Strong Arm of the Law

Among those who have written the chief about Salvo's performance is former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh. The director commended Salvo for coming to the aid of 14-year-old Jasmine Rice, the daughter of an FBI employee, during a waterskiing accident. Others credit Salvo for helping to clean up crime in the recently revitalized downtown. Linda Strutz, director of the Arts Academy of Hollywood, said Salvo responded quickly to concerns about homeless people loitering in the alley behind her establishment. "It is very comforting for me to know he is in the area when I close the school every evening," Strutz wrote in a letter to the Police Department. Now a narcotics detective earning about $66,000 per year, Salvo has become a star veteran in the Hollywood Police Department. But there are blemishes on his career that the department seems to tacitly condone.

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As a patrol officer just shy of four years on the job, Salvo faced an IA investigation and a state grand jury inquiry into an allegation that could have ruined his career. Joni Marie Schapler, an attractive, 36-year-old brunet from Fort Lauderdale, told authorities that Salvo and Officer Greg Saladino sexually assaulted her during a traffic stop near the Chili's restaurant on Sheridan Street.

About 3 a.m. on Friday, May 20, 1988, Schapler headed south on Interstate 95 and exited on Sheridan Street, heading west in a red Chevrolet Camaro. At the time, Salvo and Saladino had their cruisers parked along Sheridan. They were chatting. Salvo remembered seeing a red streak in the humid night air. "There goes a speeding car," Salvo told Saladino.

The young officer gave chase. The Camaro's brake lights flashed unexpectedly, signaling to Salvo that the driver had seen the cruiser in the rear-view mirror. He turned on his lights and stopped the vehicle near a Builder's Square.

Schapler wore a short jeans skirt and a green blouse. The music blared in her vehicle. "What do you want?" Salvo recalled her asking, propping up a leg and exposing her pubic hair.

"I need your driver's license, your vehicle registration, and proof of insurance, ma'am," Salvo said.

The woman thumbed through documents. "When she was fumbling with the papers," Salvo recalled in a statement, "the skirt was going up higher and she had her leg, like, on the console, to where she was exposing, really exposing, herself to myself."

Salvo walked back to his cruiser with Schapler's license and registration. Just then, Saladino's cruiser pulled in behind. The handsome, six-foot-two, 230-pound officer walked up beside Salvo.

"Did you find your insurance, ma'am?" Salvo asked Schapler.

"Oh, I'm looking, I'm looking," she said. "Who's the big guy?"

"He's a partner of mine," Salvo answered. "Don't worry about it."

Schapler's pager sounded. "It's the office," she explained. "They're trying to locate me because I'm supposed to be somewhere."

"At 3:30 a.m.?" the officers questioned.

"I'm a financial consultant," Schapler answered. But that was a lie. She later acknowledged during an investigation that she was a high-priced prostitute servicing wealthy businessmen. That night, she was on her way to see a client. "If I would have said that I was an escort, I think that that in men conjures up a lot of things unless you can sit them down and tell them what caliber of people you're dealing with," she would later explain in a statement.

Salvo and Saladino ordered her to move the Camaro to a dark section of the parking lot, the woman recalled. "I'd just as soon finish it here," Schapler said she replied.

"If you don't [move the car], I'm gonna take you in," Salvo allegedly said.

The officers both acknowledged that they ordered Schapler to a different part of the parking lot. But that is as far as their stories agree with Schapler's.

According to Schapler's account, Salvo and Saladino again approached her car in the dark portion of the lot. Salvo approached her first, she said. "He grabbed my hand and had me fondle him through his clothes because he was commenting that he had such a hard-on," Schapler alleged in her statement.

Schapler claimed that Saladino ordered her to stand against the car, her hands on the top and feet spread. "He undid his pants and pulled up my skirt and had intercourse with me," Schapler said. Salvo masturbated as she was raped, Schapler alleged.

She wasn't on birth control, the woman told the officer. She was concerned about sexually transmitted diseases. She always used condoms.

Please.

Stop.

"Don't worry about it," Schapler remembered Saladino telling her. "I won't get a drop on you." The officer then pulled out early and massaged himself, releasing on the ground, Schapler recalled.

"She was in shock when she came home," remembered her roommate, Ellen Panzarella. "She was a mess, actually. She was just talking in circles, and her mind was just... she was gone, you know? She was crying and very, very upset."