A comment left on an earlier blog post raises substantive and very significant questions about HPD’s Criminal Intelligence Unit. Misuse of the unit and its personnel are a big part of the indictments that have come down so far.
I’ll quote the comment here in full.
Another area of concern that needs to be addressed beyond the Kealoha’s current case is the alleged improper and illegal conduct of the Criminal Intelligence Unit.
It has to be cleaned out folks. The job of a CIU is to gather intelligence on criminal activity and terrorism. Frankly it is chilling to read in the indictment that CIU made a search of Mr. Puana’s home and conducted physical surveillance of him from “time to time” from June 2011 through 2013. How much time?
The obvious question that has not been completely answered is, if what they were doing here just one example of many where they were misused for “off the record” investigation of people who are not liked or marked for a “set up” by political or power interests? There has been recent criticism of cases filed by the Prosecutor outside of the normal channels through HPD and at least one has been criticized by a state court judge. Did Ms. Kealoha use the CIU or did she or others make it available for misuse by the Honolulu Prosecutor? Fair question, and it seems that abuses may have been committed at some level at that office to cover or protect Ms. Kealoha. You would expect that there must have been someone in the unit who was fed up with what was going on.
There should be another grand jury to look into these legitimate issues. It is premature to say this is over yet.
The indictment provides this description of the CIU:
A separate, federally-authorized and specialized unit of HPD called the Criminal Intelligence Unit (“CIU”) was responsible for gathering intelligence and data on organized crime, terrorism, and gang threats facing the City and County ofHonolulu. The members of CIU did not collect evidence to be used in the investigation and prosecution of criminal cases, but instead, passed intelligence information about criminal threats to other units in HPD and federal law enforcement partners.
It’s my understanding that some other major white collar crime investigations also would have been assigned to the CIU.
Then-Chief Kealoha apparently put his own people into CIU, including those named in last week’s indictment. These included the then-husband of Katherine Kealoha’s niece, Bobby Nguyen; a former boyfriend of Katherine Kealoha, Dan Sellers; and Derek Hahn, who formed Discount Energy Solutions LLC with Katherine Kealoha and Bronson M. Tokioka.
One wonders Chief Kealoha padded the unit with other of his favorites, and what officers were reassigned to make room for the chief’s picks for CIU.
And, as the comment above asks, can we believe the stolen mailbox was the only time these assets were deployed in illegitimate ventures?
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Katherine Kealoha appears to have a powerful addiction to Nepotism and Cronyism. Her boss needs to be fired. Until recently, Kealoha remained a high-ranking prosecutor in Keith Kaneshiro’s office.
Either Keith knew about some of this stuff, or he was ignorant of it.
Either one of these is a firable offense. Get rid of him.
Gov. Ige seriously needs to create an independent comission to investigate and make a public report covering this entire controversy, from beginning to end. Indendently. In public. Let chips fall where they may. You cannot simply replace the Kealohas and make it all go way. Hawaii let them rise to power.
This is an excellent point. KK strongly supported her all the way to the end and even went as far to refuse to cooperate with the federal prosecutor. He had to have known. Sounds like another book when this is all over….
meanwhile:
In an open letter published in today’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser, First Assistant Federal Public Defender Alexander Silvert said three current members of the commission should resign because they voted to give Kealoha a new contract before his first term was up, repeatedly gave him high evaluation marks and voted to pay him $250,000 to retire instead of seeking to fire him for cause.
“Moreover, these three commissioners did absolutely nothing to learn the facts behind the allegations that have been at the center of the pending federal case for the last two years,” Silvert said in his opinion piece. The three did nothing after retired Officer Niall Silva pleaded guilty and acknowledged a conspiracy, or when Kealoha received a target letter from federal authorities in December, he said.
Silvert does not name the three in his open letter, but they are Commission Chairman Max Sword, Vice Chairwoman Cha Thompson and Commissioner Eddie Flores. They are the three longest-serving of the five commissioners.
Like I said above:
Either these idiots knew about some of this stuff, or they were ignorant of it.
Either one of these is a firable offense. Get rid of these three police commissioners. They failed at their most basic task. And they knew it all along. Ignorance is not acceptable.
Is there no Internal Affairs section of HPD? When I grew up in Georgia there was a GBI, a state level agency akin to the FBI. Maybe something that would help. All of this is so ridiculously bad that you might even have to bring in out of state staff in rotation to run either of these organizations and establish them in concert with federal agencies.
The revelation of charges against the Kealoha’s turned things inside out for this observer. What seemed like an “all we have it this mailbox thing but we’re going with it” investigation revealed serious criminal wrongdoing. And the prosecutor referred to it as the tip of the iceberg. It is resonable to think that some of the ex-chief’s supporters were motivated by their own dirty hands.