As the saying goes, hindsight has 20-20 vision, and things that might seem obvious now may not have been known or even imagined at the time the decision was made.
That fat $250,000 severance payment to Louis Kealoha to get him to leave the Police Department actually didn’t look very good at the onset and looks pretty stupid now, but it’s important to remember the context.
The bottom line at the time was getting the chief away from the Police Department before things got even worse.
In January 2017 when the settlement was reached between the Honolulu Police Commission and Chief Kealoha, no indictments had been handed down against him despite an investigation that had gone on for two years. Now that both he and his wife have been convicted of felonies, have pleaded guilty to other crimes and he has waived his right to appeal, things look very different, but back then it was a swirl of bizarre talk of a mailbox and a family feud and a desire to move the whole mess out of the police headquarters on Beretania Street.
Kealoha’s contract as chief had recently been re-upped, and would not have expired until November of this year. Imagine if he had held on and held on even longer.
Then-Police Commission Chairman Max Sword said at the time that what factored into the decision to allow Kealoha to retire with full benefits plus the payout was the financial cost of a protracted legal process. The Kealohas already had shown themselves quick to file lawsuits against people and agencies that crossed them. “We believe that $250,000 is a reasonable amount,” Sword said.
Police Commission member Judge Steve Levinson supported the payout but explained his position this way: “This was for me a very tough decision. In the end, I went the way I went on a cost-benefit analysis basis, which took into account not just money, but the effect on the department of a protracted dispute and other emotional costs and tolls that would have been taken on a lot of people individually, the public at large, the department.”
Police Commission member Loretta Sheehan was the lone dissenting vote. She issued a statement calling the severance payment “expensive and very likely undeserved.” Sheehan had wanted a hearing to examine the issues that had been raised regarding Kealoha’s leadership and management abilities before any sort of retirement agreement was reached.
Now that we’ve reached the denouement of this terrible saga, the provision that required Kealoha to give back that $250,000 if convicted of a felony is clearly in effect, though whether the city ever gets that money is yet to be seen. There are direct victims of the Kealohas’ crimes — her grandmother, the kids whose father’s death benefits she squandered — who probably should be first in line. It may be cold comfort, but the city did get what it paid for with that $250,000. It got Louis Kealoha and his messy entanglements out of the Police Department.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
