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No charges for 5 officers in connection with University-area arrest

HONOLULU POLICE DEPARTMENT
                                Sindney Tafokitau, 44, left, and Tevita Cadiente, 25, are seen in a combination of photos.

HONOLULU POLICE DEPARTMENT

Sindney Tafokitau, 44, left, and Tevita Cadiente, 25, are seen in a combination of photos.

Five Honolulu police officers will not be charged for using force to mistakenly arrest a 25-year-old man found running toward a Jan. 1, 2024, shootout with an attempted murder suspect who evaded police and shot two of them, Prosecuting Attorney Steve Alm announced today.

Tevita Cadiente, 25, knew Sindney Tafokitau, a 44-year-old attempted murder suspect who shot his ex-girlfriend with an AR-15 assault rifle on Jan. 1, 2024, before leading officers on a day-long manhunt while shooting at them.

Tafokitau shot and wounded two officers on University Avenue and was shot 23 times. He died at the scene.

Cadiente was intercepted by officers as he ran toward where Tafokitau was shot and killed and later told police he was trying to record it.

“In this case, the responding Honolulu Police Officers believed that Tevita Cadiente was in fact Sidney Tafokitau. The officers knew that Tafokitau had just driven up University Avenue, and Cadiente was running down University Avenue away from where shots were fired and an officer was hit. The radio said ‘he’s running.’ Both Tafokitau and Cadiente are tall Polynesian males with facial hair and were wearing similarly patterned shorts,” Alm told reporters during a news conference today announcing the use of force by the officers was justified. “As a result, the officers attempted to arrest Tevita Cadiente. Cadiente resisted their efforts to arrest him. The officers then used such force “as necessary to compel the person to submission.”

Cadiente allegedly knew Tafokitau from “the clubs” and knew he was being chased by police and “ran out to record it,” according to the findings of a Honolulu Police Department criminal investigation into the incident.

Cadiente admitted to having Tafokitau’s name and number in his cell phone under the name “Nuketown.”

Cadiente admitted to calling Tafokitau “twice that day but he did not answer” and thought the first officer who pulled up beside him and got out with a gun and was yelling at him was “Pepe’s boy with a gun,” according to the police investigation.

Cadiente knew Tafokitau as “Pepe,” according to HPD. Police found no evidence that Cadiente was helping Tafokitau that day.

He told police he didnʻt know the first person who got out of the car to confront him was a police officer. Cadiente allegedly yelled an expletive and tried to run away from the officer before a police van hopped a curb in an attempt to cut him off and drove him into a fence.

An officer pulled Cadiente to the ground face-first. Cadiente resisted arrest despite multiple verbal warnings to surrender.

Officers punched and restrained Tafokitau and tried to handcuff him but he kept reaching for what officers believed was a weapon in his waistband or dark-colored objects under the police van that could have been weapons, according to the police probe.

Cadiente resisted, and one officer felt he was in danger of Cadiente gaining control of his weapon.

Alm noted that state law allows broad discretion for police officers to do what is necessary to gain submission over a suspect resisting arrest.

State law also makes clear that whenever a crime is committed, and the “offenders are unknown, and any person is found near the place where the crime was committed, either endeavoring to conceal oneself, or endeavoring to escape, or under such other circumstances as to justify a reasonable suspicion of the person being the offender, the person may be arrested without warrant.”

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