A former Honolulu police sergeant claims he is being prosecuted in retaliation for arresting a convicted felon against the wishes of former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha.
Albert Lee is accused of crashing his vehicle into an electrical vault while drunk and lying about being the driver. He was still employed by the Honolulu Police Department but off duty at the time of the early morning Nov. 17, 2016, crash off Lunalilo Home Road in Hawaii Kai.
Lee was in the passenger seat and the only person in or near the vehicle when responding officers arrived. He told the officers someone else was driving but that he didn’t know who because he was asleep.
His fellow officers didn’t arrest Lee or test him for
alcohol intoxication. The city Department of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Career Criminal Unit, headed by Kealoha, charged Lee nearly a year later, after the officers changed their reports.
According to a document his lawyer filed in state court Monday, Lee claims the charges are part of a continuing effort to retaliate against him for a Dec. 4, 2015, arrest he made in conjunction with the FBI. The person he arrested was Michael John Miske Jr., who at the time owned a Restaurant Row nightclub and Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control. Miske has felony convictions for kidnapping, attempted assault, theft and credit card fraud.
Lee arrested Miske for driving away after another officer, one of Lee’s subordinates, stopped him a month earlier and was about to cite him for using a cellphone while driving.
According to the document, Lee claims that Miske called the subordinate officer, promised to meet but never followed through. After the officer looked for Miske at the nightclub, Miske called back and threatened to go to the “top of the food chain.”
At the time of Miske’s arrest for refusing to comply with a lawful order of a police officer, Kealoha’s unit was prosecuting him and his brother in connection with a 2012 assault of two people in a parking lot near the nightclub.
Lee claims that a few days after Miske’s “food chain” call, Kealoha told the officer that Miske was assisting the city prosecutor in another case and instructed the officer to leave Miske alone. Lee claims that a few days after Kealoha’s call, another person from the city Department of the Prosecuting Attorney called to tell the officer to leave Miske alone.
In May 2016, five months after Miske’s arrest, Lee received a complaint from then-Deputy Police Chief Cary Okimoto charging him with violating HPD policies for not claiming overtime for the day he made the arrest. Okimoto handed Lee a written reprimand in February 2017.
Lee says he believes Kealoha is behind the HPD policy violation charge against him. He says he believes Kealoha directed a city prosecutor investigator to file a complaint against him.
Lee’s allegations against Kealoha are in response to Kealoha’s request to block a subpoena for her personnel file. State Circuit Judge Edward Kubo had already rejected a similar request from the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney.
Kealoha’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Miske pleaded no contest in the traffic stop case and paid a $200 fine and $37 in court-related fees. His assault case is still pending and scheduled for trial in July. The state Attorney General took over the prosecution in May 2017.
The city prosecutor handed over Lee’s DUI and a handful of other cases connected to Kealoha to the Attorney General in February. The Kauai Office of the Prosecuting Attorney is now handling the case.
