Taxpayers To Pay $1.8M After HPD Stopped, Beat Up The Wrong Man
HPD used physical force against the wrong people during an islandwide manhunt in 2024, costing taxpayers almost $2 million.
On New Year’s Day 2024, the Honolulu Police Department engaged in a nine-hour islandwide manhunt. The suspect they were chasing, Sidney Tafokitau, was armed with a rifle and fled over 100 miles as more than 60 police officers spread across dozens of vehicles pursued him, according to a lawsuit.
When officers finally thought they’d found their guy, they crashed a police van into him and beat him up, the lawsuit said, punching and stomping on him and causing serious injuries. But it was a case of mistaken identity. Tevitatonga Cadiente and his father, Vaokehekehe Mataele, had nothing to do with Tafokitau’s alleged crimes. Both men were handcuffed on the ground.
“Mr. Cadiente was significantly injured in his head and face,” Cadiente’s lawyer Ralph O’Neill said in an interview. “I mean, he had facial fractures. He had lacerations and abrasions.”
On Wednesday, the Honolulu City Council approved a $1.8 million settlement for Cadiente and his father. The real suspect, Tafokitau, was ultimately killed in a gunfight with HPD officers just up the road from where Cadiente was beaten.
Prosecuting Attorney Steve Alm declined to press criminal charges against the officers in late 2024 and early 2025 for both their killing of Tafokitau and their beating of Cadiente, saying that the officers’ actions were justified. The lawsuit, filed by Cadiente and his father, was scheduled to go to trial this year, but the city and the two men agreed to settle instead.
Mistaken Identity
The police chase began around 7:15 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2024 after Tafokitau shot and wounded his ex-girlfriend as she drove down Moanalua Freeway near Aloha Stadium, according to the lawsuit. Four hours later, Tafokitau shot at a police van in Kalihi and then carjacked a driver’s white Scion XB at gunpoint in Kāneʻohe.
During his final hours alive, Tafokitau led police on a high-speed chase around the island spanning Mililani, Waialua, Kahuku, Kahaluʻu and Kaimukī, the lawsuit says. The chase eventually reached University Avenue, where Tafokitau shot a cop in the abdomen before crashing the Scion into a bus stop near the intersection of University Avenue and Dole Street.
Tafokitau then shot at other HPD vehicles, hitting another officer, which prompted police to return fire and kill him.
Around the corner, Cadiente and Matalae had left their apartment along Varsity Place and started walking toward the scene. Cadiente knew Tafokitau through the Tongan community and church, according to the lawsuit, and he thought he could encourage Tafokitau to surrender.
When they heard gunfire, the father and son began to run to the scene. Police, who were on their way to respond to reports of an officer down, saw Cadiente running and assumed he was Tafokitau, according to the lawsuit. The officers crashed a van into Cadiente, pinning him against a chain-link fence, before pulling him out to the sidewalk to stomp on and punch him.
Cadiente was dazed by the collision, Judge Micah Smith said in an order denying the city’s motion for summary judgment, which is typically requested in order to avoid a trial.
“Nonetheless,” he said, “officers proceeded to punch and strike him while he lay on the ground.”
Matalae was on the ground moaning in distress as HPD restrained and beat his son, according to bodycam footage from an officer who arrived shortly before the other officers realized their mistake.
Meanwhile, Tafokitau, the real suspect, lay dying of a fatal gunshot wound just a few hundred yards up the road.
Cadiente needed to be taken to a hospital for his injuries, the lawsuit says, which included a concussion, facial fractures and a burst blood vessel in his eye.
Cadiente and Matalae filed their lawsuit against the city about two weeks after the incident. An amended filing named officers Patrick Sung, Douglas Lee, Christopher Chu, Ryan Domingo, Hubert Louiz Barboza and Darren Lee Soto. Claims against three other officers were dismissed.
While Cadiente and Tafokitau are both Tongan with similar dimensions, the complaint says, Cadiente has significantly darker skin complexion, no neck tattoos like Tafokitau, and he was wearing a different outfit. Cadiente was also nearly two decades younger than Tafokitau and was unarmed.
Officers conducted an unlawful arrest and had no reasonable cause for using excessive force and intentionally causing emotional distress, the complaint says. The city’s response to the complaint denies wrongdoing. In an emailed statement, HPD Deputy Chief Brandon Nakasato said the department agrees with the terms of the settlement and declined to comment further.
The episode was a notable example of the tension between Mayor Rick Blangiardi and then-HPD Chief Joe Logan. HPD issued only one notification, on X, to the public during the daylong chase. That notification occurred just over an hour before the chase’s conclusion.
Blangiardi, who lacks the legal power to fire the police chief, criticized Logan for poor communication. On a podcast put out by his office, Blangiardi said he only learned about the incident with Cadiente and Tafokitau when local media reported on the pair’s lawsuit.
“They don’t get to be a separate country,” Blangiardi said about HPD at the time. “They don’t get to make up their own rules.”
