Officer who fatally shot Alton Sterling called ‘borderline nuts’ in internal police email

An attorney for the family of Alton Sterling revealed Tuesday that former Baton Rouge police officer Blane Salamoni was called “borderline nuts” by a BRPD official in an internal email after Salamoni got into an argument with another officer at a July 2015 training session, a year before he fatally shot Sterling.

Attorney L. Chris Stewart said that admission by a supervisor within the Baton Rouge Police Department, which was shared with other supervisors, exemplifies a larger problem in how the city responds to troubled cops.

“What we’ve realized even further is this was not just the act of a rogue cop, Blane Salamoni, this was a systematic failure by the police department and also those that oversee the police department,” Stewart said Tuesday morning. “One year later, this borderline nuts — using the language of BRPD, — officer, shot and killed Alton Sterling. Why borderline nuts officer was allowed to be on the streets?”

The email Stewart referenced was sent on July 21, 2015 after firearm training session, where Firearms Training Unit Commander Sgt. Robert Knight said Salamoni and another officer got into a “pretty heated argument,” the email says.

“I had to get between them and get them in the range office,” Knight wrote in the email to J. Darron Leach, the former director of training at BRPD. “I got them to apologize to each other after I read the riot act. Both of them are borderline nuts. I will call you in the morning to give you the full report, but no punches thrown and they shook hands at the end.”

Stewart is on a team of lawyers representing Sterling’s five children in a lawsuit against the police department, the officers and the city, where they are each blamed for the wrongful death of Sterling. The lawsuit was filed in June 2017.

Read the full story at TheAdvocate.com

This story was originally published September 18, 2018 at 2:19 PM.