Cook ‘takes responsibility’
for role in HPD food scandalA judge grants Ernest Villanueva's
request to defer his guilty plea
A former Honolulu Police Department cook said he has no regrets telling the truth about the Central Receiving Desk food scandal even if it implicated his superiors, whom he highly respected.
"I'm here to take responsibility," Ernest Villanueva, 47, said yesterday. "I have a family to set an example for, and I'm going to do the right thing from now on."
As Villanueva's wife and children looked on yesterday, Circuit Judge Michael Town granted Villanueva's request to defer his guilty plea to second-degree theft for a period of five years and ordered him to pay the city $314 in restitution for a leftover roast he took home to his family on one occasion. If Villanueva meets conditions similar to probation, his criminal record will be wiped clean.
Villanueva is one of four defendants, including two commanders in the Central Receiving Division, to be charged with second-degree theft in the scheme in which food that was purchased for prisoners was fed to police officers instead.
Villanueva was the only one to take responsibility by pleading guilty, said his attorney Kathy Kealoha. The others all pleaded no contest.
Deputy Prosecutor Randal Lee said that while it was easy to blame the cook for the fiasco, the evidence showed Villanueva, who ordered unauthorized foods and prepared them, was only following the orders of his superiors: then-Maj. Rafael Fajardo and later Maj. Jeffrey Owens.
Fajardo and Owens were in charge of the receiving desk during overlapping periods from 1995 to 2000.
It was only under their command that unauthorized food was purchased and prepared, Lee said. While Villanueva had ample opportunity to steal food when they were not in charge, it did not happen, Lee said.
Had prosecutors not examined the case, Villanueva and Myron Lee, another cook who was questioned as a witness but never charged, would have been scapegoats in this investigation, said Scott Collins, also Villanueva's attorney.
Fajardo, who later retired as an assistant chief, blamed those under him for the thefts, saying that had he known they were happening, he would not have tolerated them, Lee said.
But Collins, a former police officer, said there was no way the cooks could have purchased the food without the knowledge of the sergeant and those above them in the chain of command, especially the major.
Kealoha said while Villanueva was the only one to take responsibility by pleading guilty, he was the only one to be fired. Everyone else charged in the case was given time to retire, she said.
Town said it appeared the practices in the Central Receiving Division involving the unauthorized foods were accepted and "the way business was done."
Town ordered Villanueva to write a letter apologizing to the city managing director for his actions and to perform 100 hours of community service.
Fajardo and another cook, John Spondike, received deferrals of their no-contest pleas and were also ordered to pay restitution and perform community service. Owens will be sentenced next week.