City approves $150,000 for Kealoha lawyer fees

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BRUCE ASATO / 2012

The City Council voted to approve up to $150,000 to hire attorneys in four cases involving Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha, above at a 2012 news conference.

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A Honolulu City Council committee gave preliminary approval Tuesday for up to $150,000 to hire three sets of outside attorneys to represent Police Chief Louis Kealoha in four cases against him and the Honolulu Police Department.

Councilman Ron Menor, who heads the Council Executive Matters and Legal Affairs Committee, said his committee voted to approve the expenditures on the advice of city Corporation Counsel Donna Leong because Kealoha in the summer sued the city in connection with actions taken against him and Katherine Kealoha, his wife, by the city Ethics Commission and its former executive director Chuck Totto.

“It’s a conflict of interest issue and somewhat complicated,” Menor said after the EMLA Committee meeting. The full Council will hold a final vote on the four requests at its Dec. 1 meeting.

The Kealohas have been in the center of controversy since last year when it surfaced that the couple is the subject of a federal investigation.

The committee voted to approve:

>> Up to $50,000 to retain the services of McCorriston Mukai &McKinnon to represent Kealoha in cases brought by Christoper Baker after he was denied a permit to carry a firearm in public.

>> Up to $50,000 to hire the McCorriston firm to represent the chief in a similar firearm case brought by Kirk C. Fisher.

>> Up to $25,000 to retain the services of attorney Cary T. Tanaka in a case brought by Jamie Kalani Rice, who claims he was beaten and falsely arrested by HPD officers while he was praying and chanting with a Hawaiian monk seal in September 2014. HPD says Rice harassed the seal.

>> Up to $25,000 to hire Chung &Ikehara ELC to represent Kealoha in a case brought by the family of the late Sheldon Haleck against the city, Kealoha and Leong. Haleck’s parents, wife and son claim that in March 2015 police officers acted unjustifiably when they shot Haleck with an electric stun gun in front of Iolani Palace. Haleck died the day after. HPD said Haleck was intoxicated by drugs and was running in the middle of South King Street and behaving erratically.