Former TPD officer arrested

A former Tucumcari police officer and onetime candidate for sheriff was arrested and briefly jailed last week after being accused of using force on a city cop and menacing another.

Herman Isidro Martinez, 50, of Tucumcari was detained on a warrant Thursday on charges of battery upon a peace officer and assault upon a peace officer.

The battery charge is a fourth-degree felony that can lead up to 18 months in prison and up to a $5,000 fine. The assault charge is a misdemeanor.

According to the criminal complaint, Tucumcari Police Cpl. Nemie Salvador and Patrolman Santos Saenz were sent Jan. 14 to Martinez’s home in the 2500 block of South 11th Street to check on a report of a domestic disturbance.

Saenz wrote in the complaint that when he arrived, he saw Martinez talking to Salvador in front of the garage. As Saenz approached, Martinez told him to step back from his property and called him a “f—ing rat.”

“Martinez placed his left hand on the center of Cpl. Salvador’s chest and his right hand on Cpl. Salvador’s rib area and pushed Cpl. Salvador out of the way in an attempt to aggressively close the distance between him and I,” Saenz wrote in the complaint.

“As I saw Martinez, closing distance, I feared based off his demeanor and choice of words he was attempting to commit a battery upon me.”

Saenz wrote he took a step back and drew a Taser in a show of force. Salvador got between them, and Saenz walked off the property in an attempt to de-escalate the situation. Saenz said Martinez and his wife, Betty Jo Martinez, yelled obscenities at him.

About 30 minutes later, Martinez approached Saenz’s patrol car with a flashlight, asking him to leave the property, yelling obscenities and shining the light in Saenz’s face.

“I told Martinez to not shine the light toward me,” Saenz wrote in the complaint. “Martinez then placed the beam of his flashlight in my eyes. This caused me to lose sight of Martinez for a brief moment in time, again thinking he was going to commit a battery.”

Saenz wrote that a New Mexico State Police officer interjected and escorted Martinez back to his home.

Magistrate Judge Noreen Hendrickson issued the arrest warrant on Martinez on Thursday. According to logs by the Quay County Detention Center, Martinez was booked into the jail on Thursday morning, then released early Friday on a $2,000 appearance bond. Martinez made his first appearance in magistrate court Friday.

No attorney for Martinez was listed in online court records.

Martinez ran for the Republican nomination in 2022 for Quay County sheriff. Dennis Garcia defeated Martinez in the primary election by a more than 4-to-1 margin. Garcia went on to win the general election.

Martinez retired that year as a corporal from the Tucumcari Police Department. He once was a sheriff and undersheriff in Harding County, a member of the the New Mexico Mounted Patrol and was an officer at Roy, Springer and New Mexico Highlands University, according to an candidate questionnaire he submitted to the Quay County Sun in 2022. He spent 30 years in law enforcement.

Martinez also was one of two city officers during a 2021 arrest in Tucumcari where a suspect was body-slammed to the ground. A bystander captured the arrest on cellphone video.

The officers were cleared after an internal review, though the suspect later filed a lawsuit against the officers, city and police department. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2023.