The Ruben Salazar Files

For 40 years, the slay­ing of former Times colum­nist and KMEX-TV news dir­ect­or Ruben Salaz­ar has been clouded by ques­tions, con­tro­versy and sus­pi­cion. Key ques­tions in the case were nev­er answered, in­clud­ing wheth­er a Los Angeles County sher­iff’s deputy fol­low­ed de­part­ment policy when he fired a tear-gas mis­sile that killed Salaz­ar after a ri­ot erup­ted at a massive anti-Vi­et­nam War protest in East Los Angeles.

On Tuesday, Feb. 22, the county Of­fice of In­de­pend­ent Re­view re­leased a re­port on Salaz­ar’s slay­ing. A draft version avail­able here re­ports that Los Angeles Sher­iff's depu­ties com­mit­ted a series of tac­tic­al blun­ders that led to the 1970 slay­ing of former Times colum­nist, but ar­gues there is no evid­ence depu­ties in­ten­tion­ally tar­geted the news­man or had him un­der sur­veil­lance.

From his early days as a cub re­port­er in El Paso to his fi­nal months writ­ing columns and dir­ect­ing tele­vi­sion cov­er­age in Los An­geles, Salaz­ar caught the at­ten­tion of fed­er­al and loc­al law en­force­ment au­thor­it­ies. The re­cords be­low were ob­tained by The Times over the years from Free­dom of In­form­a­tion Act and Cali­for­nia Pub­lic Re­cords Act re­quests and sources.

— Robert J. Lopez and Ben Welsh (Feb. 22, 2011)