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A 37-year volunteer reserve officer of the Honolulu Police Department said he saw active-duty officer Vincent Morre assault a patron of an illegal gambling house in September but did nothing about it.
"I should have reported it," Joseph Becera said in U.S. District Court Monday. "I didn’t do that."
He also said when the FBI asked him whether he saw the assault, "I wasn’t truly honest with the agents."
Becera, 77, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin Chang that he is sorry for both of his failings. He pleaded guilty Monday to deliberately concealing his knowledge of a felony by omitting the assault in his official police report and to making a false statement to the FBI.
At his sentencing in October, Becera faces a maximum three-year prison term for the concealment and a maximum five years for lying to the FBI.
In a plea deal, Assistant U.S. Attorney Darren Ching told Chang that the government is not charging Becera with falsification of a record in a federal investigation, which carries a maximum 20-year prison term.
Outside court after the hearing, Becera’s lawyer, Andrew Park, told reporters that Becera pleaded guilty because he knows he made a mistake. He said Becera started accepting responsibility for the mistake when he resigned from his volunteer position in October.
As to why Becera didn’t report Morre’s actions, Park said, "They did work together for a long time. And Officer Morre did, in fact, once save Mr. Becera’s life. So that had a little bit to do with it."
Security cameras recorded what happened in Doc’s game room behind McKinley Car Wash on Sept. 5.
The FBI says the video shows Becera, Morre and officer Nelson Tamayori enter the gambling house dressed in plain clothes. Morre and Tamayori were members of HPD’s District 5 Crime Reduction Unit in Kalihi.
The FBI said the three men went to Doc’s on a tip that a forgery suspect was there.
The video shows Morre kicked a seated gambling house patron in the face, the FBI said. The three men then walked to the back of the gambling house, apparently to look for the suspect.
Morre returned to the front of the gambling house where he kicked another seated patron and struck him in the face with both hands, the FBI said. Morre then kicked the first patron in the face again, knocking the patron off his chair.
The FBI says the video shows Morre then walked away and threw a chair at the first patron, striking the patron in the head.
The patron’s lawyer, Myles Breiner, and the FBI say the chair opened a wound that required three staples to close.
Morre, 37, a nine-year HPD veteran, pleaded guilty last month to two counts of using his police powers to deprive a person of his constitutional rights. He faces a maximum 10-year prison term for each count plus mandatory restitution at his sentencing in August.
Tamayori, a 14-year HPD veteran, is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday on a charge of deliberately concealing his knowledge of Morre’s assault on the patron. His lawyer, Thomas Otake, says Tamayori will plead guilty.
HPD says it suspended Morre and Tamayori after it learned of the assaults. The two men are now on restricted, administrative duty.
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