HPD whistleblower to receive $650,000
By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer
With no discussion and with no admission of liability, the City Council yesterday voted to pay veteran Honolulu police officer Kenneth Kamakana $650,000 to settle his whistleblower lawsuit against the HPD.
The settlement means that Kamakana's federal court lawsuit — prompted by the secret tape recording of a criminal defendant by a secretive unit of the police department — will not go to trial and there will be no public resolution of the serious charges of wrongdoing leveled by Kamakana against the department and its elite Criminal Intelligence Unit.
As part of the settlement, Kamakana will not be allowed to return to that unit.
Police Chief Lee Donohue, who was dismissed as a defendant in the lawsuit during settlement negotiations, said yesterday he wanted the case to go to trial "so that our side could be told" but the city's insurance company decided to settle.
"The settlement of this case was an economic decision made by the insurance company ... (which) will be the sole source of settlement funds," Donohue said in a written statement.
Donohue added that "no taxpayer funds" will be used to pay the settlement, although the city paid $1 million in taxpayer money to fight the lawsuit before the city's insurance policy kicked in to cover an estimated $1 million more in additional legal expenses, plus the $650,000 settlement.
In a press release issued late yesterday, city Corporation Counsel David Ara-kawa repeated Donohue's statement that the decision to settle the case was economic, "based in large measure on the litigation expenses the insurance company was paying to to defend this lawsuit and prepare for trial."
Arakawa said the $650,000 will "cover a portion of (Kamakana's) costs and attorneys' fees."
Kamakana referred questions yesterday to his attorney, William McCorriston, who was unavailable for comment.
A 30-year veteran of HPD who specialized in organized crime and narcotics-trafficking cases, Kamakana filed the lawsuit in November 2001, alleging that he was transferred out of the CIU and investigated for criminal offenses by the Internal Affairs office of HPD after he reported wrongdoing by CIU officers to the FBI.
Thousands of pages of records filed in the lawsuit were sealed from public view, per an agreement between Kamakana and the city, until The Advertiser filed motions more than a year ago to unseal the records.
Federal Magistrate Judge Leslie Kobayashi repeatedly instructed the city to unseal many of the records, but city lawyers appealed and disputed those rulings, releasing some records but withholding others.
A private attorney appointed by Kobayashi to review the city's confidentiality claims billed the city more than $80,000 for that work alone.
Among the records which were eventually unsealed were documents showing that federal law enforcement agencies and even units within HPD itself were concerned about unusually close relationships that had developed between CIU officers and the criminal figures they were supposed to be investigating.
In the often murky world of criminal intelligence gathering, police officers often establish friendly relationships with criminals, but some in law enforcement here felt that some CIU officers had gone too far, according to records in the Kamakana case.
In one incident, a known organized crime figure under active investigation by the FBI and HPD's vice unit, and a man on parole for an organized crime-related murder conviction, were taken by a CIU officer to the hospitality suite of a statewide meeting of criminal intelligence agencies. One undercover police officer was hustled out of the room before the criminal figures could see him, according to sworn testimony taken in the Kamakana lawsuit.
In his written statement, Donohue said that various law enforcement agencies investigated the allegations in Kamakana's lawsuit and determined "there was no basis upon which to pursue any criminal action against the officers named in the lawsuit."
The settlement says that Kamakana "will not be allowed to return to the Criminal Intelligence Unit," according to Donohue.
Kamakana now is assigned to a joint federal-local agency investigating drug trafficking in Hawai'i.
Reach Jim Dooley at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2447.
