Widow of slain NYC police officer fights to keep murderer in jail — as cop killer could become 44th freed since 2017
Police Officer Cecil Sledge was killed when parolee Salvatore 'Crazy Sal' Desarno ran him over with his Chevy Nova and dragged him five blocks during a stop in Brooklyn in 1980.
'Time doesn't change anything,' said widow Linda Sledge, 75. whose labor of love this Valentine's Day was to make her 12th trip to the parole board and implore the member she spoke to not to release Desarno, declaring that losing him was 'every police officer's wife's worst nightmare.'
'A kiss goodbye, 'See you later' and he walked out the door and I never saw him again,' the widow recalled to The Post this week. 'We're never going to get parole from the horror of what this man did to us.'
Sledge was riding solo in a radio car on Flatlands Avenue in Canarsie patrolling for synagogue and church vandalism when he spotted Desarno, who was known as trouble to precinct cops and wanted in a donut-shop hold-up.
When the 35-year-old cop confronted the suspect, Desarno drew a .38 Smith & Wesson and fired five shots. Sledge drew his own weapon and fired two shots.
The cop's vest stopped the bullets but he slumped to the ground and was run over when Desarno, hit by both bullets, peeled out and dragged the officer to his death.
Desarno's Nova slammed into a Don't Walk pole at East 58th Street. He hopped out and crashed through the window of a nearby home, where he took a 50-year-old woman hostage for eight minutes until a small army of police officers arrived. The woman, a travel agent, was unharmed.
Desarno had a long rap sheet that started when he was a juvenile, including robbery and assault, and he was on parole for robbery. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in Sledge's murder and is at Five Points Correctional Facility in Seneca County.
Sledge, a U.S. Army veteran with 12 years on the force, was the first cop killed in a one-man radio car patrol. The one-cop patrols stopped after his death.
The officer left behind a 9-month old daughter and 5-year-old son.
'They never got an opportunity to hear his voice and hear his stories and spend time with him,' said the widow, who has grown weary from imploring the state parole board over and over to keep him locked up.
'But you do it, you do it for you, you do it for them, because I'm my husband's voice and I'm seeking justice for him,' she said.
Desarno, 66, should 'remain behind bars for the rest of his life,' the widow continued.
His fate now lies in the hands of the 16-member parole board, which will make its decision after his hearing, which is expected sometime in March, online records show.
The rules that govern how the board weighs a prisoner's release were revised in 2017 because of lobbying by liberal activists, a police union source said.
The board now gives more weight to an inmate's age and record while in prison — and less to the severity of their crimes.
PBA President Patrick Hendry called the probation process 'torture for the families.'
'It is shameful that they are forced to deliver their victim impact statement to a random parole board member who may not be on the panel deciding the case,' Hendry said.
'Every parole board member who sits on the panel should be required to look these grieving families in the eye and hear their story before they vote to put another ruthless cop-killer back on the streets.'
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