Cockfights And Corruption: How Police Arbitration Kept This Cop On The Job… In Hawaii, arbitrators look to previous decisions in order to be fair, no matter how serious the misconduct or whether it’s even similar.
Honolulu police officer John Cambra IV was suspended for 626 days after he was caught by the FBI trying to hide evidence in an illegal cockfighting investigation involving his father.
The 20-month suspension — considered the longest in HPD history — came after the Honolulu Police Department initially tried firing Cambra in 2008.
But the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers — Hawaii’s politically powerful statewide police union — convinced a third-party arbitrator that the punishment was too severe when compared to other officers who had faced criminal charges and were allowed to keep their jobs.
Those cases included officers who had beat up their colleagues and hit their wives. At least two were convicted and served time in federal prison.
