Four men met in the Honolulu mayor’s office to discuss what should have been a mundane topic: turning oversight of ocean safety into its own department. 

Then, one of them — ocean safety chief John Titchen — challenged Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s plans, calling his handling of the situation “8th grade level politics at best.”

Pointing at Titchen, the mayor responded, “Who the fuck are you to come talk to me like that,” according to an internal city investigation into the April 2024 incident.

“Rick admitted that he yelled at me and swore at me,” Titchen told Civil Beat, referencing the investigator’s report, “which is really not a great way to treat civil service employees.”

It’s not the first time Blangiardi has been accused of losing his cool. 

Two months ago, with a pointed finger and furrowed brow, he scolded council member Tyler Dos Santos-Tam at a committee meeting for speaking with Hawaii News Now about the permitting department’s bumpy rollout of new software. He’s also been known to yell at journalists, and former police chief Joe Logan alleges in a lawsuit that Blangiardi coerced him to resign by threatening him and his family.

But after the meeting last year, Titchen would be the one to pay, losing his job three months later. The investigator had concluded he demonstrated insubordination and violated the city’s Respectful Workplace Policy. 

Now Titchen is a finalist to lead the newly reconfigured Department of Ocean Safety, which is no longer under the direct thumb of the mayor. If he gets the job, Titchen would report to the new Ocean Safety Commission — whose members are appointed by the mayor. 

Highlighting the life-and-death stakes any Ocean Safety chief will face, Hawaiʻi ranks second in the nation per-capita for resident drownings and drowning is the leading cause of death for children in the state.

Titchen told Civil Beat he’s not concerned about his past history with the mayor getting in the way: “It isn’t something I’d worry about.” He also said the investigator got it wrong and the comment about eighth grade-level politics was in reference to the mayor’s handling of the meeting, not the department.

Blangiardi in a written statement said he supports a different candidate, the current interim Ocean Safety director Kurt Lager. As to the mayor’s history of heated comments, communications director Scott Humber said, “you’re mistaking anger for passion … it’s very much his passion about these things.”

Discussion Breaks Down

Less than a month before meeting with Titchen in his office, Blangiardi had announced during his State of the City address that Ocean Safety would become its own department. It was a victory for ocean safety advocates — and for Titchen — after years of insisting the city’s lifeguards deserve their own dedicated funding. 

But Titchen disagreed with how the mayor planned to set up the new department. After struggling to set up a meeting, he asked for help from Andrew Yani, a developer and former lifeguard he knew, because Yani owns land the city wants to purchase for a first responders center.

The 2024 meeting started with pleasant greetings among Titchen, Yani, the mayor and managing director Mike Formby, according to the investigator’s report. During his time in the U.S. Coast Guard, Titchen said in the report, he learned it can help to lead with an icebreaker, so he told the mayor he had been trying to “put the ball on the tee” and help the administration reach its goals. 

The report says he also made an analogy to baseball and mentioned being removed from his team during a game as a way to communicate he wasn’t interested in a further role in the new department and wanted to focus on doing his best in his current job.

Blangiardi and Formby were confused by these comments. They told Titchen — snidely, Titchen would tell the investigator — that they didn’t understand why all that was relevant. 

The main disagreement that day was who should oversee the new department. Titchen thought the department’s director should be accountable to an independent commission of volunteers rather than the mayor. Blangiardi, on the other hand, wanted to launch the new department with a director of his choosing.

During the meeting, Blangiardi and Formby told Titchen they supported eventually having a commission, but under the City Charter the mayor doesn’t have the power to create commissions. Voters, however, could create a commission through a charter amendment.

But Titchen wasn’t convinced the mayor really supported a commission. He claimed he’d observed unethical behavior by his direct supervisor, Department of Emergency Services director Jim Ireland, which underscored to him the importance of having a volunteer-based commission for oversight. 

For instance, he recounted a time when Ireland had suggested the two of them drive an emergency vehicle with the lights and siren on just to cut through traffic on the way to the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational surf competition in 2023. The blowup in the mayor’s office came after Titchen said he had voiced concerns about Ireland to Formby but they “fell on deaf ears.” 

“A commission offers greater transparency and visibility,” Titchen told Civil Beat. “And the reason I said that was I had witnessed, by then, unethical and illegal activity by Ireland.” 

When Ireland was accused by former employees at a City Council committee meeting last February of fostering a toxic workplace, temporarily derailing his reappointment, their allegations also included that he likes to insert himself in emergency situations for the adrenaline rush.

In an email, Ireland told Civil Beat that Titchen’s claims were untrue.

“A few years ago, Titchen made allegations of improper conduct against me related to the 2023 Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational, claims that were investigated and found to be unsubstantiated,” Ireland said in an email. “In fact, the investigation concluded that Titchen misrepresented the basis of his complaint.”

Honolulu residents voted during the 2024 General Election to create the Ocean Safety Commission and Titchen also recently proposed a charter amendment to create a volunteer commission to oversee Ireland’s job.

Inside the mayor’s office in April 2024, the argument was broken up by Formby, who told the investigator he used his arm to slice an invisible wall between Titchen and Blangiardi. Yani, who accompanied Titchen to the meeting, asked Titchen to leave the room and wait outside. 

Yani then held out both of his arms and said the hair on them was standing up, the report quotes Formby as saying. Yani said he never would have come if he had known what would happen, and he apologized profusely to the mayor and Formby “for about 5 minutes, an uncomfortably long time,” Formby says. 

Yani then shook hands with the two men and left. By that point, Titchen was gone. 

‘You’ve Got To Be Able To Have A Relationship’

After Honolulu voters created the Ocean Safety Commission, the commission’s first big task was to find a permanent director.

Titchen initially didn’t think he’d apply. By the time it was posted, he had found another job with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and he said things were going well. 

“I don’t want to be dramatic and associated with drama,” he said in a September interview with Civil Beat. “To be honest, I’m in a much better place. I surf a lot more, spend a lot more time with my family.” 

A little more than a week later, he texted that he had changed his mind. He declined to explain why during a more recent interview, saying he wanted to save it for the commission’s next meeting on Dec. 4.

At that meeting, the commission will hear public testimony on the three finalists, including acting director Lager and retired city lifeguard and supervisor Ron Bregman. A decision likely won’t be made for another meeting or two, with the permanent chief starting in early 2026. 

Ocean Safety Commission member Racquel Achiu said despite the past drama, which she sees as a clash of personalities, Titchen qualifies for the role and is therefore being given a fair shot. She also said it’s important that whoever gets the job can maintain good relationships with colleagues, including the mayor, who maintains a lot of sway over Ocean Safety’s budget.

“Anyone who takes a position — I don’t care if they’re Santa Claus or the devil himself — you’ve got to be able to have a relationship, a productive, respectful relationship, with the people you have to interact with every day,” she said.

Achiu said she was aware that Titchen had issues working with Ireland. Now that Ocean Safety is out from under EMS, however, its chief wouldn’t have to rely on Ireland as the department’s ultimate arbiter. 

That dynamic was a big reason Ocean Safety was given its own department. Achiu said she has a lot of respect for Ireland, who used to oversee the division, but she and others felt Ocean Safety was never his priority given his other responsibilities. 

“You got ambulances, you got health services, C.O.R.E. and Ocean Safety … in this department, you’re pretty much the stepchild,” Achiu said, “and you’re on the bottom.” 

Certain priorities were slow to come to fruition, she said, like the dawn-to-dusk initiative to expand lifeguards’ hours that took four years to fully implement. Titchen also deserved some of the blame for that, she said, although Titchen said negotiating new working hours for the staff was more difficult than it might have seemed from the outside.

The city recently invested millions of dollars into Ocean Safety. It’s finishing a new Windward hub in Kailua for the department, and it opened new lifeguard stand locations at Kalama Beach Park and Kahe Point Beach Park, also known as Electric Beach. Achiu, as a member of the new commission, said she’s excited to help build the new department.

“I have to give credit where credit is due,” Achiu said. “The mayor promised us a couple of town halls ago that we would get a department. And we got it.”