HPD takes another look at 3 old cases involving injured keiki
JAMM AQUINO / jaquino@staradvertiser.com
Cary Okimoto, acting chief for HPD, answers questions during a news conference on Dec. 20 at the main police precinct in Honolulu. Okimoto told the Police Commission today that HPD would take another look at three cases involving injury to children.
The Honolulu Police Department plans to do more investigating on three old cases that resulted in serious injury to a child after determining more could have been done during the initial investigations, officials said today.
Two of the three cases, for which details were not released, are from 2014 and one is from 2015, assistant chief Richard Robinson told the Honolulu Police Commission.
Acting Police Chief Cary Okimoto told the commission that investigators need to take a harder look at the three cases.
The department identified those three after conducting an audit of 112 cases that resulted in serious injury to a child and were investigated by HPD during the past three years.
The audit was done in the wake of a 2015 case in which questions recently were raised in a Civil Beat article about how police handled the investigation. That case happened at the Ewa Beach home of his babysitter, who was the wife of an HPD officer. The child, Peyton Valiente, suffered severe injuries while in her care.
The case still is open, but Okimoto told commissioners he was highly disappointed that the investigation, though following proper procedures, didn’t move as quickly as it should have. “If it was my child, I might be upset,” he said.
“We really don’t want this to ever happen again,” Okimoto told commissioners.
