Erik Salgado

Erik Salgado, 23-year old father of a three year-old daughter, was shot 18 times by Sgt. Richard Henderson and two other California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers in Oakland on 6 June 2020. Salgado was driving a car stolen from a dealership, but there is absolutely no evidence that he had been involved in that theft. He attempted to drive away when the CHP surrounded him. The cops immediately fired over 40 rounds from their AR-15-style rifles at Salgado and his passenger/partner Brianna Colombo. Four months pregnant, Colombo was shot three times but survived. In their initial call to the Oakland police department (OPD), the cops falsely claimed Salgado shot at one of them. This story was quickly dropped, and in fact Salgado and Colombo were unarmed. In the story that stuck, CHP reported they mistakenly thought Salgado had a cop pinned under his car as he drove off, and thus they opened fire. Henderson had shot and killed Latino youth Pedro Villanueva in Southern California in 2016 in strikingly similar circumstances.

Three days after Salgado’s execution about 1,000 protesters marched in East Oakland demanding justice for Salgado. After two years the district attorney found the cops’ actions in Salgado’s case to be justified, and no charges were filed. The Salgado family appealed for the case to be reopened but has received no response. In 2023 the CHP settled a lawsuit brought by the Delgado family and Colombo for $7 million. Some months earlier the CHP agreed to pay $24 million to the family of a man who was killed when multiple troopers piled on top of him and restrained him during a traffic stop.

“It really makes me upset that these police officers have this immunity and these bill of rights that protect them,” said Amanda Blanco, Salgado’s sister and an OPA endorser. She has described how Salgado had been “institutionalized” by police and the justice system since he was a young boy growing up in East Oakland. Not long after her brother’s murder, which took place just at the time of the mass protests against the cop killing of George Floyd, Amanda Blanco became organizer for Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ) and has spoken at innumerable protests on his behalf. Since that time, Blanco has helped lead and spoken at many protests for other police victims.

Open the Police Archives! Between 2016 Latinos in California made up 46 percent of deadly police shootings—the second most disproportionate behind the rates of black people. We demand the police archives be opened to the public and call for release of all statements, texts and emails made by Henderson and the other two cops related to Salgado’s killing, all recordings, audio and video－including phone calls to the OPD－concerning the incident, along with CHP and OPD reports. Salgado’s family and the public need to see the personnel records of the police involved and the documents from any lawsuits arising from their police actions. Jail the killer CHP cops!