Citing disappointment at how police handled a 2015 criminal investigation involving a seriously injured child, the Honolulu Police Department’s top executive said his agency intends to take a new look at three more child-injury cases from the past few years.

“We really don’t want this to ever happen again,” Acting Chief Cary Okimoto told the Honolulu Police Commission on Wednesday.

Okimoto was referring to the 2015 case in which police were slow to interview witnesses and potential suspects in the unsolved matter of how toddler Peyton Valiente suffered life-threatening injuries while in the care of his Ewa Beach baby sitter.

The baby sitter, Manuela Ramos, is married to a police officer. No one has been charged.

Although proper procedures were followed in the 2015 case, the investigation didn’t move as quickly as it could have, resulting in witnesses and potential suspects retaining lawyers by the time they were questioned by police, Okimoto said.

“I’m highly disappointed on how this came to be,” he added. “It kind of makes me sad. If it was my child, I might be upset.”

Okimoto said police will take a harder look at the three cases, while the Valiente case remains open.

But Assistant Chief Richard Robinson told the commission that he doesn’t expect a positive outcome in the Valiente case, citing the pace in which the investigation was conducted and the lack of sufficient evidence. “At this point, witnesses no longer are coming forward voluntarily,” he said.

Asked whether witnesses could be compelled to answer questions, Robinson told commissioners that subpoenas could be issued through an investigative grand jury process.

Prosecutors, based on evidence collected by police, are the ones who seek indictments through the grand jury process.

“We are going to try every possible option, but I do not want to give anyone false hope, especially now,” Robinson said. “It’s going to be an extremely difficult case to resurrect.”

In May 2016, prosecutors declined to pursue the case, citing a lack of evidence pointing to an individual suspect. After Civil Beat, an online news site, raised questions last month about the investigation, police decided to take a fresh look.

Later in Wednesday’s commission meeting, Chelsea Valiente, the mother of Peyton, now 3, told the panel that she didn’t appreciate police saying a positive outcome in her son’s case is unlikely, given that the investigation is still open.

“Please do not tell us it doesn’t look good, and there’s nothing else that can be done,” she said.

Valiente also questioned why parents of other children who were in Ramos’ care at the time were not questioned or notified of what happened, and she criticized police for having to learn about new developments in the case from the media.

Valiente said she was informed by HPD on Tuesday that police are taking a new look at the case — several weeks after the commission was told the same thing by Okimoto.

She expressed frustration at the many questions that remain unanswered.

“We don’t have answers to this day and we may never have answers,” Valiente said, choking up. “I’m not sure how many of you are parents here, but to know that my son will never be the same and (I) have no answers for when he grows up and asks me, ‘Mommy, how did I get this scar?’ I have no answers to give him.”

Peyton suffered a life-threatening blow to his head and other severe injuries in January 2015 while in the care of Ramos. Valiente has said that she and her husband believe the investigation was hindered largely because the baby sitter is married to HPD Cpl. Mark Ramos.

As the commission meeting continued, Valiente and her family were taken to another room at HPD headquarters by Robinson to be briefed on the case. Okimoto also apologized to the Valiente family during the commission meeting.

In the wake of questions raised about the investigation, HPD decided to look at 112 cases from the past three years in which a child suffered serious injury. Forty-four of those cases involved alleged criminal actions, Robinson told the commission.

Prosecutors declined to pursue prosecutions in six of the 44 cases, while 13 others were deemed pending because they lacked sufficient evidence to prove a crime, according to Robinson. Of those cases, police decided to take a new look at two from 2016 and one from 2015, Robinson said. He provided no other details of the three cases.

Max Sword, chairman of the commission, said he was disappointed about how the Valiente case was handled and the revelation that police are taking a new look at three more cases. He said he was pleased, though, that the agency did a review of all the child-injury cases.

“When you have a big department like HPD, you’re not going to get 100 percent perfect cases,” he told reporters.