On April 17, the two finalists for the job went through an entire day of interviews culminating in an open house at Union Station, which was the key focus of RTD’s policing strategy for a time.
The finalists are Jim Cook, current assistant chief of the Amtrak Police Department, and RTD acting chief Steve Martingano, who served as the department’s deputy chief from 2017 to last July before taking over after Fitzgerald left.
RTD CEO and general manager Debra Johnson hired Fitzgerald in 2022, when RTD’s police force was much smaller than it is now and reports of drug use on RTD trains and buses were high. The RTD police force now has nearly ninety officers with a goal of reaching 150 by the end of the year.
Fitzgerald was fired amid controversy after an internal RTD report found he had driven his work vehicle over 100 miles per hour and regularly disregarded RTD policy and state laws regarding body camera use for police officers. After his dismissal, Fitzgerald, who is Black, filed a federal lawsuit accusing RTD of racial discrimination. (After a previous policing job went awry in Texas, Fitzgerald argued the same there.)
Fitzgerald’s lawsuit in Colorado argues RTD officers did not want an outsider and that white officers, including Martingano, worked to undermine Fitzgerald and other Black officers. Martingano, along with others named in the lawsuit, has denied the allegations.
“I know who I am as a person,” Martingano said on April 17. “I've been in the law enforcement for almost 32 years — 32 years in August. During that time, I've had one complaint against me in 32 years. ...I do everything to hold integrity.”
Hoping to avoid a similarly difficult situation this time around, RTD has undertaken a comprehensive search before selecting Cook and Martingano as finalists. This included soliciting feedback from the public and RTD staff about what they wanted to see in a police chief.
"There's been major differences, and I give GM CEO Johnson a lot of props for that, as well as our Chief Human Resources Officer,” says RTD Board Chair Julien Bouquet. “This process again resulted in two excellent candidates and whoever it is going to be is going to be a success.”
Bouquet, who has served on the RTD board since 2020, said public engagement and engagement with the board were both more frequent during this search than the search for Fitzgerald.
Increasing RTD Rider Satisfaction
In a presentation on April 17, Cook said he would look to strengthen RTD police's successes over the past few years. He outlined a commitment to community and employee outreach as well as several technological updates he would enact to help RTD police become more accountable by tracking activity more closely.Much of Cook’s vision was focused on ensuring officers are happy at work.
“A motivated police officer is a police officer who's taken care of, who feels safe and secure in their environment,” he said. “That means developing a comprehensive officer wellness program, giving our leaders the opportunity to participate in leadership development, having a strong succession plan. All those will lead to increased retention of our employees, increased recruitment. My approach is all about balancing fresh ideas with the institutional knowledge of the current force.”
Cook said he would not worry about being seen as an outsider, as Fitzgerald said he was, because he comes from a transit policing background.
“I bring not only extensive law enforcement experience, but also a commitment to collaborative leadership,” Cook told the group at Union Station. “Most importantly, I will be the leader who listens first, respects the expertise of our current staff and builds on their existing strengths while addressing opportunities for growth.”
Both candidates emphasized that, unlike municipal law enforcement, transit policing requires more contact with the public and works to offer support to those who may be struggling. Following that line of thinking, both men said they would strengthen RTD’s community-led policing initiatives.
Cook said one of his goals is to increase the percentage of employees and transit riders who feel secure in the RTD system.
Martingano had a similar philosophy, saying in his tenure as acting chief he instituted a policy that officers need to get out of their cars and talk to people more often.
“They need to be on our platforms,” he said. “They need to be in our vehicles. Not only to deter criminal incidents, but also to provide customer service. Individuals sometimes take our trains that don't know where to go next, and we want to make sure that they're able to do that customer education.”
Along with getting more officers on transit vehicles, Martingano said he’s focused on using the over 3,000 cameras throughout the RTD system to identify hot stops and criminal incidents at stops before they occur. Such instances have decreased by 50 percent in the last few months as a result, he added.
That’s positive news for an RTD system plagued with a negative reputation since the COVID-19 pandemic decreased ridership and increased anti-social behavior, like drug use, on trains and buses. RTD’s ridership still has not recovered from the pandemic dropoff, with many riders citing a sense of discomfort, lack of safety and low quality of service.
Making RTD Safer
Bouquet says the RTD board has identified personal security as one of the top priorities, and asked Cook and Martingano about building a better perception of safety.“Both candidates were very open to it,” Bouquet tells Westword. “For my constituency, and other constituencies that I've heard, that's what they want is that police presence.”
RTD board member Chris Nicholson asked Martingano how he would comfort people who may be nervous about police presence on transit. He said his goal is to train officers in a service-policing mindset that focuses on education, believing that if officers are actually riding along with customers, they will build positive relationships.
“We want to make sure that individuals know that public transportation is a need for many people, and we want to allow you the opportunity to continue to respect the rules,” Martingano said. “We need to continue to be visible, make sure people know who we are.”
A study by the Common Sense Institute last year found that people continued to worry about safety in the RTD system even when crime numbers went down. Rather than just literally stopping crime, RTD needs to usher in a better customer experience, the study suggested.
Bouquet says he believes both police candidates understand the dual nature of the work needed to create a perception of safety.
“Whoever our future chief of police is going to be has to work with our communications team and basically say, ‘hey, come try RTD again,’ or ‘come try RTD for the first time,’” Bouquet says. “That's really what we're looking for, because if people have the perception it's safe to ride, they'll come back.”
RTD was the first transit policing agency in the country to have a mental health co-responding unit for when people appear to be in mental health crisis. During his presentation, Martingano said he helped institute that unit and collected resources for RTD police to share with those who may be unhoused.
According to Cook, he helped Amtrak Police add dedicated social services programs to help “those less fortunate” as partners to the police in Washington, D.C., and New York.
“We found during and after COVID that we had a lot of individuals that were down, who were coming from the system that were creating a perception of safety issue,” Cook said. “Rather than working and arresting our way out of the problem dealing with the law enforcement issue, we dedicated our officers to work directly with social services providers.”
Though only a few members of the public attended the open house with candidates, Paolo Solorzano was able to make it. Solorzano rides the RTD W Line and started the RTD Riders Alliance to advocate for grassroots change. He says he believes RTD’s insular focus on Union Station damaged the perception of safety for the rest of the large system, which covers over 2,000 square miles.
Solorzano says he was attacked on the W Line; at the time, security officers told him they knew the W Line was having problems but that the focus was on cleaning up Union Station, he says.
“Transit riders don't really understand why there wasn’t a presence when everybody knew at that point that the W Line was dangerous,” Solorzano tells Westword. “I think they were focusing on tourists and people here downtown at the expense of the transit-dependent people who use it every day, the working class.”
Solorrzano believes the next RTD chief should be prepared to help whole system if another crisis like COVID happens again.
Cook and Martingano identified the expansive size of RTD’s system as one of the key challenges for the department. Both said they would use technology to make sure officers are deployed appropriately and work to recruit more officers to cover more area.
Bouquet — whose district is outside the city center in Parker, Lone Tree and portions of Centennial, Aurora and Castle Rock — says he feels confident his constituents would be served by either chief.
“It's a very tough decision Debra has, but, ultimately, I think we'll have a good future chief,” Bouquet says.
RTD will now take the feedback from interviews and the public forum before Johnson settles on a candidate. There is no timeline for the decision.
