A Day on Patrol: Jane Rides Along with Deputy Tony Martinez

A while back, I had the opportunity to do a ride-along with one of our community police officers, Deputy Tony Martinez. Ok, it was a LONG while back, and I’m just now getting it posted because it took me this long to carve out enough time to do it justice.

I’d been wanting to do the ride-along for a while, and we finally made it happen. On a cold and snowy day, I parked my Subaru at the Township Hall and climbed into Deputy Martinez’s freshly-washed and waxed patrol car.

Before we hit the road, however, he checked his phone, something he does every morning. Not for texts from friends or to scroll Facebook like most of us do, but to check for messages from Old Mission Peninsula residents.

One of them was from a homeowner wintering in Arizona, a follow-up on a report from the day before. A man dressed in black had been spotted circling the homeowner’s Old Mission house, peering in the windows, all of it caught on the Ring camera system.

The homeowner did exactly what he was supposed to do: called 911 in Arizona, which transferred him to Grand Traverse County Central Dispatch. Just minutes after the call, Deputy Martinez was standing on the property.

Call 911, Not His Cell Phone

If emergency services are needed immediately, calling 911 is the appropriate way to ensure that you get the proper services as quickly as possible.

“I would say that over 50 percent of the time, the types of messages that I get require immediate services, and they should have called Central Dispatch [911],” he said. But quite often, residents will text him or flag him down. He thinks it comes from not wanting to be bothered. “I didn’t want to bother them” is the phrase he hears most, even when the issue is a genuine health or safety concern.

I brought up a hiking encounter I’d mentioned to him once, when a friend of mine ran into a naked man on a trail on the North End but decided not to report it. “Pick up the phone and call 911,” he said. “Who’s to say it isn’t a case of indecent exposure, or is the person experiencing a mental health crisis? These questions aren’t going to be answered until emergency services responds and investigates.”

A Warning, Not a Ticket

As we drove down Peninsula Drive, he clocked the speed of an oncoming car he suspected was traveling above the posted speed limit with a LIDAR unit, a laser-based system that’s more precise than radar. Subsequently, he did initiate a traffic stop of this vehicle, which was traveling well above the posted speed limit, and made contact with its driver, at which time he addressed the speeding issue. I stayed in the car, but could hear a little of the conversation.

“Good afternoon, my name is Deputy Martinez, Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office. By chance, do you know why I stopped you?” It’s the same line every time, he told me, delivered the same unhurried way whether he’s talking to a tourist or a Peninsula Township resident. After completing the traffic stop, I learned that the driver owned up to speeding. He pulled away a few minutes later with a warning instead of a ticket. Deputy Martinez explained that for that particular traffic stop, he felt the situation could be more of an educational opportunity rather than issuing a citation.

I personally know this to be true. Not long after our ride-along, Deputy Martinez pulled ME over on the south end of Bluff Road. The speed limit there is 35 mph, then changes to 45 mph as you get closer to The Bluffs. I was going over the speed limit. He let me off with a warning, and since that day, I never drive through there without checking my speed and thinking about the day he pulled me over there.

But don’t count on ONLY getting a warning. It’s up to the discretion of the deputy doing the traffic stop, and it could go either way.

Life on the Radio

As we drove around the Peninsula, Deputy Martinez ran through the basics of the patrol car. His radio sits within reach on the dash, tuned to Central Dispatch. “Police officers in this country get injured and sometimes lose their lives every day,” he said matter-of-factly, not for shock value but simply because it’s true. He shared this with me because anything is possible during his shift, and he wanted to ensure that I knew how to use the radio in case something happened to him.

He described Grand Traverse County’s dispatch style as deliberately plain-spoken — “common tongue,” he called it. Conversational rather than the clipped, militarized radio chatter of departments in bigger cities.

Riding along also meant listening to the county’s radio traffic, call after call, most of it having nothing to do with the Peninsula. “I hear all the calls being sent out to the county,” he said. “Sometimes it can be information overload. But you work with it, you get used to it. You should know where your partners are, you should know what they’re up to. We rely on each other because we don’t have some of the resources other places have.”

Dispatch assigns calls partly by location, which means our community police officers are usually the first ones considered for anything on the Peninsula. But not always. The day before our ride-along, Deputy Martinez was working an accident at Center Road and McKinley Road when a complaint came in on Seven Hills Road. With no way of knowing when he’d be free, dispatch sent the next available unit from farther into the county instead.

But even calls he isn’t formally assigned to still pull at him. As soon as he wrapped up the accident, he radioed dispatch and asked to be put on the Seven Hills complaint. “Even though that other officer was going to take the complaint and handle everything, it’s still my responsibility as a CPO to be up there and keep my finger on the pulse of things,” he said. “I want to know how the residents of the Township are, and be a resource to those in need.”

What It Means to Be a CPO

That word — CPO, Community Police Officer — is the reason Deputy Martinez and his counterpart, Deputy Virnell “Andre” France, are on the Old Mission Peninsula (check out their page on the Township website here). Peninsula Township contracts with the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office for the arrangement, paying a portion of each officer’s salary in exchange for more personalized coverage than simply hoping a patrol car happens to be nearby.

It also means that we — Peninsula Township residents — know them, and they’re part of our community. “That affords us to be a little bit more personalized with the people and the complaints and the yearly ongoings,” said Deputy Martinez. He also serves the department as a firearms instructor, he’s a member of the Northern Michigan Mutual Aid dive team, and he was formerly an operator on the Northern Michigan Mutual Aid Task Force, Emergency Response Team 2.

The Need for Speed

What he does find, consistently, is speed. And anyone who’s lived out here for a while or reads the NextDoor app likely knows that speeders are everywhere. Bluff Road, Center Road, Peninsula Drive — Deputy France and Deputy Martinez field complaints about all of them.

I’ve mentioned before on the Gazette about “speed clubs” — groups of people who come to the Peninsula with the specific intention of getting from one place to another in the least amount of time. And let’s not forget the motorcycles and cars who think the Center Road stretch from the Hogsback to the Lighthouse is the Indy 500.

While our CPOs do their best to apprehend as many as they can, they can’t be everywhere all at once. Also, the speed limits themselves are not set by the Sheriff’s Department. I mentioned the section of Bluff Road north of Blue Water Road where the posted speed limit is 55 mph. It’s a curvy road that ends abruptly at the closure. Despite years of concerns from residents, that speed limit remains unchanged. Altering it isn’t up to the Sheriff’s Department. It’s the Grand Traverse County Road Commission and MDOT who decide, based on formal traffic studies.

Also, he noted that unless a road is posted otherwise, Michigan’s default speed limit — even on an unpaved road — is generally 55 mph. I did a little ride-around myself to see where this is the case on the Peninsula. The far north end of Peninsula Drive where it connects to Swaney Road? 55 mph. Brinkman Road? 55 mph.

However, keep this in mind from the Michigan Vehicle Code: “An individual operating a vehicle on a highway shall operate that vehicle at a careful and prudent speed not greater than nor less than is reasonable and proper, having due regard to the traffic, surface, and width of the highway and of any other condition existing at the time.”

No Passing on the Right!

Deputy Martinez said he gets a lot of questions about the section of Center Road where drivers heading north turn left onto Matheson Road. Impatient drivers will pass on the right to get around a car waiting to turn, and the driver behind that passing car doesn’t realize there’s a stopped vehicle ahead of them until it’s almost too late.

“No passing on the right, anywhere in the state of Michigan,” he said. “That lane is not for passing other traffic, period.” And yet the posted speed limit through that section is 55 mph. “If people learned to be a little more patient behind the wheel, and know that drivers are going to be making left and right turns in that area, that could have an impact on the overall safety on that stretch of Center Road.”

In a perfect world, he added, the lead driver signals well ahead of the turn, and the traffic behind him is patient enough to brake and hold at a safe distance. “That’s in the perfect world, which you and I would agree we do not live in.”

Short of getting the speed limit changed, his advice is straightforward: don’t ever pass on the right, and expect that someone, somewhere on that section of Center Road is about to turn left onto Matheson or McKinley. “Generally speaking, we could all improve the safety of our roadways if we learned to be more patient, leave early for our appointments, and remember that you are not only influencing your safety but the safety of other motorists on the road,” he said.

I also mentioned that I’m always pulling over to let cars go around me, especially on Peninsula Drive, where the speed limit is 35 mph out to Gray Road, where it switches to 45 mph. He encouraged me to hold the line and not pull over, forcing other drivers to go the speed limit behind me. I try to do that, but I don’t like having a trail of cars behind me. Deputy Martinez responded to me by saying, “Welcome to my world.”

Reading the Road

Behind the wheel, Deputy Martinez reads traffic the way a mechanic listens to an engine. A car drifting smoothly out of its lane and back might be showing signs of impairment; the same car jerking back sharply is more likely someone glancing at a cell phone. And when he pulls in behind a driver, he assumes some of what he sees is nerves, not guilt. “I remember what it was like, a cop being behind me.”

That awareness shapes his discretion — the same discretion that let the driver from that morning’s stop drive off with a warning instead of a citation. “I honestly believe he is going to remember that interaction with me more than he would a hundred-dollar ticket.”

Beyond Traffic Stops

Not every part of the job is measured in miles per hour. At the Sheriff’s Department boat barn, he showed me the dive team’s mobile support vehicle, chainsaws and ice-cutting gear staged for winter recoveries, a pontoon boat rigged with sonar capable of scanning lake bottoms for a missing person.

Nearby sat an armored vehicle used by the county’s Emergency Response Team, the kind of equipment Deputy Martinez didn’t have years ago when he found himself posted on the perimeter of a house where an armed suspect was barricaded inside. “You come to work understanding this is a very dangerous job.”

Watching Over the Peninsula

We talked about Old Mission Peninsula School, where he periodically does lockdown drills with staff, walking the halls with fire department personnel to check whether classrooms are dark and silent the way they’re supposed to be. It’s part of why he tries to know that school as well as his own house.

“I owe it to this community to be prepared to respond to that call, and do everything in my power to do the very best I can at that moment in time,” he said. “That’s always cognizant in my mind.”

We talked about the county’s new license-plate camera system — the Flock cameras — which only read a vehicle’s plate and general description — no photos of drivers, no cabin views. Without elaborating, he said the cameras have helped to resolve cases involving Peninsula residents.

The Quieter, Sadder Calls

And we talked about welfare checks, the quieter, sadder calls that don’t make anyone’s crime blotter. They usually come from a concerned family member or neighbor, and on the Peninsula, they’re common. We have a lot of elderly residents living on their own, perhaps the other half of a household after a spouse has passed.

Sometimes it’s simple: someone couldn’t reach a relative for a day and just wants a deputy to knock on the door. The day before our ride-along, it wasn’t. The mail was piling up, the car hadn’t moved, no lights had been on, and no one had seen the woman who lived there for several days.

Most of the time, he knows where this is probably going. “I’m always hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.” More often than not, he said, those calls end up finding exactly what everyone feared.

An Honor and a Privilege

By the time we pulled back into the Township Hall, I felt like I had a good feel for what it’s like to patrol the Peninsula every day. However, this was in the winter, and he said it gets much busier during the summer months.

“It’s an honor and a privilege to wear this uniform and serve our community,” said Deputy Martinez, more than once. By the end of the ride, it was clear he meant it every time.

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Interview: Peninsula Township Deputy Talks Speeders, Break-Ins and Wellness Checks