HPD must drop culture of impunity

Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha’s pledge that the department he leads will become more transparent to the public it serves marks an important acknowledgment by HPD that trust and accountability go hand in hand. The chief’s welcome words will be meaningless, however, without continuous action to back them up.

The necessary reforms must be driven not only by the group of women leaders who were alarmed by the responding officers’ mishandling of a domestic-violence case involving a police sergeant, but by the Honolulu Police Commission, the full City Council and all state lawmakers.

These elected officials and policymakers must recognize that the domestic-violence case that has turned a critical spotlight on HPD is a symptom of a much deeper problem: The culture of impunity that thrives when police officers know that serious punishment for misconduct is rare, and almost never made public.

It will take sustained public pressure for these issues to receive the ongoing attention they deserve. Raising community awareness is an essential component to forge lasting change. One important opportunity is coming up, at an informational briefing to update lawmakers about domestic violence in Hawaii, the Honolulu Police Department’s response and ideas for improvement.

Legislators are the core audience, but community members also are welcome to come listen and learn — and a large turnout would signal how seriously the public takes domestic violence and broader issues of police secrecy and accountability.

The hearing, in the state Capitol’s Conference Room 309, is scheduled for Tuesday from 10 a.m. to noon.

HPD has begun reviewing its domestic-violence enforcement procedures and training, a positive first step. Advocates for domestic-abuse victims must be included as full partners in this overarching reassessment. HPD must not attempt this update in isolation, and a specific timeline must be set for improvements.

Remember, this soul-searching would not be occurring had this issue been left solely to the police. Officers who responded to a violent incident at a Waipa-hu restaurant on Sept. 8 did not even file a report; an investigation began only after surveillance video of an off-duty police sergeant repeatedly punching his girlfriend was leaked to the media.

The case against the police sergeant has been handed off to the prosecutor, and the responding officers who failed to report the incident are under investigation, too. HPD policies clearly hold officers to strict reporting standards when the accused abuser is an officer.

Kealoha’s public distribution of HPD’s policy regarding the investigation of domestic violence cases in general, and involving employees of the department in particular, are an example of the greater transparency he promises, and illustrate a point of contention: The statute allows arrest if a police officer has reasonable grounds to believe a person has committed domestic violence, but the HPD policy informing enforcement of that law lists conditions that advocates contend put too much of the onus on victims. More than 30 alleged victims claim that HPD mishandled their cases in the past 18 months, according to one advocate who will be speaking at Tuesday’s hearing.

Not all of those people were abused by police officers, of course, but studies cited by the National Center for Women and Policing (NCWP) indicate that domestic violence is two to four more times common among police families than among American families in general. The secrecy surrounding police disciplinary records in Hawaii generally means that until an officer is arrested, no explicit public record arises, unless an internal investigation results in the officer’s firing — which has not happened in years.

As the NCWP describes, the urge to downplay police misconduct is a powerful one, fueled not only by the fraternal code but the fact that a person who is convicted of a crime of violence is not allowed to possess a firearm — in other words, cannot be a police officer.

Police officers should be held to the highest standards, in action, ethics and integrity. If recent events truly lead to greater accountability and transparency at HPD, the whole community will benefit.