New and longer surveillance videos of a scuffle between a Honolulu Police Department sergeant and his then-girlfriend don’t excuse the veteran officer’s actions, but provide more context into what occurred that night, Police Chief Louis Kealoha said Friday.
Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Dave Kajihiro said much of the focus of an internal investigation being conducted by HPD’s Professional Standards Office is now centered on the responses of HPD personnel rather than the actions of Sgt. Darren Cachola, the officer at the center of the investigation.
An Oahu grand jury last week declined to bring charges against Cachola.
HPD’s Professional Standards Office, however, is still investigating the matter.
The initial snippet of video that media received from outside sources showed only Cachola appearing to throw punches at the woman, even after she ended up on the floor, until the manager arrived. The footage created an uproar about why Cachola had not been charged.
Kealoha told reporters Friday that after he saw the initial video, "I was taken aback. That is totally unacceptable." However, "when you look at the entire incident, that doesn’t excuse what Sgt. Cachola did; that definitely adds something else to the story. It tells a different story … that both of them were engaging in combative behavior."
Kajihiro said "when you look at the video, it’s crazy to me what they’re doing. But still, you still gotta follow the law."
Four sets of video, without any accompanying sound, and an audio recording of the initial 911 call made by the manager of Restaurant Kuni, where most of the incident occurred Sept. 6, were released to media Friday by HPD.
The first two videos show footage from several cameras inside and just outside a nearby liquor store. The two alternately speak and then take turns on the cellphone with someone else. When outside the store, they wrestle, almost casually, over the phone, falling to the ground before getting up and walking away together. Several times she appears to half-heartedly knee him in the groin.
The third video shows the man and woman inside the restaurant, with the woman stepping into the manager’s office and pointing back at the officer in what appears to be an effort to stop him from following her in. He then follows her and she pushes him away. As he steps back, the manager appears for the first time and appears to be speaking sternly at him. The woman then walks between them and appears to be urging her boyfriend to go the other way. When he stops and turns around, he appears to take a half-hearted jab at her. After she says something to him, he takes what appears to be a fighting position, and she follows and takes off her sandals. She then punches him twice against the side of his head.
He then pushes her about 5 yards backward and punches her sides repeatedly until she falls to the ground, near the manager’s office. This is the segment of the video that was distributed by outside sources to the media. Her co-workers, the manager and a male customer from the bar side at the far end of the establishment rush to intervene.
The woman then tries several times to separate Cachola from the manager, resorting to yanking on his T-shirt, shoving him, slapping him and punching him in the back.
In the last video a number of officers and one whom Kajihiro described as patrol sergeant on duty appear and speak to Cachola as he is sitting in a booth. They then escort him out.
Asked whether the patrol sergeant acted properly in escorting Cachola out and driving him away, Kajihiro declined to comment and said it is part of the internal investigation.
"It’s not perfect as far as what everyone did in this investigation, but I think you can kind of see some of things we need to address and we will address it, and take it very seriously," Kajihiro said.
The phone exchange between the dispatcher and the restaurant manager is also part of the internal investigation. After a playing of the minute-long exchange, Kajihiro said, "As you can see, maybe we have some courtesy issues."
In the recording, the dispatcher sounds curt and tries to hurry the conversation along. When the manager suggests the man threatening him may be a police officer and asks, "Will you send someone out, please?" the woman responds, "We’ll send an officer, a sergeant and the chief of police! What is the guy’s name?"
When the manager said he doesn’t know the officer’s name, the dispatcher snaps back, "Then why you tell me he’s a police officer?"
Kajihiro said, "It is a weird relationship, I can say, but that doesn’t mean domestic violence has occurred. We couldn’t prove that."
The woman told officers, prosecutors and the grand jury that the two were sparring and not intent on hurting each other. When she was examined two days later, the woman displayed no injuries, police said.
David Hayakawa, the woman’s attorney, said the extended video shows proof there was no domestic violence. The blows thrown by Cachola did not land — intentionally, he said.
The fighting, fake or not, "clearly is not appropriate behavior for a restaurant," he said. However, "domestic violence is about fear. And there is no fear in this woman of this man."
Nanci Kreidman, executive director of the Domestic Violence Action Center, disagreed.
Even though a person is hitting back, or appears to be the aggressor, it does not mean she is not a victim. "It’s very easy to believe that just because a person hits back or hits also, they’re not a victim."
"When you think about a police officer, and the power he wields and the weapons he possesses, that’s an implied threat all the time," she said. Even if kickboxing is her hobby, as Hayakawa has stated, "he has a gun."
