Ten years ago on Wednesday, June 21, around 11:20 p.m. a white car pulls up to a quaint Kahala home and parks next to a residential mailbox. Its license plate and insignia are blurred by the glare of streetlights.

A man exits the vehicle, pulls the heavy metal mailbox off its pedestal, places it into his car, and drives away. The entire event is captured on surveillance cameras.

The mailbox and its contents are never recovered.

Two of the most prominent law enforcement officials at the time were the owners of the home and the mailbox. Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha and his wife, City and County deputy prosecutor, Katherine Kealoha.

Eight days later, Katherine Kealoha identifies her uncle, Gerard Puana, as the “thief.” Gerard is arrested as he pulls into his church’s parking lot. He is ultimately charged in federal court with a felony, destruction of a mailbox.

The rest is, as they say, history. This seemingly insignificant theft sparked the largest public corruption investigation and prosecution in Hawaii history and 10 years later, we are still reeling from its effect.

The investigation and successful prosecution of the Kealohas had a butterfly effect within federal law enforcement circles. It not only opened the door to investigating and prosecuting other public corruption cases, a door that had been closed for many years, it is now not only acceptable but expected for federal law enforcement in Hawaii to go after public corruption.

Since the end of 2020, when the Kealohas were sentenced to jail, we have witnessed a number of corruption cases brought by federal prosecutors involving a variety of Hawaii government officials, including the former chairperson of the Honolulu Police Commission, the former city managing director, the former city Corporation Counsel, the former Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney, and notably, two state legislators. And the list continues to grow with no end in sight, with news of one lawmaker’s ongoing cooperation.

All this is good for Hawaii, good for democracy, and ultimately good for justice.

However, after effectively killing its own investigations of the Kealohas, the Honolulu Ethics Commission, to my knowledge, has done nothing to reform their procedures to prevent a reoccurrence of what happened to Gerard Puana.

While the Police Commission has made some progress to live up to its responsibilities and be more transparent, none of these efforts have been institutionalized. And even though several reform-minded commissioners have been appointed to the Police Commission, they have always been outnumbered by the stay-the-course majority. The next set of commissioners cannot and should not simply go back to deciding everything in executive session, in secret, as they have in the past. But they will if we let them.

Sadly, neither of these oversight city commissions have examined what went wrong much less taken necessary corrective action.

Things can change for the better. It requires perseverance. It requires persistence. It requires continued public pressure on our politicians.

In addition, the state attorney general and the county prosecutor’s office have been noticeably silent. Almost all the public corruption cases brought to date have emanated from federal prosecutors.

In 2022, in an attempt to address the growing public corruption scandals, the House created a Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct, commonly referred to as “The Foley Commission.” Public hearings were held, and specific recommendations made to institute reforms to increase transparency, regulate and ensure ethical conduct, and to punish those who did not.

Unfortunately, despite overwhelming public support for these measures, the more substantive and meaningful bills, like campaign finance reform and term limits, were killed off by the Legislature while less impactful reform recommendations were enacted.

But at least our state government tried. That’s something we can build upon during next year’s legislative session and in the years to come.

Yet, 10 years after the theft of the mailbox, the prosecution of the Kealohas, and the Foley Commission’s report recognizing that corruption in Hawaii is systemic, our politicians continue to hold onto the belief that these corruption cases simply reflect nothing more than the actions of a “few bad apples.” Thus, real and long-lasting reform has been successfully stonewalled.

This is not good for Hawaii. This is not good for democracy. This is not good for justice.

But things can change for the better. It requires perseverance. It requires persistence. It requires continued public pressure on our politicians. It requires the press to be vigilant in its reporting on how our politicians vote and behave. And most importantly, it requires the public to take notice, participate, and demonstrate they care about the direction our government is headed.

Armed with hope and determination, we can use the infamous “mailbox case” as a springboard for positive reform. That will be good for Hawaii, good for democracy, and good for justice.