One of the tragedies of the corruption scandal involving former Police Chief Louis Kealoha and his prosecutor wife, Katherine, was that our city couldn’t police its own wrongdoing and federal authorities had to come in and do it for us.

It’s galling to now have members of the city Ethics Commission, who backed down from investigating complaints about the couple’s abuse of power and misuse of city resources, claim they did nothing wrong and suggest they’d do the same thing again.

Clearly, they’re taking Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s dubious cue to move on without bothering to learn anything.

In 2015 the commission’s former Executive Director Chuck Totto had 17 open cases alleging ethics violations by the Kealohas.

The couple retaliated by suing the commission and filing ethics complaints against Totto and investigator Letha DeCaires — typical of their bullying tactics brought to light by federal prosecutors who recently convicted them of conspiracy and obstruction of justice in their attempt to frame an uncle for mailbox theft.

Instead of standing up to the bullying and doing their job, ethics commissioners ordered Totto and DeCaires off the case.

The commission didn’t renew the contract of DeCaires, a former police captain, and harassed Totto into resigning by muzzling him from talking to the media, requiring him to account for his time in six-minute increments and suspending him on vague management issues.

The panel was getting much of its advice from Donna Leong, Caldwell’s corporation counsel, who is now on paid leave after receiving a target letter from federal prosecutors in the Kealoha corruption case.

Ethics Commission Chairwoman Victoria Marks, a former state judge, called a meeting Wednesday to “set some things straight” on the Kealoha matter.

“Basically, we were doing what we thought was best, and everything we could do, so as to not in any way, shape or form have that process tainted in any way,” she said.

More like they were wimpily shirking their duty to enforce city ethics laws and leaving corruption in the Police Department and prosecutor’s office unchecked.

Also lacking credibility was the claim by Marks and other commissioners that the Kealoha case had nothing to do with Totto’s departure.

As Totto put it Wednesday, forbidding him from investigating what would become the biggest corruption case in city history made his position “untenable.”

“The Ethics Commission did not carry out its duty to the public to properly investigate the Kealohas,” he said. “You’ve heard some reasons as to why that was; I don’t buy them.”

Now, after the Kealohas have been convicted in the first of three federal corruption trials and Katherine Kealoha is already in jail, the Ethics Commission assures us it has an attorney investigating the ethics complaints against the couple from 2015.

Thanks for nothing.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.