide,” said David Johnson, a criminologist and professor at the University of Hawaii. “A low clearance rate is not a good thing. It’s a badge of shame.” 

Honolulu Police Department Chief Susan Ballard wouldn’t discuss her agency’s low clearance rate with Civil Beat.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The statistics are even worse when it comes to property crime. 

There were 29,263 cases of arson, burglary, larceny theft and motor vehicle theft in Honolulu in 2019. HPD closed only 1,582 cases. That’s 5.4%. 

The national average for cities with similar populations is double that. The national average for all departments is more than triple Honolulu’s rate. 

Meda Chesney-Lind, a criminologist at UH, said the property crime clearance rate is “unbelievably low.”

“This doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been burglarized,” she said. “They come out, write a report and say, ‘Get a dog.’ That is really disheartening.” 

The value of stolen property in 2017 alone totaled over $33 million, according to the Attorney General’s most recent Crime in Hawaii report.

Overall, approximately 32,000 serious crimes were reported to the Honolulu Police Department last year, and only 2,317 were cleared, the FBI data shows.

That’s a clearance rate of 7%. 

Civil Beat made repeated requests to HPD on Monday and Tuesday to interview Chief Susan Ballard or another HPD official about the department’s clearance rates. An email sent directly to Ballard went unanswered.

Department spokeswoman Michelle Yu said HPD wouldn’t comment until the Attorney General publishes its Crime in Hawaii report. It is unclear when that will be.

Clearances On The Decline Under Caldwell

Clearance rates are widely regarded by police departments across the country and the world as a key measure of the effectiveness of an agency, Johnson said. 

“And it looks like Honolulu is not doing very well,” he said. 

A Civil Beat review of HPD’s clearance data shows the rate has been trending downward for several years, most recently around the time Mayor Kirk Caldwell took office. 

The Honolulu Police Department’s clearance rates have fallen during Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration.

Since January 2013 when he was sworn in, the violent crime clearance rate has fallen almost 20 percentage points. In that time, the property crime clearance rate has more than halved. 

Meanwhile, the number of violent crimes reported has shot up over 17% in the last five years, the FBI data shows. 

“It’s unbelievable, unacceptable, and frankly I’m speechless,” City Councilman Tommy Waters, who chairs the public safety committee, said in a statement. 

“In the past few months, I’ve conducted three town hall meetings on crime — Hawaii Kai, Waikiki, and Diamond Head – and these numbers reflect what my community is feeling. People are upset, and they don’t feel safe.”

In 2019 alone, there were over 2,000 victims of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, who “will never see justice,” Waters said. 

“Those numbers must improve,” he said. “We keep giving HPD more and more money, and we’re seeing less and less results.”

Waters pointed to HPD’s recent pandemic ticketing spree as evidence that the department’s priorities are mixed up. 

“If HPD put as much effort into solving violent crimes as they did into issuing the 58,000 citations to otherwise law-abiding citizens, the city would be much safer,” he said. 

“A low clearance rate is not a good thing. It’s a badge of shame.” — UH criminologist David Johnson

HPD has struggled with its clearance rate before. 

In 2003, the Honolulu Advertiser reported that Honolulu solved violent and property crimes at a rate of less than 9% in the previous year, which was the lowest rate in nearly three decades and lower than the average of comparably sized cities. At that time, the clearance rate had been dropping since 1998, the paper reported. After that, it increased most years until the downturn around 2013. 

The current clearance rates are low by Honolulu’s own historical standards. It’s a rare event for the violent crime clearance rate to fall as low as 25% or below. Other than in 2018 and 2019, that has only happened in two other years since 1982, according to data in Crime in Hawaii reports. 

Honolulu averaged around 36% in that time period. 

Over that nearly 40-year span, HPD’s property crime clearance rate has never been as low as it was in 2018: 4.98%. 

Problem Can’t Be Blamed Entirely On Staffing

Several factors can impact a police department’s clearance rate, said Johnson, the UH criminologist. 

In general, Honolulu has a lot of property crime that can be hard to solve. Other cities with a different mix of crime could have an easier time, he said. 

HPD has 279 vacant positions but has solved crimes at a higher rate with less manpower.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Tourism is likely a factor as well, Chesney-Lind said. If tourists are victimized, they may just want to go home instead of cooperating with police. 

“Without a victim, it’s harder,” she said. 

But Honolulu’s numbers also raise questions about how the department is allocating its personnel.

“How many police resources are devoted to clearing cases?” Johnson said. “That is a function of how many police you have and what sort of managerial decisions are made to focus on this area instead of this area, or to focus on clearing crimes instead of other police activity. That matters.”

HPD has lamented its staffing problem. In 2019, the department had 1,864 officers. It’s authorized to have 2,143. 

Ballard has said that the officer shortage has forced her to make tough calls. She told the Honolulu City Council in 2018 that “we’re using our staffing on the more high-profile type of cases, and the other ones are not being investigated,” the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported. 

Those “other ones” include vehicle thefts, burglaries and other property crimes, the paper reported.

However, more officers doesn’t guarantee a higher clearance rate. 

The last time HPD had such low staffing was in 1998 when HPD had 1,779 officers, but the clearance rates at the time were higher. 

Despite higher crime rates on Oahu and nationwide during the 1990s, HPD’s violent crime clearance rate didn’t dip below 30% and the property crime clearance rate stayed above 10%. 

As for how existing resources are allocated, the Caldwell administration has made a point of addressing social service problems, including homelessness, with law enforcement. HPD even runs a tent city to provide homeless individuals and families with shelter during the pandemic. 

While that program, POST, is a point of pride for the city, Ballard has also publicly complained about how police officers get saddled with too many responsibilities that would be better addressed by social service agencies. 

Loretta Sheehan, an attorney and former member of the Honolulu Police Commission, wonders if that approach is coming at the expense of solving crimes. 

“If that’s true, the core mission of HPD is being neglected,” she said. “I can’t criticize HPD or Chief Ballard for doing what the mayor wants. But I do think that as chief, Ballard has to pay close attention to the core mission.”

‘What Isn’t Counted Doesn’t Really Count’ 

One major problem with Honolulu’s clearance rate is that no one talks about it, Johnson said. 

Sheehan, who previously chaired the Police Commission, and her successor, Chair Shannon Alivado, both said they couldn’t remember HPD ever briefing the oversight body on the department’s crime-solving success rate.  

Honolulu Police Commission Chair Shannon Alivado said the body may discuss the clearance rates at an upcoming meeting.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Sheehan acknowledged she never asked. 

“I put that blame on us,” she said. “That’s on me. If that wasn’t discussed, it’s on me.” 

Alivado, director of the Waimanalo Health Center, said the numbers show “room for improvement” and she may add a discussion about clearance rates to the commission agenda. 

HPD doesn’t make its stats easy to find. 

The clearance rate is not mentioned in its most recent annual report published on its website. It includes basic information about reported crimes and arrests but doesn’t include the data point that illustrates the department’s ability to solve cases. As recently as 2016, HPD annual reports did list clearance percentages.  

“That’s like a baseball player not posting their batting average,” Johnson said. “That, in my view, is a major problem. It indicates that either the leaders at HPD don’t care about clearance rates or they don’t want people to know. Either way, it’s troubling.”

For over 20 years, the Attorney General’s office published an annual Crime in Hawaii report with criminal justice statistics, including clearance data for each county. However, it hasn’t published the Crime in Hawaii report since January 2019, and that was for 2017 data. 

So the latest information on Honolulu is three years old, despite the fact that the office has continued to post stats on other islands. 

AG spokesman Krishna Jayaram said last month that the office is still preparing a report on Honolulu’s 2018 data.

Even the FBI’s website doesn’t explicitly list clearance rates. The federal agency provides the crime and clearance totals, and one has to do math to figure out the rate. 

HPD should be sharing this information with its officers and the public, Johnson said. 

“The numbers are a way of keeping people accountable,” he said. “What isn’t counted doesn’t really count. Not to count something is to say, implicitly, it doesn’t matter very much.” 

“It’s unbelievable, unacceptable, and frankly I’m speechless.”  — City Councilman Tommy Waters

To boost its clearance numbers, Chesney-Lind said HPD could form a task force to identify problems and make recommendations. During the pandemic is an especially good time to get a handle on this, she said. 

“We have the luxury now of not having a vast number of tourists, so this is the time to build capacity and figure out what to do differently,” she said. 

The Police Commission also needs to step up, Chesney-Lind said. Honolulu’s commission looks weak compared to other cities like New York, whose police oversight boards have real teeth, she said. 

“Other police commissions have representatives of marginalized communities, they have advocates of various types, prosecutors, former prosecutors. That’s what you want to see on a police commission,” she said, adding that recent additions Michael Broderick and Doug Chin help to make the Honolulu commission more credible than it has been before. 

The clearance rate is important because it’s not just a measure of HPD’s efficacy, Johnson said. It also sends a message to the public.

“If the public perceives the police to be lousy at solving crime, the incentive to report crime goes down,” he said.  

The post HPD Crime-Solving Record Is The Worst Its Been In At Least 40 Years appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

The Honolulu City Council is poised to pay $1.4 million to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit involving a botched gambling case charged by Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro and one of his top former deputies, Katherine Kealoha.

A council committee approved the settlement last month after a closed door meeting with city attorneys.

Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro has stepped away from his office while he is under federal criminal investigation.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The case involves a series of raids conducted by the Honolulu Police Department in 2012 and 2013 to seize hundreds of arcade machines from suspected illegal game rooms around Oahu.

The lead plaintiff in the case is Hawaii businessman Tracy Yoshimura, owner of PJY Enterprises, who had argued that the devices were not being used as illegal gambling devices.

When he publicly challenged Kaneshiro to release the machines or charge him with a crime, he was indicted along with several others with 414 counts related to gambling.

Yoshimura argued that the indictment was malicious prosecution for his public criticism of Kaneshiro and his office, which had included likening the elected prosecutor to a famous mobster.

“I compare him to John Gotti wherein John didn’t like somebody he would go in and shoot up the place and destroy everything in the business and walk away hoping that’s the end of you,” Yoshimura told Hawaii News Now at the time. “In this case, Keith comes in, takes our equipment and claims he’s doing it in conjunction with an ongoing investigation.”

The lawsuit argued, among other things, that deputies and investigators in Kaneshiro’s office, including Kealoha, had repeatedly presented false information to a state grand jury to secure the indictment.

Kaneshiro and Kealoha have since become the targets of a U.S. Justice Department investigation into public corruption.

Kealoha and her husband, former Honolulu Police Chief, have already been convicted of a series of crimes stemming from their attempt to frame a family member of the theft of their mailbox. Kaneshiro took a leave of absence after he was named a suspect in the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation.

The post Malicious Prosecution Lawsuit Will Cost Taxpayers $1.4 Million In Settlement appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

About a year ago, I was sitting in a meeting in downtown Honolulu when, all of a sudden, there were strange sounds coming from the ceiling. Something had gotten in through the roof and was crawling around the duct system.

A colleague looked up and saw a face peering down from an air vent. Someone had climbed up a fire ladder outside the building, had found a way inside the narrow ventilation system, and was crawling around inside the building. Eventually, the climber made it out to the steep-pitched roof, wedged herself precariously in a corner, and proceeded to break off roof tiles and throw the pieces to the ground.

Police were called. The fire department showed up with a truck and lift to get the person off the roof. Maybe a dozen or more first responders spent two hours trying to safely get her down.

The saddest part of the story was this: The cops knew this person by name and had pulled her off high places before. She was homeless. She was a climber. She was often in dangerous situations that required the assistance of so many first responders.

Honolulu police have a dismal record when it comes to closing cases, especially property crimes.

Anthony Quintano/Civil Beat

Just about everybody on Oahu has a story like this, about seeing teams of police officers, as well as fire fighters and ambulance crews, responding to a single homeless person who is gravely disabled, dangerous or in danger, acting out and refusing help. HPD is very visible in the community. We know they’re busy doing stuff that nobody else wants to do and stuff that is, frankly, a stretch as far as their job description.

Likewise, many Oahu residents have first-person accounts of home break-ins or car break-ins and how they knew, even as they picked up the phone to report the crime, that it was a fruitless endeavor, a formality simply to document the loss for insurance purposes or to add to the neighborhood statistics.

HPD may be very visible in the community, but they are mostly reactive, clearing up whatever mess there is in the moment and then moving on to the next. Oahu residents have tacitly given up on crime-solving, case-breaking, or even investigatory follow-up.

It may not be surprising to those who live here that the Honolulu Police Department has one of the worst crime-clearing rates in the country, but it should be infuriating. It should be untenable. Christina Jedra’s analysis of FBI data describing what we have understood anecdotally for too long should ignite a call for action and a commitment to change.

Don’t Take It Anymore

In 2018, Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard warned the Honolulu City Council that with nearly 250 unfilled positions in the department, victims of non-violent crimes would get a letter telling them that their report was noted but no action would be taken.

“The property crimes, you know, we’re still going to do some of the investigations if we have the leads,” Ballard said at the time. “But if we don’t have the leads, and we don’t have the staffing to chase after the leads, then we just don’t have the personnel.”

However, these numbers from the FBI show the magnitude of the problem. Even violent crimes aren’t being cleared at a rate comparable to other police departments or even to HPD in years past.

No wonder so many crime victims take to social media and the Stolen Stuff Hawaii Facebook group, become their own investigators and crowd-source enforcement of laws.

The thing is, though, even in the de facto role of social service front-line workers, the efforts of the Honolulu Police Department haven’t yielded much positive change. They’re rescuing the same folks over and over, telling the same people to move along, routinely clearing the same homeless encampments.

No wonder so many crime victims take to social media and the Stolen Stuff Hawaii Facebook group, become their own investigators and crowd-source enforcement of laws.

In the last six months, police were assigned yet another new duty: to enforce quarantine and Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s various public health fiats, issuing mountains of citations to people sitting on the beach or walking in a park when Caldwell decided that, somehow, this was the key to combating COVID-19.

(Actually, the solo-only beach-and-trail user rule was supposed to make for easier enforcement, so even COVID rules require special accommodations for Honolulu’s underperforming police force.)

For all its big city problems, Honolulu retains many of its small-town sensibilities. As most people can tell a story of a crime that happened to them or someone they know that received no follow-up from police, most can also tell a story about a cop who is awesome or describe a time a police officer truly helped.

I bring this up to make the point that the potential for efficacy is there. So much of it comes down to management of resources and political will.

There is a mayor’s race happening. Don’t buy into the dodge by Caldwell and his predecessors who shrug and say if you have complaints about HPD take them up with the police commission.

There should be a collective declaration that we’re just not going to live like this anymore, not in Hawaii, not in a place where we talk about a laid-back lifestyle but lock doors and windows and set the alarm even if we’re just doing errands that will take us away from home for 45 minutes on a Saturday morning.

The post Lee Cataluna: HPD’s Shameful Crime-Solving Record Shouldn’t Be Tolerated appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

This year, protesters across the country and the world have called for a stop to police brutality and racism in policing and demanded more transparency and accountability from police officers. 

The movement hit Hawaii too, with demonstrations at the State Capitol and on city streets. 

As Honolulu prepares for the November general election, the city’s mayoral candidates have different views on the role of the 1,800-officer police department and the Honolulu Police Commission, the volunteer-run oversight body that hires and fires the chief and investigates some citizen complaints. 

Activists have demanded major changes from police departments nationwide.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Rick Blangiardi, Hawaii News Now’s former boss, doesn’t want to make waves when it comes to HPD. 

The frontrunner in the August primary has the endorsement of the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers and speaks about police with deference. 

Chief Susan Ballard, who has denied that Hawaii’s criminal justice system suffers from the same racial inequities that plague other jurisdictions, is doing a great job in Blangiardi’s opinion. He hopes she continues to lead the department “for a long time.” 

“Everything I see has been good in their efforts to help us,” said Blangiardi. “I’m very supportive of our police department.” 

Keith Amemiya, a former insurance executive and nonprofit director, is more receptive to the calls from activists for police reform, although the policies he is advocating for are already in place at HPD. 

He acknowledges there is systemic racism in Hawaii’s criminal justice system. On his website, he states that, contrary to the idea that racism exists only on the mainland, there are “layers upon layers of structural inequality, injustice, and systemic racism right here.”

“In Hawaii, this bigotry is often aimed at Pacific Islanders, Hawaiians, Filipinos, and others who face bigotry and who are overrepresented in our prison population and homeless shelters,” the website says.

Asked about Ballard’s performance since she became chief in 2017, he said “it’s still early in her tenure, so it’s hard to say.” 

“But so far, she has provided the stability that the department needs coming on the heels of her predecessor, and his and his wife’s many problems,” he said. Amemiya was, of course, referring to former Chief Louis Kealoha and his former prosecutor wife Katherine Kealoha, both of whom are awaiting sentencing on felony convictions. 

In response to a Civil Beat review that found HPD’s rate of solving crimes is at a historic low, Blangiardi said that as mayor, he would meet with law enforcement to better understand the challenges and identify solutions. 

“Understandably, the news about HPD’s low crime clearing rates is alarming,” he said in a post-interview statement. “I can assure the public that the men and women of our law enforcement are hard-working, dedicated professionals but clearly there are administrative issues that need to be addressed.”

Amemiya said the same, and that he would like the chief to provide a detailed briefing to the Honolulu Police Commission.

“I would be interested to know how police resources are being allocated and perhaps more should be allocated toward solving crimes,” he said. 

The Power Of The Police Commission

Both Blangiardi and Amemiya said they don’t believe the Kealoha scandal was indicative of a systemic problem in HPD.

Asked how he would prevent a similar situation from unfolding on his watch, Blangiardi said he would lead the city with transparency, accountability and trustworthiness. 

Mayoral candidate Rick Blangiardi believes in the Honolulu Police Commission as it is.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

“It comes down to making sure we’re doing the right things,” he said. 

He also said holding police accountable is the job of the Honolulu Police Commission.

“There’s a separation of powers there, so to speak, and they’re responsible for what we’re talking about,” he said. “Unless something happens and I feel otherwise, I’m going to rely on that. And in the areas that the mayor needs to be involved with, I’ll be involved with that.” 

Notably, the Honolulu Police Commission is not the entity that rooted out the Kealohas’ corruption. It was federal investigators.

The Police Commission let Louis Kealoha walk out the door with a $250,000 severance, and two commissioners have quit citing a lack of power to affect change. Blangiardi’s wife Karen Chang is a former member of the Police Commission but was appointed after that payout. 

Representatives of HPD and the commission have been interviewed about the Kealoha debacle in recent weeks by the city auditor, whose office is conducting a review requested by the Honolulu City Council. 

Nevertheless, Blangiardi said he has “a lot of confidence in that kind of a model.”

“The commission has a responsibility in making sure our chief of police is doing the best job possible and to be that level of support, if you will, as the board of advisers in dealing with issues,” he said. 

“I do believe the chief needs autonomy to operate effectively in their jobs, to be trusted … If we have the right police chief, then everything is going to work right.” 

Asked whether Chief Kealoha had too much autonomy, Blangiardi said: “It’s easy to say that in retrospect, isn’t it?”

The scandal permeated the Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney’s Office too, Blangiardi noted. That office will be led by either Steve Alm or Megan Kau come January.

“I think we’re in a new day here, a good day, with respect to the quality of the leadership we’re getting from our police department and what that means for the people who live here,” he said.

Keith Amemiya wants the Honolulu Police Commission to have more power.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Amemiya said he would like to boost the authority of the Honolulu Police Commission. As a former member of the commission appointed by then-Mayor Mufi Hannemann, Amemiya said it needs more oversight power.

“Currently, their duties are more or less confined to hiring and firing the police chief and handling citizen complaints against officers,” he said. “It’s important that a police department have proper civilian oversight. I would broaden the powers of the commission to also be able to look at the various procedures in place and their operations.” 

Amemiya wouldn’t want the commission to micromanage HPD’s day to day work, but he said the Kealoha ordeal proves there is a problem. 

“Clearly there is not enough oversight power in the current structure of the Police Commission,” he said. 

No One Is Defunding The Police

Blangiardi said there aren’t any particular policing policies or procedures he would change. However, he said the department could be improved by filling vacant positions and increasing training.

“Everyone needs to learn and grow in their jobs,” he said. 

Amemiya supports several measures demanded by activists including a ban on chokeholds, a requirement for officers to intervene when their peers are misbehaving, and implicit bias training not only for police but all city employees. Chief Susan Ballard has said these measures are already in place at HPD.

A committee, including one Police Commission member, has been reviewing HPD’s use of force policy. HPD has not yet issued a report on that effort.

HPD’s budget is more than $300 million a year. Despite calls from protesters, there are no plans to reduce funding for the police.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Amemiya also supports the use of body cameras, for which a program is already being implemented. 

The majority of HPD officers are “outstanding officers and people” with an increasingly difficult job, Amemiya said. 

“They have to handle homelessness and pandemic-related issues,” he said. 

Within the social movement that is demanding police accountability this year, some people believe that police shouldn’t be responding to social service issues at all and want to “defund the police.” 

Some activists who use his rallying cry want to abolish police departments entirely. Others believe governments should reduce police budgets and allocate money to social services. The idea is that people in crisis are met with a social service provider who specializes in their issue instead of being put into the criminal justice system. 

Amemiya and Blangiardi are not in favor of either option. 

“I wouldn’t reduce the funds because there is currently a huge vacancy in the number of patrol officers,” Amemiya said. “So I hesitate to take away funds if they’re needed to fill the vacancies.” 

Instead, HPD should partner with the Honolulu Department of Community Services and nonprofit social service agencies when responding to calls involving mental health crises, homelessness and domestic violence, Amemiya said. 

“It would be a much more effective way to deal with the homeless to have experts assisting the officers,” Amemiya said. 

While Amemiya does not support cutting HPD’s city budget, he has criticized Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration for allocating nearly $15 million in CARES funds to police overtime during the pandemic, plus another half million dollars for ATVs and UTVs. In Amemiya’s view, that money would’ve been better spent bailing out families and small businesses. 

Blangiardi is against reducing police funding and didn’t take issue with HPD’s influx of CARES cash. He said he’s open to working more with social service agencies to address issues like homelessness, but he doesn’t have a specific plan for that. 

“We need to get elected first here, but I do think we’re going to have some modifications in how we do all this,” he said. 

“I’m not interested in taking money away from the police department. We may reallocate specific duties if we can figure that out, but not necessarily right now taking away monies.” 

The post Here’s How Honolulu’s Mayoral Candidates Differ — Or Not — On Police Reform appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard said on Wednesday that FBI data showing HPD is doing a poor job of solving crimes is “incorrect” – even though the numbers come directly from HPD.

The chief, speaking at the Honolulu Police Commission meeting, took issue with statistics published by Civil Beat last week that show HPD’s clearance rate in 2018 was the lowest it had ever been, according to state and federal data that goes back nearly 40 years. The clearance rate reflects the cases that result in arrest or closure as a percentage of total reported cases.

The FBI data showed that in 2019, HPD solved only 25.7% of violent crimes reported and 5.4% of property crimes reported.

Ballard declined to be interviewed for the Civil Beat story, saying that HPD would only discuss clearance rates once the Attorney General’s Office releases its annual Crime in Hawaii report. But both the FBI and the AG get their data from the same place: HPD. That report had not been issued Wednesday when she discussed the statistics with the police commission.

Civil Beat used data directly from the AG’s Crime in Hawaii reports for its 40-year analysis. The AG hasn’t published Honolulu’s numbers since its 2017 report, so Civil Beat used FBI numbers to calculate HPD’s 2018 and 2019 clearance rates. On Wednesday, Ballard said the latest FBI numbers are wrong.

“These stats are not as simple as taking one number and dividing it into another,” she said. 

HPD Chief Susan Ballard said she will do more to hold her lieutenants accountable for clearance rates.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

But that’s precisely what the AG has done in every Crime in Hawaii report going back over 20 years. And that’s done with the agreement of HPD, according to AG spokesman Krishna Jayaram. HPD gives the data to the AG’s office, a statistician analyzes it, and it’s then sent back to HPD to make sure the agency is comfortable with the findings, Jayaram said.

The data in the Crime in Hawaii reports covering the early 1980s through 2017 show declining clearance rates for both violent and property crimes. The AG’s office trusts the results, Jayaram said.

“We have a high degree of confidence in the report itself with the understanding that the original raw data comes from the department,” Jayaram said.

But Ballard says her department is doing better than the numbers would lead you to believe. According to the FBI’s numbers, HPD solved 80% of homicides that occurred in 2018 and 63% in 2019.

“In actuality, it was a 94.1% clearance rate,” she said, seeming to refer to 2018. “We pulled every single report and went through every single report. So we know that those statistics are correct, those particular ones.”

Ballard said the clearance rate for rape is also higher than FBI numbers show. For 2018 and 2019, the FBI’s data shows clearance rates of 14.81% and 22.35%. According to Ballard, it’s 40% “right now” although she didn’t specify what year she was referring to.

The chief said she was sharing supposedly corrected clearance rates on “just the ones that we’ve taken a look at.”

Throughout Ballard’s talk about how the FBI numbers are wrong, none of the commissioners asked Ballard what she believes her department’s overall clearance rate is, and she did not volunteer that information.

In general, Ballard said the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting system is “not uniform.” The FBI has strict definitions for crimes that force HPD to “put a square peg in a round hole,” Ballard said. For example, when the FBI asks about auto theft, jurisdictions in Hawaii have to report the next closest thing in the law: unauthorized control of a propelled vehicle, or UCPV. Ballard said an officer can make an arrest for UCPV that would not count as an auto theft clearance.

“It’s always going to be extremely low because the square peg in the round hole again,” she said.

Doug Chin, who recently joined the commission, said he could understand some of the data challenges Ballard outlined.

However, her reasoning doesn’t explain why HPD’s clearance rates have decreased over time when the same FBI definitions have been in place for years, he told Civil Beat.

Former Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin said part of Ballard’s explanation didn’t make sense.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

“The HPD of 2018 had the same bureaucracy and inconsistencies with the state’s statutes and federal guidelines as they did back in 2003,” said Chin, who was the Hawaii Attorney General for three years and published the Crime in Hawaii reports showing HPD’s declining clearance rates.

At the commission meeting, Ballard also called the quality of her own department’s record-keeping into question.

“Garbage in, garbage out, when it comes to computers,” she said. “We have hundreds, if not thousands, of officers inputting into the system on a regular basis. If the information is not inputted correctly, then it’s not going to be reported out correctly. And of course, that’s a user error on our side or a training issue.”

The chief said there is also the potential for “computer errors.”

“We give a disk to the FBI and to the Attorney General, and they pull … we don’t know what’s on it,” she said. “It’s all just written computer code. And so when they get it, we don’t know what they’re pulling off of it, or how they’re pulling off of it. Even if you ask the FBI, they don’t know. And just to give you another idea, if there is data missing that the FBI needs to do this report, they just estimate or they extrapolate based on whatever numbers that they use.” 

On the FBI’s charts on Honolulu, there are some years where the numbers differ from the AG’s reports and cases where data is missing.

Civil Beat requested an interview with the chief after the meeting and emailed questions about the numbers Ballard shared with the commission. Ballard did not respond.

Despite her rejection of the reported clearance numbers, Ballard said the department has instituted changes that could improve the department’s stats.

In 2018, soon after she became chief, she said the department used millions of dollars in civil asset forfeiture money to implement a new CAD RMS system – computer-aided dispatch and records management system. It’s “the backbone for everything HPD does,” Ballard said.

HPD plans to implement improved training for detectives and officers, she said. The department struggles with intra-departmental turnover, with officers moving between job responsibilities every three months, Ballard said. That means constant training is needed, she said.

The chief said she wants to hold HPD lieutenants more accountable for their clearance rates.

“Our lieutenants are going to have to start stepping up and have to do more auditing for detectives and also for the officers,” she said. “They’re going to have to be held responsible for all that.”

Property crime cases have also been consolidated under a single assistant chief who will be tasked with reviewing all the clearance rates and making changes. Previously, these crimes were addressed across eight separate policing districts.

“There was no consistency or accountability,” Ballard said.

Michael Broderick, another new commissioner, asked if the department would report its clearance numbers to the commission on a quarterly basis “so we are not left in the dark.” Ballard said that might be too frequent considering cases often take time to resolve.

“I can’t give you an affirmative answer right now,” Ballard said. 

The Crime in Hawaii reports would usually serve the function of clearance rate transparency, but information on Honolulu’s 2018 and 2019 numbers have been held up. Jayaram said the AG’s office sent HPD its findings on 2018 data in July, but the report isn’t yet ready. That’s despite data for neighbor islands being released for 2018 and 2019.

While Honolulu’s data issues could make it tough to make an apples-to-apples comparisons between Honolulu’s clearance rates and other similarly sized cities, Chin said it’s necessary for HPD to “compare itself to itself.” And on that measure, HPD is doing worse over time.

“It’s a concern,” he said. “For me personally, I’d like to see more of a spotlight put on what these trends are because I do think it’s fair to ask: How is Honolulu doing in 2021, in comparison to how it was in 2018?”

The post Honolulu Police Chief: Case Closure Stats Are Not As Bad As They Look appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

For the third time, the board overseeing police in Hawaii plans to ask state lawmakers for more money and more time to develop basic certification standards.

The Law Enforcement Standards Board already blew off a 2019 deadline to have those standards ready because members say they lack the necessary staff and resources to accomplish what the board is mandated to do. The Legislature, which created the 15-member board in 2018, has also twice refused to take up the board’s funding requests.

Hawaii is the last state in the U.S. to create a board that would set minimum standards for law enforcement officers and have the authority to revoke their certification.

The Law Enforcement Standards Board plans to ask lawmakers again for more time and money to come up with basic certification standards for police.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

But in the two years of its existence and after only a handful of meetings, the police standards board has only managed to advance proposals to the Legislature asking for money and deadline extensions. It has not set any standards or put in place a certification process.

The board has previously asked for $483,000 to hire an executive director and additional staff and take until 2023 to come up with standards.

The board voted to forward a similar request to the coming Legislature during a meeting Thursday where board members also discussed administrative procedures and took a small step toward getting the ball rolling on completing its task.

“Hopefully we will be successful in obtaining the resources we need to move forward with this program,” Kauai Police Chief and Board Chair Todd Raybuck said.

The new request comes just months after lawmakers gave the board until Dec. 31, 2021 to finish the standards.

It also comes at a time police are facing a national reckoning over use of force, which has also led to citizens calling for police funds to be used for other purposes. Along with those social factors, lawmakers will also need to contend with a budget hole currently estimated at $2 billion, which will make any funding requests from agencies difficult to push through the Legislature.

In addition to asking for an extension until 2023 and $483,000, the board’s proposal also would increase the number of rank-and-file police on the board from two to five, one for each county as well as an officer from the state.

That would mean law enforcement representation would outnumber the four seats currently set aside for citizens. The remaining nine seats on the board are state department heads and police chiefs, who all ask in the proposed measure that they be allowed to send proxies to board meetings.

The measure would also add a clause that grandfathers in current police officers, effectively allowing them to sidestep any new standards and decertification requirements.

Hawaii County Police Chief Paul Ferreira said that without that line, the police departments would have to fire and then rehire all of their officers.

But the language of the clause also means officers already employed as of 2023 would not have to go through a certification process set by the board.

Gary Yamashiroya, a new board member and former Chicago police officer, said that although current officers would be exempt, they should still have to get additional training that complies with the board standards as part of the officer’s annual recall training.

Kauai Police Chief Todd Raybuck, who also chairs the board, will lead efforts to start researching standards.

Allan Parachini/Civil Beat

Tivoli Faaumu, chief of the Maui Police Department, worried about how decertification would mesh with officers’ union contracts. Thats an issue Raybuck said could be addressed as the members try to develop their training and certification standards.

State lawmakers gave the board the explicit power to decertify officers in a law passed this year, now called Act 47. The measure also removed a 25-year-old exemption from the law that hid police misconduct records from the public.

Act 47 also gave the board until Dec. 31, 2021 to finalize its training and certification standards. The law that created the board had set a deadline of July 1, 2019. At the time, the board had met only once.

Raybuck reiterated that the board needs more resources to do its job, and that dedicated staff and an executive director would be able to handle daily tasks and devote more time to developing the standards required by law.

As it is now, the board, Raybuck said, is “comprised of people that have full time jobs, with many, many responsibilities.”

Other state boards in the West, like those in California, Nevada and Arizona, also employ staff separate from the law enforcement officials who sit on the state boards and commissions.

Board members also voted on Thursday to allow Raybuck to send letters to other state standards boards to gather information on policing standards that can be applied to Hawaii.

And while meetings have been sporadic in the last two years, the board decided that, going forward, it should meet every other month. Its next meeting is expected in early December.

The post Police Standards Board Asking For More Time, Money — Again appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

The way things are going, Hawaii’s newish Law Enforcement Standards Board may well have to resort to crowdfunding to do its important work.

We say this half in jest, as a state agency should not have to ask strangers for money.

But the Law Enforcement Standards Board really does need the kala. It was created by the Legislature in 2018 to establish basic training, curriculum and certification standards for law enforcement personnel in all four counties. Hawaii is the last state to have such a standards board.

The board was appropriated a little seed money ($100,000) in fiscal year 2019. But that’s not much for such an important panel tasked with elevating the level of conduct for police and other enforcers. If you need a refresher in why that’s important, read our investigative special report on the legal and public policy debates over police misconduct, “In The Name Of The Law.”

The 15-member Law Enforcement Standards Board has asked lawmakers several times now for more support, and just last week approved proposed legislation for the upcoming session that would also give it the cash it desperately needs to get going on doing what lawmakers told it to do.

The board wants $483,000 to hire an executive director, a clerical position and a contract researcher; to cover administration, travel and operating costs of the board; and to provide office space for the new positions.

If it doesn’t get the money, the Law Enforcement Standards Board — whose members serve voluntarily — will likely not be able to finalize its standards by December 2021. That goal was originally supposed to be met by July 2019 but has been getting pushed back because there is no one to do the work.

Contact Key Lawmakers

President Ron Kouchi
senkouchi@capitol.hawaii.gov
808-586-6030

Speaker Scott Saiki
repsaiki@capitol.hawaii.gov
808-586-6100

The state budget has been severely crimped by the health and economic crises stemming from the pandemic. And it’s also true that the legislation calling for the establishment of the standards board faced notable opposition, including a veto threat from Gov. David Ige.

But the bill passed unanimously, and language in the legislation — “that the consequences of a lack of statewide oversight of police are a matter of serious public concern” — rings all too true.

The bill, now Act 220, outlined recent incidents that highlighted the need for greater oversight. The bill states:

Besides crafting uniform standards for all county and state police agencies — including the state sheriffs and Department of Land and Natural Resources officers — the board is required to put in place a process that would allow decertification of police officers like those listed above.

Getting rid of bad cops has been tough for local agencies that face extreme pressure from the statewide police union, the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers. The new standards board was in part envisioned to help police administrators stand up to union tactics.

Still, even the board has expressed some anxiety over setting up a certification process that will withstand what will surely be a full-court press by SHOPO. The Legislature is not making it any easier by refusing to pay for the professional staff needed to craft this new program.

The events of this past year nationwide have demonstrated the need for much better oversight of police agencies. The Law Enforcement Standards Board was long overdue in Hawaii.

Now, lawmakers need to finish the job.

The post Legislature Must Give The Police Standards Board The Money It Needs To Do Its Job appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

A Honolulu police officer is being sued over an incident in which he detained a 15-year-old who was allegedly being bullied by the officer’s son at school.

The boy and his parents, Jorge and Jennifer Rivera, are suing the City and County of Honolulu, Officer Kirk Uemura and others in federal court with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii and attorneys Eric Seitz and Terry Revere, the parties announced on Monday.

The case highlights the fact that the Honolulu Police Department has no policy prohibiting officers from engaging in cases in which they have a conflict of interest.

“Unfortunately, the circumstances that gave rise to this complaint are not a one-off,” ACLU Executive Director Josh Wisch said at a press conference Monday. “They are just the latest example of a pattern and practice by HPD that regularly condones misuse of police powers.”

The lawsuit states the HPD officer was “motivated solely by a personal vengeance.”

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The lawsuit alleges that Uemura’s son had spread rumors about the plaintiff, identified in the suit as J.R., about J.R.’s alleged involvement with his girlfriend. The boys were later allegedly engaged in a physical fight in which Uemura’s son was the aggressor and J.R. was injured, according to the lawsuit.

Uemura detained J.R. the day after the fight, the lawsuit says.

According to the lawsuit:

On Nov. 9, 2018, Uemura was driving his HPD patrol car and followed the school bus carrying J.R. to Kalaheo High School in Kailua. When the bus arrived at school, Uemura “forcibly seized J.R., and subjected him to an unlawful search, detention, and harassing interrogation in plain view of surrounding students and staff.”

The officer said that the boy was being arrested because he had harassed his son.

Uemura summoned another HPD officer, Steven Kaolulo, to arrest J.R. While in transit to the Kailua Police Station, Kaolulo told J.R. he “did not know why” the boy had been arrested.

At the station, J.R. was “left shackled and handcuffed in a cell.” The officers did not notify J.R.’s parents of his arrest until after he was fingerprinted and photographed and his arrest was processed. HPD policy requires the department to contact the parents before a juvenile apprehension on school property.

Earlier that morning, Uemura had gone to the Kailua Police Station while on duty and provided a written statement to another officer alleging that J.R. had criminally harassed his son.

The lawsuit alleges that Uemura “knowingly and maliciously” provided false information in an official report, which is against department policy. The officer who received the complaint ignored the conflict of interest involved with Uemura filing a report in which his own son was the victim, the lawsuit says.

Also named in the case is Sgt. Artie Kendall, who was in charge of the Kailua Police Station and who the lawsuit accuses of condoning Uemura’s conduct.

In a statement, HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu said the officers involved faced consequences, although she didn’t specify what they were.

“An administrative investigation was initiated shortly after the incident occurred, and disciplinary action was taken for both officers earlier this year,” she said. “Corporal Uemura is assigned to District 4 (Windward Oahu) Patrol and has 21 years of service.  Sergeant Artie Kendall retired this summer with 27 years of service. His last assignment was in District 4.”

Yu noted that officers and civilian employees are expected to abide by the department’s standards of conduct while on and off duty.

“Violations of the standards is subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination,” she said.

ACLU Takes Aim At Systemic ‘Abuse Of Power’

The ACLU lawsuit argues that Uemura’s actions are part of an accepted practice of officers abusing their power, citing retired police chief Louis Kealoha as a prime example.

“What happened to the Rivera family is exactly what happened to the victims of the Kealoha scandal,” said ACLU attorney Wookie Kim. “The type of abuse of power – of misusing police powers to pursue personal, financial and other goals – that is what we are challenging. And that is what we are trying to hold the city accountable for.”

ACLU Executive Director Josh Wisch said the organization will be stepping up its scrutiny of the police.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Kealoha and his wife, Katherine Kealoha, a former deputy prosecutor, were convicted last year of a series of federal crimes stemming from allegations they framed a family member for the theft of their mailbox using a secret unit of police officers trained to fight organized crime and terrorism.

The Kealohas have also pleaded guilty to other felony charges related to bank fraud and a separate drug case involving Katherine Kealoha’s younger brother.

Ofc. Darren Cachola, who was caught on surveillance video attacking his girlfriend in a Waipahu restaurant and subsequently accused of other acts of domestic violence, was also cited in Monday’s lawsuit.

Officers did not arrest Cachola after the 2014 incident in Waipahu and, according to the lawsuit, interfered on his behalf again in 2017 when he was accused of strangling his ex-wife. Cachola was originally terminated from HPD, but has since returned to work after the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers fought to have him reinstated.

The last time the ACLU of Hawaii filed a civil rights lawsuit against HPD arising from allegations of officer misconduct was in 2000. In that case, an officer was accused of arresting, handcuffing and partially strip-searching a 12-year-old girl who had been accused of stealing $20 from a classmate.

Wisch said police accountability is a priority for the ACLU of Hawaii now more than it has been in part due to recent statements made by Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard in response to nationwide calls for reform.

Ballard has downplayed the need to address officer use of force, implicit bias and racial disparities in policing as “mainland” problems despite data showing spikes in the number of people killed by HPD officers and uneven enforcement targeting Native Hawaiians, Blacks and other Pacific Islanders, including Micronesians.

The scandals involving Kealoha and Cachola only add to the need for more scrutiny, according to Wisch.

“This type of abuse of power, this type of misuse of police authority is really a practice of HPD,” Wisch said. “This is definitely part of a larger problem, and something that we’re going to be looking into a lot in the coming months and years.”

The ACLU teamed up with attorneys Seitz and Revere to take on HPD.

Seitz is one of the most prominent lawyers in Hawaii when it comes to suing the department for wrongful death, excessive use of force and abuse of power. Among his clients are Gerard Puana, the man the Kealohas were accused of framing with the help of dozens of HPD officers. Seitz said the fact that Louis Kealoha is on his way to prison on federal corruption charges proves that HPD is among the most corrupt police departments in the country.

But he said he doesn’t think a lawsuit alone will force the reform he says is necessary.

“This is not a benign organization,” Seitz said. “Until and unless people in the community express outrage about this police department and this police chief and the unwillingness to hold them accountable things are not going to change.”

The post Lawsuit: HPD Officer Unlawfully Arrested Son’s High School Classmate appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

Hawaii’s police union doesn’t want you to know why Darren Cachola is still a cop.

Cachola was fired by the Honolulu Police Department after a 2014 incident in which he was caught on surveillance video pummeling his girlfriend inside a Waipahu restaurant.

But in 2018, when the department announced that an arbitrator had overturned Cachola’s termination for a six-month suspension, the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers filed a lawsuit to keep the record of that decision confidential.

The Honolulu Police Department tried to fire Darren Cachola after a high-profile case of alleged domestic abuse.

HPD

That case is still ongoing despite the fact the Legislature passed a law this summer to make officers’ disciplinary records a matter of public record when they’re suspended or fired for misconduct.

Cachola’s circumstances clearly meet the threshold for disclosure, yet SHOPO has argued in court records that the new law shouldn’t be applied retroactively to Cachola and that he still has a significant privacy interest in keeping the details of the arbitration proceeding secret.

Civil Beat is a party to the litigation and has tried for more than two years to secure the release of Cachola’s arbitration decision through court action. In February 2019, First Circuit Judge Jeffrey Crabtree ruled that there was a significant public interest in disclosing the arbitration records, including a lengthy investigative report. But SHOPO appealed.

Civil Beat’s attorney, Brian Black, executive director of the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest, filed a motion with the Hawaii Supreme Court last week asking for the case to be declared moot and to force the release of Cachola’s records.

Black’s argument was terse from the beginning.

“The secrecy needs to stop,” he said.

Black wrote that for nearly two decades SHOPO “coerced” city officials into rejecting nearly every public records request it received for an officer’s disciplinary suspension files, and that as a result many of those documents have been lost to “aggressive document destruction policies” pushed by the union in its collective bargaining agreement.

SHOPO relied on an exemption it helped create in the Uniform Information Practices Act that blocked access to county police officers’ disciplinary files unless they were fired. It was a unique privilege afforded no other government employee in the state.

In September, Hawaii Gov. David Ige signed Act 47 into law effectively ending the exemption.

That meant the disciplinary records of hundreds of officers who have been suspended for serious misconduct, ranging from drunken driving and drug use to violence against women and interfering in federal investigations, would be disclosable under the law.

“The public interest in what happened and how it all unfolded is just off the charts.” — Brian Black, Civil Beat Law Center

Still, SHOPO has continued to fight back on behalf of Cachola, filing motions meant to keep his disciplinary file hidden from public view.

“Personally I’ve never really understood why this was the incident that SHOPO chose to challenge,” Black said. “The public interest in what happened and how it all unfolded is just off the charts. So why this one and why continue to challenge it after the Legislature passed Act 47, I don’t know.”

Cachola has been a liability for the Honolulu Police Department at least dating back to September 2014 when he was caught on surveillance video physically attacking his girlfriend in a Waipahu restaurant.

The incident sparked outrage among women lawmakers, many of whom called on HPD to confront domestic violence within its ranks and the broader community.

Honolulu prosecutors, however, refused to charge Cachola.

The department tried to fire him, but in February 2018 was forced to reinstate him after union officials argued before an arbitrator that he should get his job back.

Cachola’s termination was overturned and a six-month suspension imposed instead, despite the fact he had again been accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife.

She ultimately sued Cachola and HPD for an attempted cover-up and recently settled the case for $320,000, according to a report from Hawaii News Now. The Honolulu City Council still needs to approve the settlement.

Keani Alapa, SHOPO’s attorney in the case, did not respond to Civil Beat’s request for comment for this story.

In a brief interview, SHOPO President Malcolm Lutu said he was unsure of the status of the litigation, but that in general the union opposed the release of officers’ disciplinary records.

SHOPO President Malcolm Lutu has opposed efforts to increase transparency surrounding officer misconduct.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Criminal cases are already a matter of public record through the courts, he said, but administrative investigations, even those involving egregious allegations of misconduct, should remain confidential.

In Cachola’s case, Lutu said he worried that the identities of other officers involved in his investigation would become public. Lutu also expressed concern that making an arbitrator’s name public could hurt the union in future cases, although he did not elaborate on what exactly he meant by that.

The ACLU of Hawaii, meanwhile, cited Cachola in a civil rights lawsuit against HPD, saying that his case exemplifies abuses of power within the department and the unwillingness of the agency to hold itself or its officers accountable.

Much of the problem with bringing about real reform when it comes to abuse of power, attorneys involved in that litigation said, is that police discipline only addresses a specific officer’s wrongdoing and doesn’t extend to other officers who may have played a role in aiding or covering up the abuse, including supervisors.

SHOPO is the reason most officer misconduct records have been kept secret in the first place in Hawaii, and the union has fought vigorously to keep it that way.

The union opposed House Bill 285 and its many iterations that were introduced in recent years.

While SHOPO was almost always successful in lobbying legislators to keep the confidentiality provision, the nationwide protests sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer proved to be the catalyst needed to give lawmakers the political will to stand up to the union.

Lutu downplayed the need for added transparency even as many across the U.S. are calling for more accountability of police officers.

“I think you’re mixing us up with the mainland,” Lutu said.

Hawaii is not immune to the problems faced in other parts of the country when it comes to racial bias in policing and fatal use of force.

Officer misconduct has also played a central role in the public discourse for many years, especially after former HPD chief, Louis Kealoha, was indicted along with his wife, Katherine, for using a secret police unit to frame a family member.

Police unions across the country have tried to block access to officers’ disciplinary files. Lawsuits have been filed in New York, New Jersey and California to stop the public from getting access to records detailing officer misconduct and improper uses of force.

The Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest is an independent organization created with funding from Pierre Omidyar, who is also CEO and publisher of Civil Beat. Civil Beat Editor Patti Epler sits on its board of directors.

The post How SHOPO Keeps Trying To Hide Police Misconduct Despite New Disclosure Law appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

A lawsuit filed this week by the ACLU of Hawaii and two Oahu attorneys alleges that a Honolulu police officer “forcibly seized” a 15-year-old boy and subjected him to an “unlawful search, detention, and harassing interrogation in plain view of surrounding students and staff.”

The alleged incident at Kalaheo High School in Kailua in November 2018 resulted in the boy’s arrest.

The complaint says that the officer who instigated the incident was retaliating against the boy because the officer’s son (a fellow student) had bullied the plaintiff. The officer counters that it was the boy who was arrested that was doing the harassing.

The lawsuit is in U.S. District Court, a legal process that often takes years before the case is resolved.

What can be done more immediately, however, is to revise HPD’s Standards of Conduct policy regarding conflict of interest. The lead officer targeted in the complaint should not have been allowed to take a matter involving his son into his own hands.

A new lawsuit underscores why it is so important for HPD to have clear language in its policies regarding conflicts of interest.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

An HPD spokeswoman explained that officers and civilian employees are expected to abide by the department’s Standards of Conduct while on and off duty. If the policies are violated, disciplinary action may be forthcoming.

But here’s the rub: The phrase “conflict of interest” does not appear in HPD’s Standards of Conduct policy, the policy that all cops are sworn to uphold.

The department points to the following section of the policy as being relevant: “I will never act officiously or permit personal feelings, prejudices, animosities, or friendships to influence my decisions.”

But if the policy were more clear — explicit, even — it would represent a major step forward in guarding against what attorneys for the plaintiffs (the boy and his parents) argue has become an all-too-common practice of officers abusing their power.

That’s why the lawsuit also names the City and County of Honolulu as a defendant. The government “has an affirmative duty to enact specific policies and procedures that provide guidance for HPD officers and supervisors to prevent foreseeable harm from occurring,” the lawsuit contends.

Because that guidance was not provided, the lawsuit explains, Honolulu “breached its duty by failing to enact any affirmative policies or procedures to recognize, manage, and prevent actual and potential conflicts of interest in law enforcement.”

To bolster its case, the lawsuit makes reference to the Seattle Police Department Manual that reads, “Employees will not engage in enforcement, investigative, or administrative functions that create or give the appearance of conflicts of interest.” It continues:

Seattle’s police manual also says that employees must “immediately disclose” to their superiors “any activities or relationships that may present an actual, potential, or apparent conflict of interest for themselves or other Department employees.”

Had that language been in HPD’s Standards of Conduct policy, the lawsuit says, the police officer at the center of things would have been required to identify and disclose his interests.

It’s not just Seattle that gets in right when it comes to the police and conflicts of interest. Very similar rules are in the policies of the Boston Police Department, the San Francisco Police Department, the San Diego Police Department, the Austin Police Department, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Oakland Police Department.

It will not be easy to change HPD’s policy, even if the mayor, City Council and Police Commission push for it.

That’s because, while the chief of police has the power to amend, revoke or repeal the Standards of Conduct, it has to be preceded by consultation with the employees’ unions “as provided by the appropriate collective bargaining agreements in force.”

That means they have to get through the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers. Good luck with that. It’s SHOPO, of course, that is still trying to hide police misconduct records even though a new law requires disclosure.

Including a conflict of interests directive in HPD’s manual will not in and of itself put an end to what has been described as a culture of impunity in our police department.

Indeed, the current policy was approved in December 2016 by then Police Chief Louis Kealoha, whose conviction last year on conspiracy and obstruction of justice not only was the poster child for conflict of interest — he used his police powers against a relative to get a leg up in a civil lawsuit — it showed that the misuse of public power was embraced at the very top.

It’s another good reason for the Legislature to fund a staff for the new Law Enforcement Standards Board. The board is tasked with putting in place statewide standards for county and state police agencies but has yet to get any real momentum because lawmakers haven’t given it any money to operate. A conflict of interest standard should be at the top of its list.

The post Honolulu Police Must Implement A Conflict Of Interest Policy appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

The Honolulu Police Department says it may need to track how its officers use force to identify bias and is considering making some policy changes to that end, according to the agency’s newly released annual use-of-force report.

The analysis said there were more than 2,300 instances in which officers used force in 2019 — about four instances per 1,000 calls for service. That’s up from 2,070 instances in 2018.

Nearly three-quarters involved physical contact or physical confrontations; 21% involved a gun, including the act of unholstering it for building searches; 3% involved the use of a chemical agent such as pepper spray; 1% involved the use of a weapon such as a baton; and another 1% involved verbal commands.

Officers used force in a variety of situations, such as when people were not complying with orders or acting aggressively against them. More than 16% of use-of-force incidents involved situations in which officers said they were facing no resistance.

HPD officers used force more than 2,300 times in 2019 — about four instances per 1,000 calls for service.

Anthony Quintano/Civil Beat

There were significant racial disparities in who force was used against last year. More than a third of the time the incidents involved people who were Native Hawaiian or another Pacific Islander ethnicity, such as Micronesian or Samoan. That’s disproportionately high for the communities that make up about a quarter of Hawaii’s population.

Black people were subject to the most disproportionate use of police force in relation to their share of the state population. They made up 7.4% of HPD incidents involving force, even though the community makes up between 2% and 4% of Hawaii’s population.

Last year’s racial disparities are consistent with disparities reported in HPD annual use of force reports over the past 10 years. A Hawaii Public Radio analysis of arrests this year due to pandemic stay-at-home orders found Micronesian, Samoan and Black people were disproportionately arrested.

Akiemi Glenn, who leads the Popolo Project, a nonprofit dedicated to telling the stories of Hawaii’s Black community, said the data is disappointing but not surprising.

“That’s really alarming that police would use force when there’s no resistance,” she said. She added that the racial categories that HPD uses could benefit from disaggregation, given that so many people in Hawaii identify as mixed race.

“We deserve answers about why our police department sees force as a viable and useful way of engaging with community members when they’re in moments of distress,” she said.

HPD Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard said previously that implicit bias is less of an issue in Hawaii than on the mainland.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The 2019 use of force report doesn’t provide much information about police killings last year. The report notes that eight people died at the hands of Honolulu police officers last year, five by guns and three by “physical contact.” That’s the highest number of annual deaths in more than a decade.

But there’s no information about the people who died or the officers involved, not even the names of the people who died. The executive summary highlights that five people were shot to death, but the total number of people killed by police doesn’t appear until page 11 of the 18-page report.

A Civil Beat analysis, confirmed with HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu, found that the people who were killed by police last year include Sherianne Nixon; Siatuu Tauai Jr.; Kyle Thomas; Michael Kahalehoe; Dustin Spencer; Dana Brown; Peter Purcell and Danny Colton.

Another 18 people sustained serious or substantial injury due to police use of force, and 471 were injured to some degree, the report said.

Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard told Civil Beat in June that the department would delay the release of the report to ensure its accuracy after Civil Beat revealed that previous reports consistently undercounted the number of people killed by Honolulu police. The report notes that two separate databases kept by two HPD divisions contributed to data discrepancies.

The report lists 12 recommendations mainly focused on improving data collection to better track when and how officers use force and what trends exist.

Among them: officers and supervisors should have better training on filling out the use of force form and there should be better accountability to ensure the forms are properly completed. The department’s rules say that officers are supposed to fill out use of force forms after every encounter that involves force.

Another recommendation is to revise the use of force report to allow police officers to indicate when they deploy a canine. There’s currently no data in the annual summary that indicates how often officers use a canine against subjects.

The report also notes that the latest statistics may be misleading.

“The statistics contained in the Annual Use of Force Report severely misrepresents Deadly Force reporting as it includes unholstering of a firearm even when a subject is not encountered (i.e.: state of readiness, building searches, etc.),” the report says.

After national calls for police reform following the death of a Black man, George Floyd, earlier this year in Minneapolis, HPD set up a committee to review the use of force policy. But Sarah Yoro, a spokeswoman for HPD, said in an email that the recommendations in the report “did not come from the committee; however, they were shared with the committee and all of the recommendations are expected to eventually be adopted.”

She said the recommendations were formed by a separate committee made up of people from HPD’s administrative operations, professional standards, human resources and information technology divisions.

Ballard has previously said that she hoped the national police reform movement would skip Hawaii and said implicit bias is less of an issue in Hawaii compared with the mainland. Studies show that implicit bias is just as strong in Hawaii as the mainland, with negative attitudes particularly strong against people who are Black and Micronesian.

Ballard did not respond to multiple requests for an interview over the past two weeks sent to HPD spokeswomen Yoro and Yu.

Read the report here:

The post Report: Honolulu Police Use Of Force Increased Last Year appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

Hawaii’s police union filed two new lawsuits this week meant to block Kauai County and the city of Honolulu from releasing the names of officers who have been suspended for misconduct.

The legal actions are the latest effort to subvert a new law that makes officers’ disciplinary files a matter of public record in cases that result in suspensions and discharges.

The State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers argued that law violates officers’ privacy rights and should be declared unconstitutional in the lawsuits, which were filed Monday in Honolulu and Tuesday on Kauai.

The statewide police union has filed lawsuits to prevent the release of disciplinary files despite a new state law that makes them public.

Nathan Eagle/Civil Beat

The complaints — the latest salvo in a decades-long attempt by SHOPO to keep officer misconduct hidden from public view — were apparently in response to notifications that the local police chiefs intended to release more officers’ disciplinary records.

Boisse Correa, who was Honolulu’s police chief from 2004 to 2009, said the change in the public records law is needed, especially given the discussions taking place nationally about police accountability.

The recent spate of scandals in Hawaii, including the conviction of former Honolulu police chief Louis Kealoha, who was charged with a series of federal crimes stemming from allegations he framed a family member, only adds to the need for more transparency.

“In this day and age with all the questions about officers and the integrity and ethics of the police department there need to be changes,” Correa said. “The problem is that the union, SHOPO, has always felt that its primary duty was never to the community or the department. Their primary duties have always been to the officers.”

Brian Black, executive director of the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest, also called the lawsuits meritless.

“This is an attempt by SHOPO to delay the inevitable,” Black said.

Malcolm Lutu, the president of SHOPO, did not respond to Civil Beat’s request for an interview.

In 1995, the union successfully lobbied the Legislature to carve an exemption into the state’s public records law that made an officer’s misconduct records secret unless they were fired. The exemption set police officers apart from other public employees in the state.

For example, the public had a right to know the name of a college professor who was suspended for sexual harassment, as well as the reason for the punishment.

When a police officer, on the other hand, was suspended for beating their spouse or falsifying arrest records, their name and the details of their misconduct would almost certainly remain confidential except in the rare case that criminal charges were filed, a lawsuit was mounted or there was a leak to the press.

That all changed in September when Hawaii Gov. David Ige signed House Bill 285 into law.

The legislation — which was passed in the wake of national protests over the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis — eliminated the exemption for police officers and opened a window into hundreds of cases of serious misconduct that have occurred over the past two decades.

County police departments, including on Kauai and the Big Island, already have begun releasing the names of officers who have been suspended for drunken driving, assault and lying to investigators, while SHOPO presses forward with its fight in the courts.

For more than two years, the union has tried to prevent the Honolulu Police Department from releasing an arbitration decision that gave Sgt. Darren Cachola his job back after he was caught on surveillance video beating his girlfriend in a Waipahu restaurant.

Civil Beat is a party to the litigation, which is currently before the Hawaii Supreme Court. The union recently filed new briefs in the case meant to keep Cachola’s records confidential despite the new laws requiring disclosure.

The Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest is an independent organization created with funding from Pierre Omidyar, who is also CEO and publisher of Civil Beat. Civil Beat Editor Patti Epler sits on its board of directors.

The post SHOPO Tries Again To Keep Officer Misconduct Secret appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

In the past year, the Department of Public Safety has updated most of its law enforcement policies and begun searching for new personnel in an effort to gain accreditation for deputy sheriffs from a national agency nearly a decade after a state law required it to do so.

DPS is about a year into a lengthy process to obtain credentials for its Sheriff Division from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, a goal mandated by the Legislature in 2011 as a way to improve problems such as ineffective leadership and a lack of direction.

The division’s lack of accreditation became a point of contention between state lawmakers and former Public Safety Director Nolan Espinda in 2019, prompting the department to step up efforts to complete the five-step process.

Accreditation should be completed by the end of 2022, department spokeswoman Toni Schwartz said.

Hawaii’s Sheriff Division has started the CALEA accreditation process, which it was required to complete in 2011.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Hawaii’s four county police departments are already accredited by CALEA, a nonprofit organization that sets and assesses national public safety benchmarks. A 2011 law required the Sheriff Division to obtain CALEA accreditation immediately after an audit the previous year exposed major problems.

However, past administrations made no discernible progress toward that goal, according to Espinda.

The department contracted with CALEA to get the ball rolling in December. That began a five phase process that can take at least three years and costs about $21,000, Mark Mosier, CALEA’s Pacific regional program manager, said.

DPS has begun the self-assessment phase, which requires it to review its own programs, update its standards, attend training and make sure that department policies fall in line with CALEA’s standards. An agency like DPS has three years to complete the self-assessment phase.

DPS applied for basic accreditation, which requires compliance with 181 standards, including how individuals are arrested, how information is shared and how internal investigations are conducted as well as fitness conditions, recruitment and dealing with hazardous roadway conditions.

Policy chapters on the DPS website still appear blank.

Those standards represent basic practices for “health, life and safety” that all law enforcement agencies must follow, Mosier said.

Larger agencies, like the Honolulu Police Department, hold advanced accreditation, which requires them to comply with more than 450 CALEA standards.

Bringing policies into compliance involves a lot of paperwork. It includes time spent rewriting and drafting new procedures, running them by legal teams and union representatives.

A majority of the DPS policies have already been adjusted to meet CALEA’s standards, but the department is still finalizing those changes, Schwartz said.

Policy chapters on the DPS website still appear blank.

Staff also need to collect proof that officers are complying with the new standards and present documentation to the CALEA assessors. Those documents could include simple forms like those signed when officers take the oath of office to more complex reports like those filed after shooting incidents.

The process culminates with a site visit from a team of CALEA assessors who will evaluate the department, take public comment and conduct interviews with stakeholders to ascertain whether or not a law enforcement agency is functioning as it should.

Once accreditation is awarded, the process begins all over again, with CALEA conducting annual assessments of agencies.

Getting through the process can be lengthy. The Kauai Police Department worked on accreditation for nine years before CALEA awarded accreditation in 2016.

“Our program is not a cookie cutter program,” Mosier said. “If an agency is not in compliance, they either don’t get accredited or withdraw. (Accreditation) is not a given, and we take pride in that. An agency has to come in voluntarily and has to want to do what is required.”

CALEA also adjusts its own standards and requires agencies to follow suit. This year, Mosier said, CALEA has made several changes to its use of force standards following nationwide calls for police reform. CALEA now bans chokeholds, for example.

Mosier said accredited agencies must comply with the new force standards immediately after being contacted.

Hawaii’s four county police departments, including the Honolulu Police Department, have all received CALEA accreditation.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Updated: The process also has been slowed by personnel issues. In 2019, the Legislature created three new positions that would deal specifically with CALEA accreditation. However, funding was not specifically set aside for those positions.

Schwartz said the department is still trying to fill those positions.

Lawmakers budgeted an additional $843,000 in 2020 and $829,000 in 2021 for the department section that would house those three positions.

The team leading the accreditation process has also changed. Espinda left the department in October, and Fred Hyun, the chair of the Hawaii Paroling Authority, has been named interim director. The governor has yet to name a permanent director.

And earlier this month, Jordan Lowe, a former federal special agent, stepped in as Deputy Director for the Law Enforcement Division, which the deputy sheriffs come under. Renee Sonobe-Hong, the former deputy under whose watch the accreditation process began, moved to the state’s Department of the Attorney General.

Lowe is tasked with finishing the accreditation process.

“Jordan brings a broad-based foundation and commitment to law enforcement. I’m confident he will satisfy the CALEA requirements and ensure completion of this national accreditation of our Sheriff Division,” Hyun said in a statement announcing Lowe’s appointment.

Sen. Clarence Nishihara, who has been a critic of DPS in the past, said he’s hopeful that the department will finally get accredited.

“More than anything else it’s the leadership, to make it a priority to get it done. It doesn’t seem to have been a priority with previous directors,” Nishihara said.

Nishihara, who recommended the Senate vote down Espinda, said he has more confidence in Hyun’s leadership, but whoever is nominated to lead the department in the long-term has much work to do.

“You’ve got to rebuild confidence and trust in that department,” Nishihara said.

The post Hawaii Deputy Sheriffs Finally On Track For National Accreditation appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

For the first time in nearly two decades, county police departments have begun to release the names of officers who have been suspended for serious misconduct.

The change is the result of new legislation signed into law by Hawaii Gov. David Ige in September following the killing in Minnesota of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer. The legislation eliminated an exemption in Hawaii’s public records law that kept most officers’ disciplinary files confidential.

Civil Beat requested misconduct records from all four county police departments regarding officers who had been suspended when the law was passed.

Among the first documents released was an arbitration decision involving Honolulu Police Department Ofc. William Suarez, who was arrested in 2011 for drunken driving after he crashed his car into a parked vehicle near the Ala Moana Shopping Center and then fled the scene of the accident.

Louis Kealoha, who was Honolulu’s police chief at the time, fired Suarez for lying to investigators about the circumstances of the crash, but Hawaii’s police union was successful in poking holes in HPD’s investigation and convincing an arbitrator in a series of closed door hearings to overturn the termination.

In Hawaii, the statewide police union often cites its collective bargaining agreement as preventing public oversight of police misconduct.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Suarez, who had previously been disciplined for falsifying records and searching a suspect’s backpack without a warrant, was ultimately reinstated. The arbitrator gave him a 15-day suspension along with back pay for the time he missed while fighting to keep his job.

“It is extremely important that these records be made available to the public,” said Loretta Sheehan, a former federal prosecutor who up until January was chair of the Honolulu Police Commission.

“Sometimes we forget that the police work for us, and that we pay every single penny of their salaries, their pensions, their benefits, their sick leave, their vacation and their retirements. They are public servants and it is incumbent on us, their employer, to check to see how well they are serving.”

The Suarez decision provides a brief glimpse into a secretive process — dictated by union contract — that can play out for many years and keep problem officers on the streets despite the wishes of a police chief who wants them stripped of their badges.

In Suarez’s case, the Honolulu Police Department fired him in June 2012 only to have it overturned more than two years later, in January 2014, after a vigorous challenge from the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers and a final decision by a third party arbitrator.

For Sheehan, who spent more than two decades working in law enforcement, the decision highlighted the struggles of HPD and its internal affairs investigators — part of the Professional Standards Office — when it came to holding Suarez accountable.

The decision also served as a reminder of the power of SHOPO, she said, which represents nearly 2,000 county police officers in Hawaii.

“This arbitration decision reflects sloppy investigation, sloppy charging decisions and sloppy thinking (by HPD),” Sheehan said. “SHOPO did a very good job in this case, and I think we should be very clear that that’s what SHOPO’s job is. It goes to bat for its members.”

Ofc. William Suarez

HPD

There’s little recourse for HPD after an arbitrator decides to reinstate an officer, according to Assistant Chief Rade Vanic. Arbitration decisions are binding, which means there’s almost no opportunity to appeal the decision unless there was a flaw in the process itself, such as bias or fraud on the part of the arbitrator.

Vanic said that if the department wants to fire an officer, HPD and its investigators need to be thorough so that the chief’s decision is not later overturned on a technicality, such as a missed deadline or failing to list the proper violation of the department’s standards of conduct.

“We’ll do our part to make sure we hold our officers accountable and we’ll also do our part to make sure the process is adhered to,” Vanic said.

“It’s never an easy thing to tell someone, ‘Hey, you’re no longer an officer anymore.’ It’s not something that is an enjoyable task, but it is a task that’s necessary sometimes because at the end of the day we need to make sure that we’re able to hold our officers accountable for the sake of the public trust.”

‘An Air Of Animosity’

Suarez’s termination and eventual reinstatement are detailed in a 52-page arbitration decision that laid out both Suarez’s version of events from the night of the accident as well as the many ways SHOPO challenged HPD’s investigation.

Suarez did not respond to Civil Beat’s request for an interview.

The arbitrator, Larry Cundiff, described the hearings as “long and cantankerous.” The proceedings were so heated, he said, that he threatened to terminate them and was forced to admonish both SHOPO and the city’s attorneys for their “non-professionalism.”

Even as tempers cooled, Cundiff wrote, “there was an air of animosity and aversion throughout the entire length of the Hearing.”

Nationwide calls for police reform reached the islands this summer in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

According to the arbitration record, Suarez crashed into a parked car while driving in the area of Kona and Pensacola streets just after 3 a.m. Suarez was off-duty at the time and he told investigators that when he had trouble sleeping he would either go for walks or cruise around the city to put himself at ease.

On this occasion, he said, a cat or some other large animal darted out in front of him causing him to swerve into a parked car. He hit the vehicle with such force that his airbags deployed and a nearby dumpster was pushed into a utility pole that sheared off at its base.

Suarez, who said he wasn’t drunk at the time, considered the crash to be a minor motor vehicle accident in part because no one else was injured. He said he would have called it in at the time, but that his cell phone was dead.

Suarez spent a few minutes looking for a pay phone, but instead decided to walk home, a journey that he said would only take about 20 minutes, so that he could get money for a cab, charge his cell phone and report the accident. He said he left his driver’s license and insurance information in his vehicle.

When he finally arrived at his house he said he was so upset that he took a bottle of bourbon from the kitchen and poured himself a few drinks.

Suarez returned to the scene of the accident about 90 minutes after the crash. By that time HPD officers were already there. Suarez failed a field sobriety test and a lieutenant from the Professional Standards Office ordered him to be arrested for driving under the influence and fleeing the scene of an accident. When Suarez was booked at HPD headquarters he had a blood alcohol level that was two times the legal limit.

“This arbitration decision reflects sloppy investigation, sloppy charging decisions and sloppy thinking (by HPD).” — Former Honolulu Police Commissioner Loretta Sheehan

The Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney’s Office eventually dismissed the charges against Suarez and told HPD that it should have only issued him a citation rather than arrest him for drunken driving.

Still, HPD wanted to fire Suarez. According to the arbitration decision, the department did not find Suarez’s story “credible.”

Police investigators did not believe that Suarez’s cell phone battery was dead nor that it only took him 20 minutes to walk 2.1 miles from the scene of the accident to his home. They also pointed out that he had plenty of opportunities to report the accident.

Not only did he walk past nine pay phones on his way home, but he also went by HPD’s headquarters and the Chinatown substation where he used to work.

Suarez also had a history of wrongdoing. In 2010, he had been suspended for 10 days for falsifying records.

The Union Fights Back

The police union pushed back on Suarez’s behalf, throwing up a series of defenses that homed in on mistakes made by HPD’s Professional Standards Office rather than the circumstances surrounding the actual accident.

Lawyers for SHOPO admitted Suarez showed “poor judgment” but said the department did not meet the threshold necessary to fire him. Like city prosecutors, SHOPO’s attorneys challenged whether HPD had enough probable cause to arrest Suarez in the first place — much less give him a field sobriety test — because none of the responding officers ever saw him behind the wheel.

They said the PSO included erroneous information in its reports to the police chief and other top officials while making the case to terminate Suarez. For instance, HPD’s investigators wrote that Suarez “failed to render aid as mandated by law,” which gave the wrong impression that there were others involved in the accident besides him.

The arbitrator, Cundiff, agreed with many of SHOPO’s arguments, including the lack of probable cause for a DUI case and that the charge of failure to render aid was misleading.

The PSO’s portrayal gave police officials “an inaccurate first impression that stayed with the case throughout the process,” Cundiff said.

Cundiff also took note of 75 letters of support the union had gathered on Suarez’s behalf and the fact that Suarez was a first responder at Ground Zero during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City.

And he considered Suarez’s own words as he pleaded with his superiors to keep his job.

“I try to learn from my mistakes, but I mean, I have to eat my words,” Suarez said, referencing his previous punishment. “I am sincerely sorry for all the stupid mistakes I’ve made through my career.”

In the end, Cundiff decided that Suarez’ actions did not warrant the “capital punishment of a career,” but that the grief, the time and the cost of the investigations and appeals demanded “serious penalty” — 15 days suspension.

Hard To Make A Firing Stick

Suarez is just one of numerous officers to be fired by HPD only to have their jobs given back by an arbitrator.

A Civil Beat analysis of HPD’s annual misconduct reports found that between 2014 and 2019 nearly one in three discharged officers were reinstated after the union intervened on their behalf.

Records show that HPD fired more than 50 officers for conduct ranging from kidnapping and sexual assault to covering up for illegal cockfighting and forcing a homeless man to lick a urinal. Of those, at least 17 had their terminations overturned even though most of the allegations involved criminal activity, including drunken driving and domestic violence.

Among those who got their jobs back were Sterling Naki and Joshua Omoso, who covered for their colleague, Anson Kimura, after they saw him accidentally shoot a bartender in the stomach while drinking.

Anson Kimura was fired after he accidentally shot a bartender in the stomach while he was drinking.

According to HPD, Naki and Omoso didn’t report the shooting when it happened and then lied to investigators. An arbitrator eventually vacated their terminations and gave them 20-day suspensions instead.

Sgt. Darren Cachola is also back on the force after HPD terminated him several years ago. Cachola was caught on surveillance video pummeling his girlfriend in a Waipahu restaurant in 2014. The incident sparked widespread outrage in the community and caused women lawmakers to hold a legislative hearing to address how HPD investigates domestic abuse within the ranks.

In 2015, HPD fired Cachola, but three years later an arbitrator overturned that decision.

Cachola, meanwhile, continues to be dogged by accusations of domestic violence. His ex-wife has filed a lawsuit against him, HPD and the city for covering up for him. Hawaii News Now has reported that the city is expected to settle the case for $320,000.

Stephen White is an assistant professor at Syracuse University who studies the political power of police unions. He said one reason it’s so hard to fire a police officer, even one who appears to have broken the law, is because there are so many opportunities for the officers and their unions to appeal.

These provisions are often built into the collective bargaining agreements, which makes it unlikely that there will be much in the way of reform, he said.

“The language in the contracts is very much stacked toward officers and letting officers get away with things, which is not surprising,” White said. “It’s not surprising that police unions want it to be harder to punish officers.”

White, who reviewed the Suarez decision for Civil Beat, pointed out that the SHOPO’s lawyers were not arguing that Suarez did not make a mistake the night of the accident. Instead, they focused on the procedure of the investigation and the disciplinary action taken against him.

“When you can frame things in a fairly legalistic way I think that is an immensely effective strategy,” White said. “As complicated as it is there’s always going to be this legal hole.”

Still Fighting For Secrecy

Malcolm Lutu, the president of SHOPO, did not respond to Civil Beat’s request for an interview.

The union, however, has filed at least two lawsuits in state court seeking to block the public release of more arbitration decisions as well as other records that might disclose the identities of officers who have been suspended for misconduct.

SHOPO President Malcolm Lutu wants to keep officer misconduct records under wraps.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The union’s attorneys are also fighting the release of Darren Cachola’s arbitration records before the Hawaii Supreme Court. Police and city officials had planned to make them public but SHOPO filed suit to block disclosure. A Circuit Court judge ordered them released and SHOPO has appealed that decision to the high court.

Arthur Ago is the director of criminal justice for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law. His organization is among the groups fighting to lift the curtain on officer misconduct records in New York after elected officials there passed legislation to make disciplinary records public.

He said it’s often the unions that are standing in the way of more transparency despite an increased push for more information on racial disparities in policing and the use of deadly force.

“I can’t stress enough that transparency and accountability go hand in hand,” Ago said. “Because the problem is if there’s no transparency then that will frequently, if not always, lead to impunity.”

Union contracts and collective bargaining agreements make it difficult enough to investigate and punish police officers. He pointed to provisions in SHOPO’s own contract that state that officers suspected of misconduct cannot be interrogated for more than 30 minutes at a time. The contract also states that “any derogatory materials” in an officer’s employment file can be destroyed after four years.

One of the more problematic trends, Ago said, is that departments are in charge of investigating their own. Some municipalities have strong citizen oversight panels and the more information that’s made available to the public about officer misconduct the better.

“The bad cops need to be identified,” he said.

This story is supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

The post Here’s How One Honolulu Cop Got His Job Back After He Was Fired For Misconduct appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.