Nearly 1 of every 6 current Honolulu Police Department officers have been taken to court over criminal or civil allegations of wrongdoing, ranging from excessive force to domestic abuse, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Just since 2010, an officer has been arrested or prosecuted at the rate of one every 5.7 weeks.

Among the most recent examples was Keoki Duarte.

The eight-year police veteran was charged in June for allegedly assaulting an Oahu motorist in a road-rage incident.

Four years earlier, he was one of eight HPD officers sued by two hikers after the pair was allegedly beaten — one suffered broken facial bones — on a remote mountain trail. Police mistook them for burglary suspects.

The hikers also filed complaints with the Honolulu Police Commission, the citizen oversight panel, which determined that the officers acted in a way unbecoming of their profession. Two also were found to have used excessive force.

The city, while denying any wrongdoing, settled the lawsuit for $167,500 last year. HPD did not discipline the officers, disagreeing with the commission’s findings, according to court documents.

Duarte now faces two felony charges and a misdemeanor count in connection with the June road-rage incident on the H-1 freeway. He remains on restricted duty pending the outcome of the criminal case. He did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Astonishing’ data

Several national experts were alarmed by the Star-Advertiser’s findings.

“To have the percentage you found is really just astonishing to me,” said Samuel Walker, professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice in Omaha.

HPD officials, while stressing that the vast majority of officers perform their jobs honorably, acknowledged that the criminal cases are troubling.

“It is alarming that officers are getting arrested,” Deputy Chief Cary Okimoto said in an interview with the Star-Advertiser. “We’re very concerned. And we’re trying to meet that head-on. Like I said, there’s going to be consequences for their actions.”

But the department took issue with how the Star-Advertiser conducted its broader analysis.

The newspaper found that more than 330 officers, or nearly 16 percent of the 2,100-member squad, have been named as defendants in criminal cases, temporary restraining orders and wrongful-conduct lawsuits since joining the force. Most of the lawsuits alleged on-duty civil rights violations, while most of the TROs involved off-duty conduct.

Analysis questioned

Okimoto questioned combining arrests with lawsuits and TROs to illustrate a misconduct problem. Given the nature of police work, officers are going to get sued during their careers, he said, and TROs may or may not involve police-related conduct.

“Those are three separate things, and I don’t think by looking at those three statistics together you can conclude there’s a misconduct problem,” he said. “But certainly we’re addressing and looking at the amount of officers getting arrested and getting into trouble off-duty.”

HPD also pointed out that most of the civil cases were dismissed. “A few cases make the headlines, but there are many more that are thrown out because they are frivolous or unsubstantiated,” department officials said in a statement.

The national experts contacted by the Star-Advertiser said the newspaper’s approach was sound and would produce valuable data.

“I think your findings are very solid,” Walker said. “I think they’re very important and should get a lot of attention.”

Ongoing problem

The analysis comes nearly six years after Chief Louis Kealoha, who was promoted to the top job in late 2009, met with reporters to deplore a spate of officer arrests at the time. Kealoha called the arrests unacceptable and vowed to continue efforts to address the problem.

But that has hardly disrupted the steady stream of unflattering news reports on rogue officers, raising questions about how effectively HPD is dealing with misconduct and whether its discipline serves as an adequate deterrent.

Although the department has not been hit by the racial strife over high-profile fatalities that has rocked some mainland police forces, it has had a steady dose of controversial cases, including ones that have cost taxpayers millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements.

In just the past few years, videos have captured the unseemly side of Honolulu policing, exposing disturbing behavior that normally would go unseen.

One clip showed a plainclothes officer assaulting patrons in an illegal gambling establishment. Another focused on a patrolman wielding his baton and repeatedly striking a man who had been sitting too close to a beached monk seal. A third captured an off-duty sergeant exchanging blows with his girlfriend at a Waipahu restaurant.

The chief himself has been under investigation by the FBI and a federal grand jury for months for alleged wrongdoing, though no charges have been filed, and his attempt to promote a major with a history of domestic abuse unraveled after a huge public backlash.

Officers also have been caught lying or covering up misconduct of their fellow cops.

Bad seeds targeted

Of the 55 criminal cases from the past six years that the newspaper examined, more than half resulted in convictions or deferred pleas of guilty or no contest. The deferrals give the defendants the opportunity to keep their records clean if they stay out of trouble for a certain length of time.

Most of the 18 officers whose pleas were deferred remain on the job. Only one of the 14 who were convicted is still an HPD officer.

HPD officials say the department has taken steps to combat the misconduct problem and increasingly has sanctioned rogue officers, sending a clear message that anyone who crosses the line will be held accountable.

That has been reflected in a rise in discipline cases, according to the annual reports HPD files with the state Legislature.

The Star-Advertiser analysis is the first to provide a systematic look at how often HPD officers are formally accused of wrongdoing. But the newspaper was unable to compare its findings with data from comparable departments on the mainland.

None of the half-dozen national experts contacted by the newspaper was aware of any other research using the same metrics.

Increased pressure

City Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro, whose office pursues cases against Honolulu police officers accused of crimes, said there clearly has been a rise in misconduct, reflected in the higher volume of arrests and prosecutions.

He and others say the increase is partly related to officers being under more pressure and scrutiny than ever before, and the public becoming more defiant and less respectful of law enforcement.

“The fact that more officers are charged means the police are taking misconduct seriously, and we’ve always taken misconduct seriously if there’s a crime,” Kaneshiro said.

Dennis Kenney, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said the newspaper’s finding that nearly 16 percent of officers have been accused of wrongdoing is high.

Most research, he said, suggests that about 5 percent of officers account for a disproportionate share of complaints against police. “You are talking about far more than just complaints if it is going to court,” Kenney said in an email.

But Philip Stinson, an associate professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who has studied arrests of police nationwide, said he believes HPD’s 1-in-6 accusation ratio would be in the range of what one would find doing the same analysis of other large metro forces.

“To me, your numbers make sense,” Stinson said in a phone interview. “To the general population, they should be alarmed.”

The Star-Advertiser requested an interview with Kealoha, but the department did not make him available. Instead, three of his administrators, including Okimoto, the deputy chief, responded to questions.

Likewise, the newspaper sought comments from Mayor Kirk Caldwell, but he did not respond to repeated requests in time for the Star-Advertiser’s deadline.

Fighting misconduct

HPD has several programs in place to try to head off misconduct problems.

One involves recognizing potential warning signs, such as increased sick leave, citizen complaints and other issues that can affect an officer’s performance. Those officers get counseling. If performance continues to lag, they can be referred to a staff psychologist. As a last resort, an evaluation of whether an officer is fit for duty is done.

Supervisors also get training to recognize potential red flags.

“It’s really important that the first-line supervisors are in touch with their employees and address the little issues before they fester into big issues,” said Assistant Chief William Axt, who oversees HPD’s administrative bureau, which includes human resources and training.

The department also began a program more than a year ago to evaluate complaints against officers, with the goal of reaching one complaint per 10,000 interactions with the public. Six months ago, the rate was 1.7; today, it’s 1.5, according to HPD.

But the biggest way to head off misconduct, Okimoto said, is to set clear thresholds on when discipline will be meted out. “That’s the most important thing to establish in an organization, knowing what those consequences are so everyone understands.”

The various efforts seem to be working, Okimoto added, noting that the number of criminal cases pending against officers is down from a year ago.

Among worst in nation

Although the Star-Advertiser was unable to compare HPD’s 1-in-6 ratio with rates at other comparable departments, it was able to crunch numbers from a recent national study that Stinson and several of his Bowling Green colleagues published on

officer arrests. HPD did not fare well.

Using Google-based searches of news articles, the researchers compiled data on arrests from 2005 to 2011 involving officers at hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the country.

Based on those data, HPD had the 10th-worst rate per 100,000 population among the more than 80 police departments with at least 1,000 full-time officers. It was 11th worst on a per-1,000 officers basis.

HPD downplayed the rankings, noting that the researchers themselves cautioned in the April study that their data could not be used to “support a direct comparison of one agency to another nor indeed any cluster of agencies to others.”

But immediately following that warning passage, the researchers included multiple lists of the 10 highest arrest rates by different agency categories — no different from what the Star-Advertiser did to check HPD’s ranking.

Despite the steady pace of arrests, prosecutions and unflattering publicity, the public still seems supportive of HPD.

In a Hawaii Poll taken earlier this summer, about half the respondents voiced “strong” or “very strong” confidence in the department.

Richard Berard, 52, a construction management worker, was among that group. Though he was aware of HPD’s recent troubles, Berard said he believes officers should be lauded for performing dangerous work even as they are underpaid.

“These guys are out there every day risking their lives to save others,” Berard said. “They should be respected a little bit more for what they do.”

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ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LAW

Since 2010, 55 officers from the Honolulu Police Department have been arrested or prosecuted on criminal charges — a rate of one officer every 5.7 weeks, according to a Honolulu Star-Advertiser analysis. Some were acquitted. Some are no longer on the force. Some pleaded guilty or no contest but their pleas were deferred by the court. A deferred plea gives defendants a chance to keep their records clean if they stay out of trouble for a certain period. Here are the 55 current or former officers in alphabetical order:

Source: Court records, media reports, Honolulu Star-Advertiser research

Criminal Cases Since 2010 by Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Scribd

Dana Williams and Dominique Times contributed to this report.