“Please don’t change the law!”
That was the anguished cry of a widow whose husband’s killers were caught in 2006 with the help of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk list a day after Gov. Paterson signed legislation forcing cops to delete the data.
Viola Justo’s husband, Ricardo Salinas, a 33-year-old cook at a Staten Island pancake house, was beaten to death by three thugs as he walked to buy milk for their kids.
Detectives located the killers the next day because patrol cops had detained them the night of the Sept. 2 crime and entered their names on the stop-and-frisk register, police said.
“If something like this happens again and someone in my family is attacked, the crime may never be solved,” said Justo, 25, who struggles to care for little Emily, 6, and Ricardo, 5.
Cops said that the hard-working Mexican immigrant, who had been in New York for eight years, suffered a fatal heart attack during the assault.
Travis King, 22, Daniel Betancourt, 23, and John Messina, 20, stole Salinas’ cellphone and called family members, cursing at them with racial slurs.
Their names popped up among those who were stopped by cops in the area of the attack, and when detectives picked up King the next morning for further questioning, the suspect still had Salinas’ phone in his pocket.
“The stop-and-frisk law definitely helped in capturing the men responsible for killing my husband,” Justo said. “I was told this kind of crime never gets solved or takes a lot of time to get solved.”
The 2001 state law that allowed cops to stop and frisk people who were not suspected of any crime was changed on Friday after critics charged that the practice violated civil rights and unfairly targeted minorities.
Salinas’ killers, however, targeted him because he was Mexican — and they believed Mexicans never called police, cops said.
Police may can still detain people, but may no longer keep their names in a database.
Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly urged Paterson not to sign the bill.
Their view was backed by the former NYPD Chief of Detectives William Allee, who told The Post that stop-and-frisk information was critical to solving crimes.
“It’s an extremely important tool,” he said. “Doing away with them would be a big mistake.”