Maui Police Chief Gets Glowing Job Review From Commission
Chief John Pelletier is credited with implementing a five-year strategic plan, something the department lacked when he joined the force in 2021.
The Maui Police Commission on Wednesday unveiled a highly favorable evaluation of Chief John Pelletier, whose powerful voice helped guide the greater Lahaina community through the chaotic first days and months that followed the nation’s deadliest modern day wildfire last August.
Pelletier, a former Las Vegas police captain, was sworn in as Maui, Molokai and Lanai’s first chief from the mainland in December 2021. He took the helm of a department that for years had grappled with morale issues and understaffing under the direction of his embattled predecessor, Tivoli Faaumu.
His mostly glowing 2023 evaluation focuses on his handling of a slew of inherited problems: recruitment and retention troubles, outdated equipment, communication deficiencies and the lack of a long-term strategic plan to help guide the department’s performance.
Notably absent from the report, however, is a detailed accounting of how Pelletier quarterbacked emergency response during the Aug. 8 fires in Lahaina, Kula, Olinda and Kihei.
An published in April by the flagged a need for improvement in evacuation coordination between the Maui police and fire departments, noting that the two agencies were not together at incident command posts as they should have been while large swaths of Maui were burning.
The first in a series of , also released in April, found that police and firefighter radios operated on separate channels, which meant they could not monitor what the other agency was doing.
²Ñ±Ê¶Ù’s internal probe of its wildfire response highlights 32 recommendations for improvement. But the chief’s evaluation is absent of any significant criticism of Pelletier’s handling of the August wildfires or his time in office before then.
The commission gave Pelletier high marks for his efforts to combat post-wildfire misinformation and conspiracy theories. The panel also lauded his ability to communicate effectively at press conferences and with other government agencies.
Pelletier said he expects the commission might address improvement opportunities exposed by the wildfire in his 2024 performance evaluation since the government reports that point out these challenges and opportunities for improvement were not published until this year.
“I know that their evaluation is specific to me, but it really is one team, one fight,” Pelletier said Wednesday. “I’m certainly proud of the work the entire agency has done to make sure the community can be very proud of its police department.”
Police Commission Chairwoman Stacey Moniz declined to comment for this story.
One of Pelletier’s top accomplishments last year was guiding the creation of to help steer department operations through 2028. MPD had no such plan when Pelletier joined the force, and the chief said it took time to build consensus so that the plan reflects the ambitions of the entire department and not just his own goals.
“What I told folks at the time was every Fortune 500 company has a strategic plan,” Pelletier said. “And the fact that we’re a tri-island community and we’re a larger, mid-size agency, why would we not want to have the best plan possible?”
The plan’s completion in the spring of 2023 constituted “a major
and long overdue milestone” for the department, according to the evaluation.
The strategic plan cites four major areas of needed improvement: recruitment and retention, department operations, internal communications and community relations.
It’s not just a plan collecting dust on a shelf. The department is now obligated to complete quarterly self-assessments to measure how well it’s achieving the objectives it lays out.
Pelletier, who has placed police force recruitment and retention at the forefront of his proposed $83 million spending plan for the coming fiscal year, also has made strides in his efforts to address police morale, the commission noted.
Staffing shortages remain a persistent problem, mirroring a national trend among police departments that have struggled to attract and retain new officers. All told, 188 of the police department’s 570 sworn and civilian positions are vacant.
One contributing issue is pay. An MPD Police Officer 1 position starts at $75,000 per year plus benefits — compensation that Pelletier has described as a barrier to hiring on islands with an astronomical cost of living.
The department has started leasing space in the Queen Kaahumanu Center in Wailuku to entice more recruits. Pelletier has said the office space at the mall is less intimidating than the police station. It’s where the U.S. Army and Navy formerly enlisted new members.
The commission gave Pelletier high marks for taking the staffing shortage seriously while directly addressing other, more tangible morale issues.
He partnered with the police union to offer new schedule options aimed at reducing stress and increasing family time. The chief is also phasing out a tedious case management system in favor of one expected to reduce the share of time officers spend writing reports.
The commission noted that Pelletier is beginning to allow officers to use their own vehicles for police work with subsidies instead of relying on fleet vehicles — a change favored by most officers, according to the commission. The evaluation also praises Pelletier for providing new career advancement and training opportunities for officers.
Overall, the commission concluded that Pelletier has met or exceeded all of its expectations.
See the full evaluation below.
Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.
