DENVER — This year's Hispanic Heritage Trailblazer Award winner is a retired Denver Police commander who was one of the few Latino officers to hold the rank of commander within the department – the award recognizes Latino officers who were the first to achieve a milestone in their careers.
Retired Denver Police Commander Jeff Martinez is this year’s Hispanic Heritage Trailblazer Award winner, an honor given by the Denver Police Department, Denver Police Museum and the National Latino Police Officers Association.
Martinez was appointed commander of Districts 1 and 4 in Denver. He also held the position of commander for the department’s Denver Homeland Security Bureau.
Martinez admitted law enforcement was not a career he wasn’t thinking about growing up.
“We didn’t have relationships with law enforcement officers growing up,” Martinez said. “My parents, they were natives here of Denver as well, so they grew up in the 30s and 40s here. Law enforcement was a lot different back then and it wasn’t focused on community. There were great police officers of course but there were things they did back then that left what I call ‘scars’ on our family.”
Martinez grew up in southwest Denver in the College View neighborhood. He said during his childhood, he wanted to go into law enforcement but wasn’t sure if that was the right career path for him.
When he joined a softball league in his 30s and played on a team that was made up of Denver Police officers, he had a change of heart. “Ended up on a team that was mostly Denver Police officers,” Martinez said. “I was intimidated at first because I did not want to play with them.”
That’s when he said he talked to them and got to know them as people. Martinez eventually joined DPD in 1996 and started as a patrol officer. During his 25 years with DPD, he served as a patrol supervisor, internal affairs bureau sergeant, gang bureau shift commander, training bureau assistant director, and district and sector commander, working his way up to the commander of police District 1 and again in District 4 where he grew up.
He was one of the few Latino officers to hold the rank of commander within the department. Along the way, he said he tried to be a role model for other officers of color.
“I figured we belonged in a certain box, and I never thought I would be chief of police or in the Denver Police Department as one of the highest in command,” Martinez said. “I hope that some people who look like me or others that may not think they have the opportunities that are in front of them, look at me and say, ‘If he can do it, I can do it.’”
Martinez retired from DPD to take the position of police chief of the Sheridan Police Department where he continues to cement a path for others who follow in his footsteps.
“We have to earn that, and we have to be the right people for the positions, “Martinez said. “We can’t just get it simply because of the color of our skin because we hurt others that are following us because it will appear that we can’t do the job.”
Martinez believes that even though there have been many changes in police departments across the country, there is still a long way to go.
“So here we are in 2024, and I still will walk into a room full of chiefs and I will usually be the only one or maybe one or two others that happen to be Latino or Black or any other minority,” Martinez said. “It’s a little disheartening to be the only one of color walking into a room of chiefs but it’s also an honor and I do my best to make sure that we shine.”
Learn more by visiting the Denver Police Museum.