Honolulu City Council reviews audits on HPD and prosecuting attorney’s office

After reviewing two recently published audits, a Honolulu City Council committee explored options for greater oversight of the Honolulu Police Department while criticizing the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney for its “utter lack of leadership.”

The City Council’s Executive Matters and Legal Affairs Committee spent about two hours Wednesday reviewing the audits — one of the police department and the other of the prosecuting attorney’s office — by the Office of the City Auditor. Both looked at the departments’ respective policies, procedures and controls that guide their handling of potential internal misconduct.

The committee asked follow-up questions to representatives from HPD, led by Police Chief Susan Ballard, and the City Auditor’s Ofice, which included acting City Auditor Troy Shimasaki.

While Ballard received some praise for being open to departmental changes, it’s clear that HPD has a lot to work on to address officer misconduct.

The audit on HPD had reported that its ability to react to misconduct has led to an accumulation of useful data, but it does not do well to prevent misconduct in the first place.

The meeting involved a laundry list of topics ranging from police officers’ abilities to report the misconduct of other officers to better analysis of misconduct data. Part of the meeting was a discussion on improving oversight of the HPD, and Ballard entertained the idea of having a more independent Honolulu Police Commission.

“As long as the police commission is part of the Honolulu Police Department, I think there may be some issues there,” Ballard said. “I believe they need to be removed by charter from the police department so they have their own budget, they have their own hiring (process) … so they don’t have to come to HPD for everything, because then people see that as they’re a part of us.”

The police commission appoints and can remove the police chief, reviews HPD’s rules, regulations and annual budgets prepared by the chief and handles complaints about HPD submitted by the public.

But the commission’s own budget falls within the police department’s, which could lead to conflict, according to Councilman Ron Menor, chairman of the EMLA committee.

“The police department formulates the budget for the police commission,” Menor told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “If the police commission feels it needs more staffing, or needs more resources to exercise more effective oversight … it could be very difficult to accomplish that.”

Menor likened the potential move to the Honolulu City Charter amendments passed in this year’s election that gave the Honolulu Ethics Commission more independence from the city administration.

The city auditor’s office also recommended that City Council establish a commission that performs annual evaluations of the prosecuting attorney.

The police commission is withholding comment on Wednesday’s City Council meeting to give its commissioners time to watch it, but chairwoman Shannon Alivado said the commission likely wouldn’t benefit from becoming more independent.

Alivado understands the potential problem, but said there has been no recent struggle for resources and that the commission’s independence has been maintained.

“Operationally, we are independent of the police department. We hire our own investigators. We do our investigations separate from HPD. Any complaints that are directed to our office never have to go through an intake process that goes through HPD,” she said.

The committee also touched on HPD’s grievance process, which the audit said could “send a message that penalties and punishment can be lessened rather than misconduct should be avoided.”

From 2015 and 2019, 22% of disciplinary actions — normally suspensions or firings — were reduced after a grievance process, which is provided to police officers through HPD’s collective bargaining agreement with the police union, the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers.

When asked if changes to the collective bargaining agreement are needed, Ballard said police officers have a right to due process through the grievance process.

Notably absent from the committee meeting was a representative from the prosecuting attorney’s office, including acting Prosecuting Attorney Dwight Nadamoto — a fact not lost on Menor.

Menor said, “It’s not surprising to me that neither he (Nadamoto) nor a representative from the prosecuting attorney’s office has even bothered to show up to respond to our auditor’s report.”

Despite the high-profile Kealoha scandal, — involving former Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Katherine Kealoha and her husband, former Police Chief Louis Kealoha — that prompted both audits, the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney’s “policies, procedures, and controls have not changed significantly and more needs to be done,” according to the City Auditor’s report, and the department “continues to follow older versions of its policies and procedures established by former administrators.”

Menor said he was dissatisfied with the department’s responses to the Council’s concerns as well as the indication that it was “not planning on doing an exhaustive evaluation” of the situation that allowed corruption.

A spokeswoman for the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney said the department was not informed of the meeting and that its absence on Wednesday was not intentional.

Menor still has high hopes for the prosecuting attorney’s office, as Nadamoto will be replaced by Prosecuting Attorney-elect Steve Alm on Jan. 2.