Legal bills from Kealoha suits persist

The city will continue to pay lawyers thousands of dollars to defend itself in lawsuits by outgoing Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha because his retirement agreement does not include his legal claims against the city, said the city’s Ethics Commission and the commission’s former executive director and investigator.

In the agreement with the Honolulu Police Commission that Kealoha signed last week, he waives any claims against the Honolulu Police Department and the Police Commission. The agreement explicitly excludes from waiver Kealoha’s lawsuit involving the Ethics Commission.

Kealoha, his deputy prosecutor wife, Katherine Kea-loha, and their minor daughter are suing the Ethics Commission, former Executive Director Charles Totto, former investigator Letha DeCaires and the city for investigations Totto and DeCaires conducted into the chief and his wife.

The city has hired three separate private law firms to defend itself, Totto, DeCaires, and the Ethics Commission. The law firms have yet to bill the city for their services.

The lawyer representing Totto said he’s disappointed that Kealoha’s retirement agreement didn’t include the lawsuit involving the Ethics Commission.

“If they are going to pay Kealoha anything they should have resolved everything,” said Joachim Cox. “It imposes an unnecessary expense on the city.”

A day after the Police Commission announced the agreement the parties to the civil case were in court where the judge, assuming that the agreement did include the lawsuit, asked whether there was a need to continue the proceeding.

The Kealohas have sued the Ethics Commission before. Katherine Kealoha filed suit in July 2015 to get the records of the then-ongoing investigations. She dropped the lawsuit a month later in favor of a new one her lawyer filed in September 2015 on behalf of “Doe” and “Roe.” A state judge dismissed the second lawsuit in December 2015.

In addition to the waiver, Kealoha’s retirement agreement includes a $250,000 severance payment. Kealoha must return the money if he pleads guilty on no contest or is convicted of any felonies within six years of signing the agreement for any actions committed during his employment with the Honolulu Police Department.

Kealoha told the commission last month that he received a letter from the FBI informing him that he is a target of an investigation.

The lawyer representing the uncle of Kealoha’s wife in a federal criminal case involving the alleged theft of the Kealohas’ mailbox said he gave the FBI information in December 2014 of possible police corruption at HPD. A federal grand jury has been meeting on the case for more than a year.

So far, only one person has been charged in the case.

Retired HPD officer Niall Silva pleaded guilty last month to conspiring with others to defraud the government by falsifying records, lying to federal investigators and lying under oath during the federal theft trial. At the time of the alleged theft Silva was a tech officer in HPD’s elite Criminal Intelligence Unit.

Silva testified in the trial that his supervisor assigned him to go to the Kealohas’ Kahala home to recover video of the alleged mailbox theft. However, the time of day he said he was at the home was five hours before the filing of a theft report. In his plea agreement, Silva said he didn’t go to the Kealohas’ home but that another officer retrieved the hard drive from the surveillance system then gave it to him at HPD headquarters.

Federal prosecutors say in court documents that Silva had five co-conspirators. The documents do not name them, but do say that four of the five are HPD officers who had a hand in the recovery and concealing of the hard drive. For the theft case HPD turned over copies of the video on disk but not the hard drive.

The documents describe the fifth co-conspirator as the person from whose home the mailbox was taken and who falsely reported that the mailbox was stolen. According to the court documents and trial testimony of the theft case, it was Katherine Kealoha who reported in June 2013 that the mailbox had been stolen.

Five days after federal prosecutors charged Silva with conspiracy, Katherine Kealoha’s uncle, Gerard Puana, who was accused of stealing the mailbox, sued his niece, Chief Kealoha, Silva and four other HPD officers.

Two of the four other officers, Minh-Hung “Bobby” Nguyen and Daniel Sellers, worked with Silva in CIU and are still assigned to CIU. The other two officers are retired homicide Lt. Walter Calistro and current homicide detective Dru Akagi.

Puana claims in his lawsuit that the Kealohas repeatedly lied to investigators about the mailbox to frame him for theft. Puana also accuses Chief Kealoha of lying on the witness stand during the theft trial. Puana accuses Nguyen, Calistro, Akagi and Silva of mishandling evidence and falsifying reports about the alleged theft.