Two weeks ago marked six months since a SWAT team shot and killed Fairfax optometrist Sal Culosi on a gambling raid. To date, there has been no accountability on the part of Fairfaix officials. Culosi’s family writes:

We have not updated this site in the last three months in anticipation of a response from Chief Rohrer. We were hopeful that sheer decency would mandate that Chief Rohrer honor Supervisor Connolly’s request to respond to us “with an estimation of the time for the release of a report on the death of [our] son.” To date Chief Rohrer has failed to comply with this request.

This failure by Chief Rohrer is totally consistent with FCPD’s apparent “closed door” policy of not sharing any information with the public and makes us wonder if Chief Rohrer works for the Board of Supervisors or if the Board and Supervisor Connolly work for Chief Rohrer. If I were Mr. Connolly, I would want and expect compliance with my directive and I would want it now.

. . . we understand that the FCPD has already concluded their Internal Affairs investigation but we have not received any information on their findings. We can only speculate that the delay in any response from the FCPD is connected to their trepidation that the ongoing investigation by the FBI may connect the dots differently than their “in house” investigation of themselves.

[...]

Any competent undercover detective who engaged our son would have known him to be both a non-threatening and non-violent person. Sal had no history of violence, did not own a weapon, and was unarmed and cooperative at the time of the killing.

Sadly, if this case procedes like others I’ve researched, the Culosi’s will get a monetary award, but none of the officers will be disciplined, and there will be very little in the way of real reform.

If you’re in the mood for irony, have a look at this page. It’s the tribute page for Officer Salvatore Embarrato, Sal Culosi’s uncle, and the man after whom he was named. Embarrato was killed in a traffic accident while on duty in 1961.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 9:59 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Gambling, Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.