Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard won high marks in her first annual review from her bosses at the city Police Commission.

Commission Chairwoman Loretta Sheehan on Wednesday was effusive in her praise of Ballard, who took the reins of the police department following the tumultuous seven-year tenure of former Police Chief Louis Kealoha, who retired at the beginning of 2017 and was indicted on public corruption charges several months later.

“You had an extraordinary year,” Sheehan said. “You took a fractured and somewhat mistrustful department and completely turned it around. You lead by hard work, by inspiration, you surround yourself with dedicated people and you lead by example.”

Ballard thanked the commission for its work. “You folks also stepped into a very difficult role,” she said. “You hold us more accountable and thank you because that’s the way it should be.”

The process of evaluating the chief was itself revamped and markedly different from previous years. The commission actively solicited comments from the rank and file of the department as well as the broader community and spent several months evaluating the feedback.

In previous years, the commission simply distributed its evaluation form to the media listing a handful of criteria for which the chief could be marked “exceeds expectations, meets expectations and does not meet expectations.”

The full evaluation and “contributing data” are to be made available to the public today, Sheehan said.

Of seven areas for which she was marked, she received “exceeds expectations” in five of them and “meets expectations” grades in the two others, the chief told reporters after the announcement.

$550,000 settlement discussed

In recent weeks, Ballard and the commission have come under fire publicly after the Honolulu City Council voted unanimously to approve a $550,000 settlement payment to retired police Lt. DeeAnn Koanui. The 32-year veteran alleged in a 2009 lawsuit that Ballard, then a major and commander of HPD’s Training Division, tampered with test scores for recruits and then ordered incriminating documents destroyed.

On Wednesday, Ballard and several commission members took issue with some of the criticism, including a Honolulu Star-Advertiser editorial calling on the panel to compel Ballard to better explain what happened, and a piece expressing a similar sentiment by Star-Advertiser columnist David Shapiro.

Ballard, during her regular chief’s report to the commission, said “every single one of the allegations that was in the lawsuit were fully investigated by multiple entities — the EEOC, the Ethics Commission, Internal Affairs as well as SHOPO. And all of which did not uncover any facts that supported the allegations.”

She said she stands by all the decisions she made as a major, which were also reviewed and approved by her superiors at the time, Ballard said. She pointed out that she volunteered the information about the long-standing lawsuit when she interviewed for the chief’s job “and I’m assuming that I had answered everything and (commission members at the time) must have been comfortable with the answers that I had.”

Economic considerations factored into the decision by both parties to settle, she said, and she suggested that critics should talk to attorneys with the city Department of Corporation Counsel to explain the details.

Sheehan, one of two of the current six commission members who participated in the chief’s selection process, confirmed that Ballard brought the lawsuit to the interviewing panel’s attention.

“At the time, I had zero concerns,” Sheehan said. She pointed out the commission plays no role in approving settlements. “For those who have a problem with the City and County settling lawsuits, you really have to take that up with the Corporation Counsel and City Council because there is no misconduct, in my opinion, by Chief Ballard.”

Commissioner Steven Levinson, the only other current member who was one of four commissioners who voted unanimously to hire Sheehan, was unhappy with Shapiro’s suggestion that the commission “disregarded” Koanui’s allegations when they selected Ballard.

“We interviewed a number of fine candidates,” Levinson said. “When the interviews were concluded, by two men and two women I might add, it took the group about one second to come to an agreement that Maj. Ballard was clearly and indisputably the most qualified candidate, taking into account all the information that (Ballard) gave us during the course of the interview.”

Levinson said he continues to believe that she was the best candidate and that the suggestions made by the two opinion pieces were “way, way out of line” when the commission has no control over settlements.

Kealoha counsel approved

Also on Wednesday, the commission voted to approve providing legal counsel to Kealoha on one of the federal criminal cases against him while rejecting a request on a second case. The approval for legal expenses involving the so-called “mailbox” case was 4-1, with Commission Vice Chairwoman Shannon Alivado the lone “no” vote. The rejection of fees for the second case, involving bank, identity and mail fraud, was rejected unanimously.

Sheehan said explanations for the decisions would be in formal documents to be made public but gave no date for their release.