This is another reader request, who was understandably interested in the chief investigator of the Vegas Casino shooting, John Pelletier, also being the chief investigator of the Maui Incineration. What a small world it is, when a 25-year veteran of Vegas Metro is the only qualified choice for police chief of a remote island!
Do you know what’s also a small world? The Burning Man music festival is held outside Vegas in the Black Rock Desert. Meanwhile, the beach at Lahaina, Maui is called Black Rock Beach. But I digress. Probably.
We start down the rabbit hole with Maui’s opening for police chief back in 2021. Me having firsthand experience of Hawaiian locals’ attitude towards mainlanders, why the heck did they choose a Las Vegas vet with a past?
Wanted: Maui Seeks New Police Chief. FBI Training Is A Plus
h ttps://www.civilbeat.org/2021/06/wanted-maui-seeks-new-police-chief-fbi-training-is-a-plus/
By Blaze Lovell, 23 June 2021
Well, well. I want to feel all smart and investigative, but it’s like the Deep State isn’t even trying to hide it anymore.
A volunteer panel of Maui police commissioners is getting ready to select a new police chief to lead the state’s third-largest law enforcement agency.
Maui County law requires candidates to have a minimum of five years experience in law enforcement, with at least three years in an administrative capacity. But the island’s police commission wants more.
The commissioners are looking for someone with at least 15 years experience as a police officer, including five years in administration. The commissioners also prefer someone with a four-year degree from an accredited university and proof of training from the FBI Academy, or equivalent experience.
Translation, they did NOT want local talent and DID want an FBI presence at the highest level of Maui law enforcement.
During the last search in 2014, the Maui Police Commission required all applicants to have a bachelor’s degree in police administration, law enforcement, criminal justice, political science, business administration, sociology or a related field. If not, they had to prove they graduated from the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va.
In March, De Rego argued in favor of keeping the bachelor’s degree requirements since they are becoming standard around the country.
The only thing dumber than mandating a credential because other people are, is waiving the requirement if the FBI vouches for a candidate’s intelligence.
But the commissioners decided not to make those education requirements mandatory after hearing pushback from several Maui police captains concerned that doing so would limit the pool of potential candidates.
“Some of law enforcement’s best, who have dedicated themselves to this difficult profession, do not have degrees,” Capt. Wade Maeda wrote in a letter to the commission. “We have people in the Maui Police Department with years of executive level experience that do not have a degree. A four-year bachelor’s degree is nowhere near the substitution for four years at MPD’s executive level.”
Mmm-hmm. Even the managerials will blame stupidity when the alternative is admitting evil. “We should require college degrees because everybody else is!” except that doing so also eliminates most of the local talent.
De Rogo’s name came up a lot. The media didn’t talk much with the other commissioners.
New this year, the commission may require the top five police chief applicants to take a written exam.
If a civil service exam to screen out capable non-loyalists was good enough for the KKK of the Antebellum South, it’s good enough for the Clown World Deep State.
The search comes as Oahu’s police commission also is recruiting a new police chief after Susan Ballard retired on June 1. However, the selection processes are playing out much differently.
The Honolulu Police Commission will largely rely on a consultant and advisory committee led by a police chief on the mainland.
Hawaiians don’t like mainlanders. It’s understandable given their deep-Pacific location. Their land is too strategically important to the empires of the world to be left alone, yet too small to defend themselves from said empires. So, the only reason they would outsource the choosing of their next leader to a mainland talent scout, is because the American Empire is no longer satisfied with having a few military bases.
Speaking of local talent,
Police chiefs previously had to have lived in the state for at least one year, but that state law was lifted in 2017.
That’s now true for California also. USA’s military is also being converted to an all-mercenary force, now that the all-volunteer force isn’t volunteering to be literally castrated.
Now it’s time to discuss how Pelletier was the candidate they were looking for. His disciplinary record is reportedly spotless, which is especially odd for a veteran of three officer-involved shootings, one of which was an ambush.
Metro Capt: Life Moves On But Not Easily After Using Deadly Force
h ttps://www.knpr.org/show/knprs-state-of-nevada/2017-06-15/metro-capt-life-moves-on-but-not-easily-after-using-deadly-force
By Joe Schoenmann, 15 June 15, 2017
Three years ago this month, two Las Vegas police officers were shot and killed while having lunch at a pizza restaurant on Nellis Boulevard.
The shooting came at a time when police were being scrutinized around the country for questionable shootings of unarmed suspects.
And much of the country still questions the use of deadly force by police, in large part because police work is so far apart from the everyday lives of most Americans.
Capt. John Pelletier says he gets that.
He’s been involved in three shootings over nearly 20 years as a Metro cop, one of them resulting in death. He talked with State of Nevada about his fatal shooting, he said, in the interest of transparency and the hopes of providing some insight for Nevada residents, as well as his fellow officers.
. . .
Pelletier was part of Metro’s Problem Solving Unit. In plain clothes. And looking for an armed robbery suspect. It was September 2002; still pretty warm out, and close to 11 p.m.
Pelletier was in his Metro-issue Chevy Lumina—unmarked, sure, but Luminas were known to almost everybody as the go-to car for police — when his “spidey senses” went off.
Bullshit. Undercover Vegas cops are well-known for using a specific type of car for their undercover work? That kind of stupid would get cops killed. Innocent drivers of civilian Luminas, too.
Somebody was gunning for Joe, or at least, his undercover persona.
That’s when he noticed the interest that a driver stopped next to him — at Stephanie Street and Tropicana Avenue–was taking in him and his Lumina.
The next stoplight turned green, but the Blazer didn’t immediately move. Pelletier knew he had been recognized. Then a dispatcher crackled over the radio that the Blazer was driving with a stolen license plate.
More bullshit. How would he have read the Blazer’s license plate from the side, while stopped at a traffic light?
Pelletier drove ahead and saw the Blazer and another vehicle drive into the parking lot of the Nevada Palace Hotel-Casino on Boulder Highway. He followed but was already thinking “ambush.”
MORE bullshit. “I think this is an ambush, and I have no backup or even my badge, and I’m driving a car that screams ‘undercover cop’, but let’s see how this plays out.” But wait, Pelletier was driving ahead? Did he circle back into the ambush, hoping to get credit for snaring a stolen vehicle, when he was supposed to be looking for an armed robbery suspect?
Pelletier did call for a marked unit backup, but apparently decided not to wait.
Suddenly the Blazer stopped. The driver got out and, holding what Pelletier described as a “hand cannon,” walked back quickly toward Pelletier with the gun pointed at him.
Pelletier said he had no option. He couldn’t move his car or get out of the car quickly enough – the man had him dead if he pulled the trigger.
Instead, Pelletier pulled his gun out of his holster and fired seven times, shooting through his windshield, one bullet hitting the man in the head and killing him.
That is a very unlikely self-defense story. “I suspected they marked me as an undercover, and I watched them set up an ambush, but I decided to circle around and follow them anyway, then their ambush took me by total surprise and I had to shoot the perp seven times before he could get a shot off. Sorry I didn’t wait for backup.”
It turned out later that the man was working with a woman – who was in the vehicle that followed him into the Palace parking lot. And the “hand cannon” had been used in the murder of a police officer in Arizona.
I don’t doubt that the perp was dirty. But that’s no comment upon the fact Pelletier’s story does not hold together.
After the shooting, he was part of what was then called the “coroner’s inquest,” a quasi-legal proceeding where a county prosecutor questions witnesses, including the officer involved, to determine if the shooting was justified or not.
Inquests were open to the public and held in the Clark County courthouse. And they were fraught with tension, as both family members of the deceased and friends of the officer were all packed into a small courtroom.
Pelletier’s shooting was deemed justified.
He’s also been involved in two other shootings since then. Both suspects survived and are serving life sentences in Nevada. Pelletier talks about those shootings, especially the fatal, with incredible detail, like it just happened yesterday.
h ttps://lasvegassun.com/news/2003/mar/19/sheriff-to-examine-use-of-force/
2003
Officer John Pelletier, 30, on Friday shot and wounded Edward Seely, a 32-year-old robbery suspect, at an apartment complex near Charleston Boulevard and Torrey Pines Drive.
Officers from the southeast area substation had been at the complex looking for Seely in connection with a robbery March 9 at a nearby 7-Eleven store in which a clerk had been shot and wounded.
Shortly after midnight Pelletier spotted Seely as he was walking away from one of the apartments. As Pelletier, who was in plain clothes, approached Seely and identified himself as a police officer, Seely pulled a handgun from his waistband and began to run back to the apartment, police said.
Pelletier fired at Seely, hitting him in the torso. Seely is recovering from his injuries at University Medical Center. When he is discharged, he will be charged with assault with a deadly weapon, felony resisting arrest, being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm and possession of a stolen handgun, police said.
That was definitely mishandled. A lone officer, presumably on stakeout, made an arrest decision such that the perp had time to draw on him? That was poor conduct even though I’d fault the perp. When an officer gets to choose the circumstances of an arrest, it’s not passable for the result to be a gunfight.
h ttps://www.reviewjournal.com/news/officer-idd-in-shooting/
The Las Vegas police officer who shot and wounded a 36-year-old man in a mobile home park Friday has been identified as Sgt. John Pelletier.
Pelletier has been with the Metropolitan Police Department since July 1999. He is currently assigned to the patrol division of the Northeast Area Command.
He was one of two officers who responded to a call about a gun-wielding man at 3825 N. Nellis Blvd., south of Las Vegas Boulevard North near Nellis Air Force Base, about 8 p.m. Friday.
When the officers approached Ernest Charles Gibbs, police said he reached for an object under his shirt. Pelletier then fired shots and wounded the man.
Gibbs was reaching for a large, Bowie-type knife, police said. He was taken to University Medical Center for treatment.
Gibbs is charged with assault with a deadly weapon and felony resisting arrest. His criminal history in Las Vegas includes convictions for being an felon possessing a firearm and attempted burglary.
That is more understandable. Pelletier was told he was looking for a gunman and a guy they tried to approach went for his waistband? Good shoot.
Timeline:
1997 BA Political Science, U.Nevada Las Vegas.
1999 Recruitment by LVMPD
2002 Fatal officer-involved shooting while undercover. He couldn’t have been long out of training.
2003 Nonfatal OIS while undercover.
2009 Nonfatal OIS while uniformed.
c.2012 Promoted to training sergeant. He also helped implement a Federal DOJ program to reduce the frequency of OIS.
2013 Promoted to lieutenant. Pelletier’s captain at the time was Tom Roberts, now a Nevada state legislator. The two have a long and continuing association.
2015-2016 SWAT Team commander, despite never serving in SWAT.
March 2017-January 2020 Manager of Convention Center Area Command, aka Las Vegas Strip. Also K9 Section manager? but no history working with dogs.
October 2017 Mandalay Bay shooting, blamed on Stephen Paddock. Pelletier was incident commander. Investigation closed by FBI in January 2019.
2019 Certificate in criminal justice, FBI Academy at Quantico.
2020-2021 In charge of the department’s Major Violator, Narcotics Bureau.
Which is when he acted on his lifelong dream to return to Hawaii, paraphrasing from his acceptance speeches, despite being born in Buffalo, NY and living his life in Vegas with no particular interest in travel.
Pelletier’s first act as police chief was waiving hiring requirements to bring his former supervisor in… as his deputy.
New Maui police chief chooses Las Vegas colleague as deputy
h ttps://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/new-maui-police-chief-chooses-las-vegas-colleague-as-deputy-2481333/
19 November 2021
WAILUKU, Hawaii — Maui’s new police chief is bringing a colleague from the Las Vegas department he came from to serve as his deputy chief, according to a letter to members of the Maui Police Department obtained by The Maui News.
Incoming Chief John Pelletier announced in the letter he selected as his second in command [Assistant Sheriff] [blacktivist] Charles L. Hank III. Both men, who served in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, will be sworn in at a December ceremony in Wailuku.
The commission previously waived a one-year residency requirement for Pelletier. He will have the ability to waive the residency requirement for his deputy, said Corporation Counsel Moana Lutey.
Lutey said Hank was the only applicant for the deputy position with all the qualifications for the job, which were determined by Pelletier.
I didn’t figure Pelletier for a coal-burner. Uh-oh! What happened in Vegas isn’t staying in Vegas!
Sooo, how did island life suit them? Before all those little kids went missing in an engineered firestorm that happened to advance the 15-Minute City agenda of Maui’s foreign-loyal government.
Commission declines to discipline police chief
h ttps://www.mauinews.com/news/local-news/2022/09/commission-declines-to-discipline-police-chief/
By Lila Fujimoto, 8 September 2022
The Maui Police Commission voted Wednesday not to take disciplinary action against Pelletier, saying that a third-party investigation found two complaints against Pelletier were unsubstatiated.
Two complaints of eight.
The Maui Police Commission decided not to take disciplinary action against Police Chief John Pelletier on Wednesday after reviewing investigations of three employee complaints that alleged a hostile work environment.
Five complaints of eight.
In a statement following a closed executive session to discuss the complaints, commission Chairman Frank De Rego said the nine-member commission “unanimously voted to decline to initiate disciplinary proceedings” against Pelletier.
I was told there would be transparency in Hawaiian government.
The three complaints are among eight that have been filed by county employees against Pelletier and members of his executive staff, according to the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers. The complaints allege harassment in the workplace and gender discrimination, according to SHOPO.
In the statement, De Rego said, “The commission took note that Chief Pelletier has retained an executive coach to address management style. After carefully considering the investigative reports including all interviews and documentary evidence, the commission voted to file the complaints and not initiate disciplinary action. The commission’s annual review of the chief’s performance will include a review of the executive coaching program and its results.”
That’s what judges call “diversionary treatment”, and it doesn’t justify memory-holing the complaints before the diversion is completed.
Before then, the commission heard testimony supporting Pelletier from a dozen people, including eight who know him from when he worked at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
Pelletier has almost as many staffers as a Congressman. That’s not a compliment. And that’s some biased testimony there.
The commission also received written testimony, including letters from Maui Police Department employees who didn’t give their names. One letter questioned the actions and motives of commissioners, but De Rego shut down discussion of the letter’s allegations, saying, “This is out of order.”
LOL! Nine complaints of eight!
In stopping the discussion, De Rego said: “I would hate to set a precedent where commissioners are constantly being questioned about their motives through written testimony. It’s not even on the agenda.”
LOL!
Maui County deputy police chief retires after just 10 months on the job
h ttps://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2022/10/28/maui-county-deputy-police-chief-retires-after-just-10-months-job/
By Staff, 28 October 2022
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Questions are lingering over why Maui County’s deputy police chief is retiring after just 10 months on the job.
Charles Hank III was recruited by Maui Police Chief John Pelletier after they worked together in Las Vegas for years.
MPD did not explain why Hank is retiring.
He will be replaced by Wade Maeda in November, who is being promoted from captain.
Maeda has been with the department for 25 years.
Remember Maeda from the first article, complaining that not all Maui top cops have college degrees? De Rogo imported an entire squad of Vegas Metro Glowies in an effort to not promote Hawaiian native Wade Maeda… and FAILED.
I close with my analysis of the 2017 Vegas shooting vis-a-vis Pelletier. I agree with the theory that it was a botched assassination of a Saudi prince, Alwaleed bin Talal, one of Mohammed Bin Salman’s Wahhabist rivals. Paddock was a gunrunner and FBI informant, a licensed pilot with a girlfriend in the Philippines, a history of international travel and a documented tendency to have meetings in high-level hotels. The hit went bad, Prince Talal’s bodyguards managed to shoot their way out (killing Paddock in the process) and the FBI was left with a world-class political incident about to explode. Over the next hour, the conspirators decided to open fire on a large crowd of Trump Voters in order to cover the incident in a complete shitshow of Chaos.
That accounts for nearly all of the discrepancies I found in the official accounts. The hour gap, Paddock’s room having no broken windows and waaay more expensive guns than any spree shooter would lug through a public area, all the way to the black helicopters.
Taking that as the true situation, Pelletier’s role was simply to sow confusion. He was not one of the conspirators but had taken the Ticket in return for plush, high-status promotions…. perhaps via Tom Roberts. And confusion there was, with reports of multiple shooters in multiple hotels, police sent to wrong floors, cops getting shot at times inconsistent with the official timeline and so on.
The year that the incident’s investigation was closed with a finding of “no reason at all”, Pelletier was rewarded by his handlers with a Quantico endorsement, and soon, a transfer to Maui.
Which fell apart so quickly that maybe the reason Pelletier skipped out of Vegas was not merely to join some plutocratic Great Reset. Maybe his Ticketholders simply couldn’t keep the lid on his second life any longer… even in Vegas.
Damn!