“Nobody deserves to go through what I went through”

Fired Waukegan police officer Dante Salinas received a 60 day jail sentence on Tuesday for his conviction on felony misconduct—but the court stayed his incarceration pending the separate murder trial he faces. 

Salinas appeared in the Lake County courthouse Tuesday wearing the same black and white checkerboard shirt he wore a month earlier, when county judge George Strickland found him guilty of just one charge stemming from his 2019 attack of fellow Waukegan resident Angel Salgado. 

He displayed little emotion as Strickland read out his sentence for that conviction: two years probation, 100 hours of community service, a number of fees and fines, and on top of all that, 60 days incarceration. 

“I take responsibility for my actions,” Salinas told the court.

There was a wrinkle to Strickland’s decision, however—per his order, Salinas’ two months of jail time have been put on hold. The judge’s decision has to do with Salinas’ history with the Waukegan police. 

The criminal case on which Strickland sentenced Salinas Tuesday stems from Salinas’ violent August 2019 arrest of Angel Salgado. It was an arrest Strickland deemed unlawful when finding Salinas guilty last month, and one in which Salgado suffered fractures to his facial bones— either from Salinas repeatedly striking him in the face, or from his face hitting concrete when Salinas and other Waukegan police tackled him.  

State prosecutors hit Salinas with felony aggravated battery and two professional misconduct charges over the incident. Strickland only found Salinas guilty on one of those misconduct charges. Waukegan itself settled a civil lawsuit with Salgado in late 2022 to the tune of $300,000.

The beating of Angel Salgado is the less severe of two incidents over which Salinas has faced prosecution. Salinas will eventually appear in court yet again over his fatal shooting of Black 19-year-old Marcellis Stinnette at a traffic stop in October 2020. The shooting wounded Stinette’s then-20 year old girlfriend Tafara Williams as well. 

The couple were unarmed, and Salinas did not activate his body-worn camera (BWC) until after the shooting. He was quickly fired from the department following the killing, and the community and family also held sustained protests in the wake of a summer of other Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the country. 

Salinas faces trial on multiple second degree murder and manslaughter charges over killing Stinnette, and Strickland decided to stay Salinas’ jail time pending the resolution of that case. The judge also said he would seek for Salinas to be incarcerated outside of Lake County.  

No date has been set for the start of Salinas’ murder trial, though one may be decided at an upcoming court hearing on Dec. 3. Salinas has thus won a reprieve from incarceration for at least several months. 

Strickland’s sentence aligned with that proposed by the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office, reprieve aside.

Salgado, who was present for the sentencing Tuesday, wrote in a statement for the court that his arrest had left him with “trauma and anxiety,” as well as lingering pain in his face. He also said the incident had distressed his children, who now expressed fear of police.   

“Nobody deserves to go through what I went through,” Salgado wrote in his statement, which was presented to the court by Assistant State’s Attorney Jeff Facklam.  

Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart further argued Tuesday that Salinas’ actions in August 2019 did more than injure Salgado. As a police officer who abused the power entrusted to him by the state, Rinehart claimed, Salinas had dented the underlying social contract. 

“He didn’t just damage Angel and his family,” Rinehart told Strickland. “He damaged the [police] department, he damaged the community and he damaged our system.”

Citing what he called Salinas’ “power trip” on the night of Salgado’s arrest, Rinehart urged Strickland to respond “with the fury of local incarceration.” 

Salinas’ own attorneys Doug and Joe Zeit argued that Strickland should reconsider his verdict or at least grant Salinas a new trial. They claimed it wasn’t possible to determine if Salinas directly caused Salgado’s facial injury from available video footage alone. They also deferred to the chaotic nature of Salgado’s arrest, saying Salinas acted reasonably, if not ideally, to the situation. 

“This case involves a good faith officer making split-second decisions with a non-compliant subject,” Joe Zeit argued. 

Strickland stood by his ruling, however.

The judge said he had already gone “into microscopic detail” on the case, and repeated his finding that Salinas used escalatory force while arresting Salgado in August 2019. Salinas’ BWC footage from the night in question shows him pulling a pistol—followed by a taser—on an angry but unarmed Salgado almost immediately after exiting his police vehicle. 

“I found the use of force by Mr. Salinas was not necessary,” Strickland told the court Tuesday. 

Salgado himself declined to comment on Salinas’ sentence. He and Salinas sat directly across the court aisle from each other leading up to Tuesday’s hearing; neither man looked at the other.  

Local activists who have been following Salinas’ case, however, spoke to how the outcome of this trial fits into the larger reality of militarized federal police forces like Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement occupying the Chicago area, including Waukegan. 

“When people say, ‘how are we holding these feds accountable,’ how are we holding our local police accountable?” one local named Don Gross asked.     

Parker Adams, another Waukegan resident who has been following the case, meanwhile wondered what kind of accountability would assuage what Salgado and the larger community has endured.

“There’s a level of physical harm and emotional distress that will just never equate,” they said.