Almost every day seems to bring news of a massive financial award paid by police departments to the families of men who were killed by police officers. The latest example is that of Erik Salgado, who was shot and killed by the California Highway Patrol in East Oakland in 2020. The CHP just paid his family $7 million.
Was this justified? Here are the facts as we know them.
Salgado and his girlfriend stole a car. (He may have stolen it by himself, but she was with him at the time of this incident.) The CHP spotted him driving recklessly after he ran a red light and drove on the wrong side of the road. The cops ran a license plate check and discovered the car had been stolen. When they attempted to intervene, “Salgado allegedly reversed his car and pumped the brakes before striking [an] unmarked CHP truck behind him. He then allegedly drove forward and struck [a] CHP patrol car.”
Allegedly, the cops believed Salgado’s vehicle had run over one of their colleagues, pinning him underneath the suspect vehicle. That’s when officers opened fire. Salgado was struck 16 times and died on the scene. Investigating the matter, former Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, the predecessor of Pamela Price, found the cops who shot him did not break the law and had been fully justified in their actions.
Enter John Burris and James Chanin, two ambulance-chasing lawyers who have made a good living suing police departments; they were hired to represent Salgado’s family. Burris called the incident “an ambush.” Chanin is an embittered, aging lawyer anxious to remain in the spotlight. Now, according to last night’s news, Salgado’s family wants Price to file criminal charges against the cops.
Those are the facts. Here’s my question: Why is God’s name is Salgado’s family entitled to $7 million? Salgado was a criminal menace. Even his girlfriend, who was also shot, said he was “driving crazy,” and that when the shooting happened, Salgado was trying to fit his car between the police cars and vehicles parked on the street, possibly to escape.
Police departments settle these cases because ultimately it’s cheaper to do so than to fight it out in the courts. But this is a form of embezzlement. In all my years of reporting on incidents like this, it seems to me that the vast number of men shot by cops were trying to escape, or were acting threateningly toward cops, who have the right to defend themselves.
Burris and Chanin and others like them have been running this con on the taxpayers for far too long. I’d like, just once, for a police department to let the case go to a jury or bench trial, instead of settling. The truth is, if the cops try to stop you, you have an obligation to submit to them. If you try to get away, and if you pull a weapon and threaten them, you can expect to be shot. That’s exactly what cops should be doing: Protecting themselves, each other and all of us from brutes. And now, Salgado’s family are demanding that Madame D.A., Price, “file murder charges” against the cops whom Nancy O’Malley found completely innocent. Given Price’s penchant for persecuting cops and favoring criminals, can there be any doubt that she’ll reopen the case? Let’s keep an eye on this developing story, as the Price recall proceeds. If she dares to indict the cops, she’ll be facing the wrath of the community.
“Erik [Salgado] was somebody’s baby,” a representative of a “restorative youth justice” group told CBS News. So is every criminal; the fact that Salgado had a mother is irrelevant. He might have thought of his mother, and his general obligations toward society, before he became a car thief, police attacker and thug.
Steve Heimoff