A split Redlands City Council this week moved to, in the words of one City Hall insider, “permanently shut up” Deputy Police Chief Travis Martinez by paying him $871,956 plus a buyout of his accrued sick, vacation and staff privilege leave to discontinue his statements critical of his political masters and administrative overlords and retire before the end of the month.
Martinez, the second-highest ranking member of the Redlands Police Department, has claimed that decisions made by council members, the current and immediate past city manager and other senior department heads at Redlands City Hall has saddled the police with an inferior police chief and inadequate leadership of the police department and created physical and procedural circumstances within the city that have been and remain a continuing hazard to the public.
Martinez was highly thought of for the quality of his police and investigative work and his ambition and industriousness on the job. Those qualities, combined with the Redlands’ community’s desire as it advanced into the Third Millennium to promote Hispanics into high profile positions of authority, resulted in Martinez achieving the second highest ranking position in the Redlands Police Department.
Nevertheless, what was either his insensitivity to or disregard for political implications, a personality trait uncommon in most individuals who make it to management positions in the law enforcement profession, resulted in complications for the city, its political and administrative leadership and ultimately Martinez himself.
Martinez, grew up in Redlands as the grandson and grandnephew of the first two Latino members of the Redlands City Council, Norman and Odie Martinez. At the age of 22 in 1995, after graduating from the University of Redlands the previous year with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management and then attending the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Academy, he was hired by the Redlands Police Department.
For the first two decades he was a cop, Martinez managed to stay on the right side of the powers that be, both within the department and the City of Redlands.
With his college degree he was on the fast track within the department, making relatively fast progress up the department chain of command after serving an obligatory five-year stint in routine patrol and other assignments. A major portion of the early stage of his career came under the leadership of Jim Bueermann, who was police chief from 1998 until 2011. With the rising political clout of Hispanic voters in California and particularly in Southern California given a shift in demographics in which more than half of the population in the southern part of the state self-identified as Latino, Redlands’ political and administrative leadership was striving to promote Hispanics into responsible roles within the municipal bureaucracy, no less so in the police department, against which claims of bias and prejudice against so-called “protected minorities” – Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders and Alaska natives – had historically been made. In this way, Bueermann was willing, indeed eager, to facilitate the promotion of both Martinez and another Hispanic officer in the department, Mark Garcia, who was slightly older than Martinez.
Martinez advanced to the position of detective in 2000 and to sergeant in 2005.
In 2011, Martinez made a major career advancement when, in an effort to find an effective but affordable 0means of combating intensifying retail theft and both bank and liquor store robberies in the midst of a recession and declining tax revenues to support municipal and therefore police operations, he developed and deployed a system to track thieves using a combination of existing global position system technology and automated license plate readers. Coordinating with local residents and businesses, the department hid miniaturized and virtually undetectable GPS devices discreetly within items commonly targeted by thieves or hidden within the stacks of cash at banks or retail establishments. When the hidden GPS device was moved more than 38 feet in a given direction, it activated a signal that was sent to the departments dispatch center, whereupon the department’s dispatcher in place at the time could forward global positioning data on the device to the entirety of the police department’s personnel via their smartphones, whereby they could trace the direction and speed of travel of the device and who ever was in possession of it. Simultaneously, the position of the device could be cross-referenced with the data pulled from the license plate readers position at various points along the route traveled by the thief or thieves, getting a possible identification or fix on who the thief was through the vehicle registration information associated with that license plate.
In 2012 and 2013, with the retirement of Bueermann and the advancement of Garcia to police chief, Martinez attended and graduated from California Police Officers Standards and Training College, which corresponded with his promotion to lieutenant, in which capacity he supervised the department’s investigations and special operations bureau, including investigations, narcotics, gangs, air support, forensics, community policing, property/evidence and crime analysis.
Martinez subsequently obtained a master’s degree in the field of public administration and social service provision.
At that time, with Garcia in the role as police chief and Martinez taking an energetic and pro-active command of those elements of the department’s function that he was overseeing, his future was already well-secured and his prospects seemed unfettered, with the potential that he would advance to the post of police chief by 2020, his 25th year with the department.
In 2016, however, Martinez engaged in what was the first major political miscalculation of his career.
Owing to the death of her son, Nicholas, from a previous marriage, Juliana Foster, the wife of Redlands Mayor Paul Foster, was experiencing periods of inconsolable depression, during which she would grow irrationally aggressive. During one such episode of despondency on May 21, 2016, Mayor Foster summoned the police department. Upon arriving, the responding officers determined that Juliana Foster had physically assaulted her husband and engaged in domestic violence, and they moved to arrest her. At that point, however, she had retreated to an interior room in the couple’s house. At that point, one of the officers contacted Martinez on his cell phone, giving him a briefing on the circumstance, and asking how to proceed. Martinez instructed the officers on the scene to proceed with arresting Juliana Foster. Before the arrest was effectuated, however, Mayor Foster spoke to with Martinez, requesting that Martinez use his authority as the commanding officer over the policemen at his house to desist in the effort to arrest Mrs. Foster. Martinez told the mayor he could not do as was requested, and he reiterated his instruction to the officers to make the arrest. Recognizing that Mayor foster was likely to then go over his head and call upon Police Chief Garcia to countermand the order to arrest Juliana Foster, Martinez phone Garcia, apprising him of the situation. Garcia, in turn, made an inquiry with the officers on the scene as to what was taking place, at which point the police chief contacted Martinez, telling him to document his phone conversation with Mayor Foster in a police memorandum that could be forwarded to then-City Manager Nabar Martinez, who is no blood relation to Travis Martinez.
Afoot in Redlands at that time, as is still the case, was a serious pay-to-play ethos that a majority of the members of the council had involved themselves in, necessitating that they hang together with regard to maintaining a grip on the machinery of government and the decision-making/policy determination processes. At all levels of the police department, there was no interest in challenging the city’s political masters – the mayor and city council – or municipal administration – the city manager and various department heads – with regard to issues relating to development or the pace of growth and expansion.
In August 2017, Travis Martinez was promoted to one of the department’s two commander positions, which put him in charge of the department’s operations division, including patrol, community policing, traffic, special events and the volunteer unit, making him the department’s second in command.
Both Garcia and Martinez were determined that the police department would be given autonomy to function within the normal bailiwick that traditionally fall to police departments, that being the upholding of the law as it relates to everyday life, patrolling the streets with regard to traffic laws and holding the line with regard to typical criminal activity, extending to violence, property theft and the like as well as ensuring public safety. Accordingly, Garcia and Travis Martinez had an understanding with Nabar Martinez that the police department would be permitted to function within its conventional province, without city officials interfering in department operations and the police department remaining unentangled in the political goings-on at City Hall.
While Nabar Martinez remained as city manager, he strove to serve as an insulator between the city council and the police department. Indeed, throughout the remainder of 2016 and well into 2017, Mayor Foster was pressuring Nabar Martinez to begin preparations to terminate Garcia as police chief and to simultaneously bypass the command echelon of the police department and have the police department’s internal affairs unit open up an investigation of Travis Martinez. Foster’s goal was to find grounds to terminate Travis Martinez and effectuate his separation from the department and then replace Garcia as police chief with someone more amenable to direct influence by the city council.
In late 2017, Garcia was induced to retire in early 2018. The city council maneuvered to replace Garcia not with Martinez, but the other commander in the department, Chris Catren.
In late 2018, Nabar Martinez was suspended and then terminated by the city council. There followed nearly 15 months during which the city was without an official city manager, such that Foster, as mayor, essentially function as the de facto city manager.
With Catren in place as police chief, during Nabar Martinez’s last several months as city manager and then during Foster’s domination of City Hall as mayor/acting city manager, a reorganization of the management of the police department took place in which Martinez’s status as commander was rescinded, he was demoted to the position of deputy chief and his salary was cut. Simultaneously, in accordance with the reorganization, three of the department’s lieutenant positions were eliminated and four command posts other than police chief were established, those being the deputy chief position Travis Martinez held, a second deputy chief position and two commander positions. It was Travis Martinez’s contention that the reorganization specifically targeted him by demoting him while the three other high-ranking members of the department previously serving under him made relative gains in rank, prestige and power within the department, receiving promotions and pay raises.
According to Martinez, the city’s higher-ups were upset with his unwillingness to suspend the law, policy and normal rules in compliance with the wishes of the city’s elected officials and administrators. He said that Chief Catren told him that the city wanted to do the police department’s command reorganization prior to a new city manager being installed to replace Nabar Martinez.
Recognizing that the reorganization was going to take place and that Catren was set upon promoting Mike Reiss into the second deputy chief position, Travis Martinez counseled the police chief that his choice of Reiss was ill-advised, given Reiss’s proclivity for either seducing some of the department’s female employees or using his position of relative authority or oversight within the department to engage in sexual activity with willing female employees on the basis of favoritism and/or promises of promotion or with unwilling female employees by using threats of demotion or termination. Martinez sought to convince Catren that he should fill the other deputy chief position with Rachel Tolber.
Reiss’s unsavory reputation within the department for inappropriate and in some cases what seemed to be illegal sexual conduct with female employees was widespread and Catren had knowledge about at least some specifics relating to that activity. Nevertheless, Foster, who had reason to want to avoid having the police department focus on any issues relating to the city council’s interactions and financial relationships with developers and others with a pecuniary interest in the decisions being made at City Hall, exerted pressure on Catren to ensure that the department steer clear of any examination of the council and its activity. Reiss, whom Foster considered a personal friend and loyal supporter, possessed the attributes and experience as a law enforcement officer that would render him an outstanding deputy chief and a potential police chief when Catren retired, Foster said. Ultimately, Catren rejected Martinez’s advice and appointed Reiss to the deputy chief post.
As it would play out, Reiss’s advancement would prove to be something oa a public relations nightmare for both the department and the City of Redlands. By 2023, four of the department’s current and past female employees – Police Officer Laurel Falconieri, Police Detective Leslie Martinez, evidence technician Julie Alvarado-Salcido and forensic specialist Geneva Holzer had filed suit against the city and/or the police department, alleging specific acts of sexual harassment or a culture of discrimination against female employees, perpetrated by, or in some fashion associated with, Reiss.
Much to the city’s, department’s and Catren’s discredit, all three tried to ride out the controversy and adverse publicity that hung over Reiss, but ultimately were unable to. One of the incidents involving Reiss was sordid enough to garner international attention.
With Reiss’s promotion to what was at least the third-highest ranking and arguably the second ranking position in the department, he became even more forward in the way in which he approached women working within the department than he had before, such that it prompted a cascade of reactions that neither the department’s watch commanders, its command echelon, the city’s administrators, the city council nor the city’s legal team could contain.
At first, the complaints, legal claims in advance of the lawsuit and the suits themselves echoed hollowly as nothing more than written accounts of a few disgruntled women working at the police department. Then, however, a narrative by Holzer, one of the department’s forensic specialists, about what her colleague, Alvarado-Salcido, had endured together with an account of what Reiss and some of the department’s officers had done in an effort to suppress the facts and the details, became public and then went viral.
According to sworn documents put into the court record in support of her lawsuit, Holzer said that in December 2019, Reiss and Sergeant Kyle Alexander sought to destroy physical evidence implicating Reiss in what was arguably a rape by coercion. The evidence in question, Holzer stated, was what she had grounds to believe was a semen stain on Alvarado-Salcido’s office chair. That evidence matched up with one of the details in the allegations by Alvarado-Salcido in a lawsuit that attorney Cristal Cabrera filed on behalf of Alvarado-Salcido against the department and the City of Redlands in August 2022, alleging she was forced to engage in sexual acts with Reiss in order to be able to promote at the department. On one occasion in August 2019, she said, Reiss had prevailed upon her to orally copulate him in her office. Holzer, having learned of what had occurred, took possession of the semen-stained chair at Alvarado-Salcido’s work station, recognizing it to be evidence of a crime. Ill-advisedly, it turned out, Holzer went to her superior, Alexander, with the chair, explaining her belief, based on her experience as a forensic technician employed in a law enforcement setting, that it constituted evidence of a specific crime. Alexander, who was answerable to Reiss up the chain of command, the next day told her to dispose of the evidence altogether, meaning to get rid of the chair. When she did not immediately act to carry out Alexander’s instructions, according to a lawsuit that Holzer filed against the department and the city, Alexander directed her to cut the upholstery on the chair that contained the semen, dispose of the chair, write a report of the matter in which she was to “not be descriptive” of the circumstance involving Reiss and Alvarado-Salcido and provide the report and any photos of the chair to only him by email.
Prior to Holzer and Alvarado-Salcido taking the department to task, Leslie Martinez, a detective specializing in crimes against children, Laurel Falconieri, an officer who had been pushed out of the department, had sued the department and the city, alleging they had been subjected to a work environment patently hostile toward woman in which there was “pervasive sexual favoritism” toward men. In their jointly filed suit in which they were represented by Riverside-based attorneys Daniel Moussanche and Dennis Wagner, both Leslie Martinez and Falconieri cited in the main the comportment of Officer Eddie Herrera, who had sexually harassed them.
According to both Leslie Martinez and Falconieri, Herrera made false claims against them, including accusing Leslie Martinez of making a false arrest and accusing Falconieri of giving a baggie of drugs back to a woman during a domestic violence call, The accusation against Falconieri resulted in her termination.
According to Falconieri, at certain points, including while she was pregnant, Reiss made improper advances toward her, remarking how attractive she was and repeatedly asking her out for drinks, inviting her to his beach house in Carlsbad and sending her photos of himself in which he was unclothed, despite her being married. She had politely declined Reiss’s offers, according to the lawsuit, but Reiss made a habit of remaining physicalkly close to Falconieri, according to the suit, to the point that “Other officers noticed this behavior and assumed that Plaintiff Falconieri was sexually involved with him. Plaintiff Falconieri’s colleagues believed that Lt. Reiss was “in her pocket” and would fast track Plaintiff Falconieri’s advancement due to a sexual relationship that did not exist. Plaintiff Falconieri took no part in fostering this misbelief.”
According to the suit, at one time the Redlands Police Department had provided “female officers with opportunities” but things had shifted and “The Redlands Police Department started to become an environment where female officers would receive promotions and opportunities if they had a superior officer ‘in their pocket,’ which was code for having a sexual relationship with a superior officer.”
According to the suit, when Falconieri and Leslie Martinez came forward with their complaints relating to their treatment and the sexual harassment they had endured, the rest of the department closed ranks around the offenders and the two women were subjected to harassment by other officers.
Catren, according to the suit, was aware that Leslie Martinez had filed a complaint against Herrera on July 6, 2016 alleging sexual harassment and a hostile work environment and that an internal affairs investigation had sustained the accusations in the complaint. Despite assurances that Herrera would be disciplined, that did not come about and Herrera was never held accountable, according to the lawsuit. Catren buried that internal investigation report as he did with other reports pertaining to the harassment Falconieri had been subjected to by Herrera and Reiss, Alvarado-Salcido’s treatment by Reiss and Holzer’s gathering of evidence against Reiss and the efforts by Sergeant Alexander to have that evidence destroyed, sources within the department state.
In December 2022, Alvarado-Salcido’s suit was served upon the city. According to Travis Martinez, the city did not inform him about the suit, and instead filed a claim to dismiss it. It is unclear whether Alvarado-Salcido’s claim against the city, which had to be lodged with the city and rejected prior to the filing of a lawsuit, had also been withheld from the department, although presumably, Catren would have been consulted about such a claim. It was not until January 26, 2023, according to Travis Martinez, that he was shown, by a sergeant within the department, a copy of Alvarado-Salcido’s lawsuit. The sergeant also conveyed to him, Travis Martinez stated, certain “sensitive information” related to the circumstances pertaining to the suit. The sergeant told Travis Martinez that he had previously provided the same information to Redlands City Councilman Paul Barich.
When he spoke with Catren about the information he had gleaned from his conversation with the sergeant about the Alvarado-Salcido/Reiss matter, Travis Martinez maintains, Catren feigned being, or was actually, “astonished.” Travis Martinez is somewhat equivocal with regard to Catren’s knowledge with regard to the sexual harassment issues in the depart, stating at one point that it appears City Manager Charles Duggan, who succeeded Nabar Martinez following Foster’s 13-month stint as de facto city manager, withheld Avarado-Salcido’s lawsuit from Catren. Nevertheless, sexual harassment issues were at the basis of the lawsuit filed by Falconieri and Leslie Martinez, and Catren was fully aware of that suit and the matters it dealt with. In May 2023, the city and both Falconieri and Leslie Martinez came to an understanding with regard to the allegations contained in their lawsuit and in June 2023 the city announced it had settled that suit for $1.7 million.
In February 2023, when reports about Alexander’s instructions to Holzer to destroy the evidence of Reiss’s rape of Alvarado-Salcido by coercion surfaced within certain circles within the Redlands community followed by local press reports, Reiss was put on administrative leave with pay. As those reports became more general in Southern California, then switched from print to television media and shortly thereafter went national, Reiss in late February 2023 applied to retire, and on March 4, 2023, officially left the department and began pulling an annual $188,736 pension.
By March 2023, media around the world focused, however briefly, on the lurid and sensational nature of Holzer’s thwarted attempt to get the police department to take stock of the evidence implicating Reiss in the rape of one of the department’s 28 civilian employees and the harassment that was endured by some or all of the department’s six sworn female officers. Incidental to that was how Catren had indulged his “men” in such behavior and action while preventing any details about what had occurred from being disclosed. Abruptly, unwilling to field questions coming in from all four corners of the globe, Catren two days prior to Reiss making his exit, abruptly resigned. He had the department’s official spokesman publicly attribute his decision to “retire” to a lingering back injury.
Meanwhile, Travis Martinez, aware that the department’s internal affairs division had not taken up the issue of Reiss’s sexual exploitation of Alvarado-Salcido, provided the information and evidence relating to that matter which had been given to him by the sergeant to the FBI’s public corruption unit.
In a claim he filed against the city in June 2023, Travis Martinez zeroed in on the intentional misfeasance and passive negligence of the city and department in dealing with improprieties on the part of members of the department.
“[A]llegations of sexual misconduct are treated in a laissez-faire manner and complete lack of diligence within the city,” the claim stated. “[H]igh-ranking members of the city government were aware of the allegations for months and did nothing to investigate or protect other employees.”
While Martinez had been the department’s second-in-command under Catren, city officials, by that point were wary of his inability or unwillingness to remain deferential toward the political hierarchy in Redlands and in choosing Catren’s replacement as police chief, opted to temporarily install Tolber as the interim police chief and on June 1, 2023 officially promoted to her as police chief.
It was slightly more than three weeks after that, on June 22, 2023, when Martinez filed a claim against the city. Representing him in that claim was Daniel Moussanche, one of the attorneys representing Leslie Martinez and Laurel Falconieri.
According to the claim, the city defied custom and tradition when the city did not offer him, as the second highest ranking member of the department under Catren and his logical successor as chief, the post outright nor conduct an open recruitment to fill the position while allowing him to participate in that competition.
It was the his unwillingness to abide the incompetence, misfeasance and malfeasance at City Hall and within the police department that led to his not acceding to the position of police chief, Martinez stated in the claim. Martinez “was not given the opportunity by the city manager to become the interim chief of police simply because the city manager retaliated against him for speaking out and performing his job duties and not covering up sexual misconduct and his reporting to the FBI.”
In his claim, Martinez maintains he was eminently qualified to become police chief, based upon a litany of accomplishments during what was then his 27 years with the department.
“While Rachel Tolber has the skills to eventually be an effective police chief, claimant believes she currently lacks sufficient experience to currently serve in the role for a department coming out of a sexual misconduct investigation,” the claim states. “Claimant believes that he is more qualified for the position than Rachel Tolber and that City Manager Charles Duggan passed over him because claimant’s actions exposed discriminatory behavior by the City Manager and either the incompetence or cover-up by the city manager in the sexual misconduct case.”
Ironically, according to the complaint, the city did not promote Travis Martinez to police chief at least partially because of the sexually charged scandal dogging the city that came about because city officials had kept him out of the loop in the earlier stages of the contretemps involving Reiss.
“[T]he city decided to choose a less qualified person like Tolber for the position because the city has had problems with sexual harassment allegations and lawsuits and that hiring a female chief shows they are resolving issues in the department.”
In his June 2022, Martinez had further alleged that the city disregarded his observations and recommendations with regard to a serious hazard at the railroad crossing on Alabama Street, suggesting that the city had done so because acknowledging the accuracy of his determination with regard to a fatal accident that took place there in April 2023 would subject the city to liability.
According to the claim, Martinez reviewed a security video of the collision of Metrolink Arrow train with a vehicle in which 47-year-old Heather Woolard-Chiakowsky and her 11-year-old daughter, Presley Chiakowsky. were the driver and passenger. Both were killed. That mishap, in which Heather Woolard-Chiakowsky had pulled too far forward when she stopped for the train and her vehicle was trapped in place by the descending crossing gate, occurred on Alabama Street north of Redlands Boulevard on April 4, 2023.
Martinez maintained in the claim that he had come across a “dangerous condition” at the Alabama Street railroad crossing and informed Assistant City Manager Chris Boatman, who is also the city’s facilities and community services director, of the hazard, advising Boatman that the city should contact “the responsible public entities” who had shared jurisdiction with regard to the railroad crossing, meaning the city’s public works division, the Metrolink authority and the San Bernardino County Transportation Agency.
“Claimant was shut down and told not to bring up this issue at the scheduled meeting with the train consultant and not to discuss any of his findings because the matter was going to be litigated and it was implied that the city did not want to correct this dangerous condition in order to protect itself from the litigation by not expressing the dangerous condition or bringing it to light,” according to the claim. “Claimant was instructed not to provide certain evidence to other authorities. The claimant then discovered a Facebook post describing how the same type of confusing, dangerous road condition likely existed elsewhere in the city. Claimant is concerned that his knowledge about the potential danger that in his opinion could easily be rectified and the city’s refusal to take any steps to potentially protect its citizens would subject all of them, including himself, to potential manslaughter charges if a future accident should occur. The claimant believes that if he were to speak with the proper authorities about
his concerns, he would subject himself to insubordination charges.”
Martinez alleged that the city and department had acted vindictively toward him because he had assisted one of the department’s officers who was bilingual in an effort to obtain bilingual pay. According to the claim, the language spoken by the officer was one other than Spanish, Farsi, or Vietnamese, the only three languages that the city states recognizes as qualifying an officer for bilingual pay. His efforts in this regard antagonized City Manager Duggan, Martinez asserted.
Martinez’s claim was filed in June 2023. Under California law, a public entity has 45 days to accept or reject that claim. Upon rejection or the elapsing of the 45 days, the claimant can then file a lawsuit, which must be brought within six months of the rejection of the claim or the elapsing of the 45 days from the filing of that claim.
Without explaining how the city had failed to respond to Travis Martinez’s claim for more than 20 months and why Martinez had failed to file suit prior to the expiration of the six-month deadline for him to do so in February 2024, the city took up his claim at Tuesday night’s council meeting, discussing it in closed session for more than an hour. Upon coning out of that closed session, City Attorney Yvette Abich Garcia announced, “The city and Martinez shall release each other for any and all current and future claims each may have against the other” pursuant to an $871,956 monetary settlement, which is to be augmented with a further payout of Martinez’s accrued leave. As part of the settlement, Martinez is to file for retirement within 10 days of accepting the settlement terms.
It was disclosed that the council voted 3-to-2, with Mayor Mario Saucedo and councilmembers Denise Davis and Eddie Tejeda prevailing and councilmen Paul Barich and Marc Shaw dissenting to enter into the settlement.
Upon retirement, Martinez will be eligible for a $184,373.81 pension.