Here we go again. Another public board planning to debate and take action on the performance of a top public official behind closed doors. Something that state law and the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court says needs to be done openly and in full public view.
This time it’s the Maui Police Commission. The commission plans to meet on Wednesday and has outlined an extensive agenda for an executive session that appears intended to lay the groundwork for firing Maui Police Chief John Pelletier.
He was put on paid leave by the commission in October while it conducted an administrative investigation into his oversight of MPD’s Criminal Intelligence Unit. The unit’s top officer, Lt. Michael Vaituulala, was arrested in August and has been charged in federal court with taking bribes to protect chicken fighting and drug operations.
A few days after he was put on leave Pelletier held a press conference where he blasted the commission, demanded his job back and revealed that Maui Mayor Richard Bissen has been the subject of two criminal investigations, including a felony case being conducted by MPD. Bissen says that’s not true.
A secret session where commissioners talk about their unhappiness with the police chief and consider whether to get rid of him permanently is just wrong for a number of reasons. First and foremost, what’s happening on Maui with its police department, its chief and its mayor is of significant interest to the public and our fundamental right to know how the government is operating.
There is nothing more important for citizens to scrutinize than the actions of police who wield extraordinary power over ordinary citizens. The Maui Police Department’s reputation for corruption and misconduct goes back decades. The previous chief lost his job after he backed his truck into a motorcycle in a parking garage and tried to cover it up. Vaituulala was already in place as head of the special investigations unit when Pelletier took over.
Pelletier, a former captain with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, was hired over local candidates at the urging of residents concerned that nothing would change if internal promotions continued. Those Police Commission members who hired Pelletier have largely been replaced by commissioners who have taken over since Bissen has been in office. Only two of the nine commissioners were appointed by the previous mayor. Bissen has appointed some of the current members, the County Council put others in place and a couple have been brought forward by Maui’s Independent Nomination Board, a panel that some Maui residents say is also stacked with Bissen’s allies.
Maui residents concerned over what is happening with Pelletier are already mobilizing, for and against the chief. Soon after he was put on leave, dozens of people including current and former officers, business leaders and residents staged a solidarity rally to show their support for him.
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Pelletier has the backing of members of the Maui Police Department’s Multicultural Advisory Counsel (purposely spelled that way), a group of people who had generally been anti-police activists that he called together soon after taking over as chief five years ago.
Counsel vice chair Keisa Liu put together a 30-page analysis of the Police Commission’s decision to place Pelletier on leave and concluded the action was unwarranted and damaging to the department. She has been circulating that along with documentation of questionable political connections between Bissen and the commission to the Maui County Council, the Maui Ethics Commission, the Commission on Judicial Conduct (Bissen is a former judge) and the Campaign Spending Commission.
“I read the documents, studies, laws, and rules. I examined the decision within the larger systems of Maui County government,” she wrote to the Police Commission earlier this month, urging that the chief be reinstated. “I couldn’t understand why, with everything this chief brought to the table and the facts presented, you were putting him on administrative leave. After your glowing review. After corrective measures were quickly implemented. After recognizing the weight of his accomplishments for the department. He still has the potential to do so much more for us.”
On the other side, a group calling itself The Peace Officers Think-Tank Guild of Hawaiʻi wants Pelletier out. Self-described as “resolute anonymous citizens,” including current and retired state and county cops, the group has written two recent letters to the commission complaining that besides forcing some officers to leave the department Pelletier is working four days a week, 10-hours a day which they say is fine for officers but not for the chief. The 4/10 shift is one of numerous things on the commission’s executive session agenda for next week.
Also on the agenda is an item that should raise concerns for Oʻahu residents. The Maui commission is apparently getting help from the severely understaffed Honolulu Police Commission to investigate Pelletier and other Maui officers’ involvement in a Jan. 1 fireworks incident that caused extensive property damage and also played a role in the federal bribery charges against Vaituulala. Not only is the Honolulu commission struggling to fill investigator and staff positions (including its own executive officer) but no mention of Maui’s request has been made public or acted on by commissioners on Oʻahu. That raises serious questions about Sunshine Law violations by the Honolulu commission, too.
Beyond the obvious broad public interest in the commission’s actions, there’s the very public feud between Pelletier and Bissen that deserves deeper examination. Elements of it appear in the Police Commission’s upcoming executive session agenda and in letters written by the anonymous Peace Officers Think-Tank Guild. The public needs to know if Pelletier is right when he says that Bissen has been working for years to undermine him and orchestrate his ouster.
It is public record that Bissen opposed Pelletier’s hiring and wrote a letter to the commission supporting then-deputy chief Vic Ramos. Pelletier has accused Bissen of foul play in the past five years including trying to get the Police Commission to put him on leave in 2025 — the commission refused. That was after a wild civil suit was filed in California claiming the chief had been an enforcer for hip-hop star Diddy Combs. That crazy case, which included two anonymous plaintiffs and a few celebrity defendants, was eventually tossed by a federal judge after the plaintiffs failed to file basic paperwork supporting their case.
But the defense cost Pelletier thousands of dollars and he was forced to defend himself publicly in the small island community. He’s spoken angrily about it in a couple public forums, blaming Bissen for exacerbating the situation that created problems for him and his family.
Besides all that, the Police Commission itself deserves public scrutiny. The nine commissioners should openly discuss their concerns with Pelletier and make it clear they are not just tools of the mayor, as Pelletier has said.
There’s reason to be concerned. Several commissioners have been significant political contributors to Bissen in his last two elections, a review of Campaign Spending Commission records shows. Don Cameron has donated $2,480, Joseph Arias has given $3,000 and Shackley Raffetto has donated $2,000. They are three of the newest appointees. Lahela Aiwohi, who was appointed by the previous mayor, gave Bissen $1,060 in 2026, records show.
Another commissioner, Toni Rojas, is the daughter of Bissen’s director of economic development.
Even Vaituulala, the lieutenant under investigation by the feds for bribery, gave Bissen $250 in 2022. And he’s related to one of the current police commissioners.
All of this argues that Maui is one very small town indeed. And the public deserves to know how connections — whether financial, familial or something else — are affecting their police operation and their public safety.
Mainly, though, it’s the law. The Sunshine Law requires that hiring, firing and job evaluations of our top government officials be done publicly. The argument that “it’s a personnel matter” and has to be confidential went out the window nearly a decade ago when the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court ruled in another police commission case that the public has a significant interest in the performance of high-level government officials.
That happened after the Honolulu Police Commission secretly gave then-Chief Louis Kealoha a $250,000 payoff while he was under federal investigation for abuse of power for framing his wife’s uncle for stealing a mailbox to gain the advantage in a civil case the family was in the midst of. Two years later, in 2019, the high court made it clear that privacy of the official only outweighs the public interest in very narrow circumstances, such as discussion of someone’s medical issue. Otherwise, discussion, debate and certainly any action must take place in open session.
“This should not be done behind closed doors,” says Brian Black of the Public First Law Center, which brought the Kealoha case to the Supreme Court nearly 10 years ago and has argued these cases time and again — and won.
In 2025, the law center prevailed again in a case against the Agribusiness Development Corp. and Defenders Council that resulted in the Office of Information Practices essentially retracting an old opinion and notifying state agencies and boards that the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court had clarified this issue.
And yet, here we are. Again.
Black has filed testimony with the commission urging it to reconsider the executive session agenda items and warning that consequences of violating the Sunshine Law include that whatever action it takes can be overturned and members could face misdemeanor charges.
In Pelletier’s case, the Maui County Charter says a police chief can only be fired for cause, malfeasance being the specific offense. And that can only happen after formal charges are filed and a hearing is held. At that point, it’s considered a contested case hearing and should be public.
But Pelletier is not waiting for that to get his day in court, so to speak. He intends to push the Police Commission to operate openly starting with Wednesday’s meeting.
“Apparently they’re getting ready to fire him and we object to it all being done in secret,” says Eric Seitz, Pelletier’s attorney. “We’re going to ask it all be done out in the open.”
