John Titchen, Honolulu’s Ocean Safety and Lifeguard Services Division chief since 2018, has been placed on administrative leave Tuesday, city officials said.
The leave is unpaid, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser confirmed.
But on Wednesday the Mayor’s Office provided little information as to why Titchen was suspended nor offered any details into a “pending investigation” involving the 5-1/2-year Ocean Safety division leader.
“The city does not comment on personnel matters and declines to comment further on the investigation,” Ian Scheuring, the mayor’s deputy communications director, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser via email.
Titchen’s attorney, Eric Seitz, also did not want to answer questions over his client’s administrative leave.
“I’m waiting for (the city) to respond to me and for us to have an opportunity to sit down and talk,” Seitz told the Star-Advertiser by phone Wednesday. “So, in the meantime, I’m not going to make any further comments, I’m going to wait and see what (the city) is willing to do.”
Seitz said he’d contacted Mayor Rick Blangiardi as well as city Managing Director Mike Formby “who I have been communicating with directly.”
“And we’re discussing that with him and (the city),” he said. “I want to give them an opportunity to respond to us before I say anything further.”
As chief of Honolulu’s 277-member Ocean Safety division, Titchen, 50, has led the city’s lifeguard division, within the larger Honolulu Emergency Services Department.
In his time on the job, the city’s ocean safety program has undergone changes.
“Until quite recently the Honolulu Fire Department used rescue skis, but for a variety of reasons, disbanded their program, turning over all their skis to Honolulu Ocean Safety a few years ago,” Titchen previously told the Star-Advertiser.
He added HFD’s retreat from “the maritime domain,” combined with the passage of a 2019 city ordinance requiring Honolulu to have a “dawn-to-dusk lifeguarding” service, and an ever-increasing number of visitors, mean an increased demand for the city’s Ocean Safety services.
“This is the primary reason I have personally and professionally advocated for a stand-alone Ocean Safety Department,” he said. “On an island of nearly a million residents … a separate department focused exclusively on the nearshore environment makes sense to me, and most other first responders here agree.”
According to the city, the estimated cost to run a new Ocean Safety department would be about $1.4 million annually.
Titchen said he favors a plan now being forwarded by Council member Andria Tupola’s Resolution 50, which urges, via voter-approved charter amendment, Honolulu’s lifeguard and paramedic services be broken up to create that new Ocean Safety department.
Resolution 50 — which requests language be placed on the Nov. 5 general election ballot — also calls for a “board, creating accountability and oversight similar to that provided by the city’s Fire Commission and Police Commission over the city’s other public safety departments, the Honolulu Fire Department and Honolulu Police Department.”
Conversely, Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration — under Resolution 103 —wants to use the mayor’s executive powers to create a full Department of Ocean Safety. The city says it’s interested in creating an oversight commission. However, the mayor does not have the power under the City Charter to create the oversight body and must work with the Council on a charter amendment that will go to the voters establishing the commission.
Titchen, however, has been critical of the city’s plans.
In an April 14 email to all city and county lifeguards, Titchen informed his division about the options to create a new Ocean Safety department but stated his “strong support” for Tupola’s Resolution 50 “because I believe a chief and commission structure best allows for accountability and transparency.”
“Also, I oppose the instant start-up of a Department of Ocean Safety with an appointed Director, because in my professional opinion, this will look just like a carbon copy of the existing Emergency Services Department,” Titchen wrote. “And I believe the HESD model with appointed directors is not a good fit for public safety and in my opinion, this model fails to provide consistent quality leadership for vital responders in Our Honolulu.”
He added, “I firmly believe that Resolution 50 enables voters to decide if Ocean Safety should be its own department, and that when they do vote, they will be giving elected officials — such as the Mayor and Council Members — a mandate on how much to prioritize Ocean Safety.
“In a department with an appointed director, that political appointee will serve only for four years, or maybe eight years. In my experience thus far in the city, and in my opinion, these individuals tend to focus first and foremost on serving the interests of the Mayor who appointed her or him, rather than the interests of the Department or service,” he wrote. “There is nothing necessarily wrong or illegal about this set up — the Mayor is elected to set priorities for the City and run an administration. I just don’t happen to think this organizational construct works well for emergency response departments.”
Moreover, Titchen declared, “I will not seek the position of an appointed Director of a Department of Ocean Safety, and I doubt very much that I would be asked.”
“In my expert opinion, I know of only a very few number of individuals on Oahu who would qualify for this position, based on the language of the Mayor’s proposed executive action,” he wrote. “They include a former Ocean Safety Administrator, a former HESD director, myself, and perhaps one or two other retired or former managers.
“I believe the instant establishment of a Department of Ocean Safety with an appointed Director through executive action is a mistake,” he wrote. “I also believe it’s highly political, and I sincerely worry about the reasons for choosing this particular path toward making Ocean Safety a standalone agency with no, or very little, input from lifeguards.”
Titchen’s job suspension sent shock waves through the ranks of Honolulu’s city and county lifeguards who are represented by HGEA bargaining unit 15.
“I was really saddened,” Ocean Safety Lt. Kawika Eckart told the Star-Advertiser by phone. “I heard it through a rumor first, yesterday on the beach, and from a pretty legitimate person. I was told (Titchen) came into the captains’ meeting and said ‘I can’t attend the meeting’ and walked out.”
Titchen’s April 14 email might have contributed to the suspension, Eckart added.
“I don’t know of any other reason, because he is going against, what I’m assuming, is what the mayor wants to do and he’s kind of rallying the troops,” he said. “And in the email it described both, right? What if the mayor was to appoint this, and what would happen if we went to vote and how that would come out.”
A 40-year city lifeguard who supervises East Oahu’s beaches from Aina Haina to Kualoa, Eckart said a majority of his colleagues “all support us going to the resolution that says to go out to vote and create a commission.”
“We agree with John’s stance on how it would be,” he said, adding the city’s desired path is “way too fast, way too soon, and it will turn into a political thing because it’s going to be appointed, and it’s going to change all of the time, and it wouldn’t be for the betterment of us in Ocean Safety.”
Correction: City officials said John Titchen was placed on administrative leave, but they did not specify that it was unpaid, as was reported in an earlier version of this story. However the Star-Advertiser confirmed that it was unpaid. Also, the mayor does not have the authority under the City Charter to create an oversight commission for a separate Ocean Safety department and must rely on the City Council to do so via legislation. An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that the administration is not interested in attaching the department to an oversight commission. Finally, Ocean Safety lifeguards are part of HGEA bargaining unit 15, not unit 14 as previously reported.
