Gypsy Barrientos, girlfriend of slain parole officer Davis Martinez, stands with his mother, Blanca Garcia-Martinez, at a vigil honoring him Monday. Martinez was killed while on duty in May 2024. Photo by Bryan P. Sears
The family and loved ones of slain Parole Officer Davis Martinez called on Maryland lawmakers Monday to boost protections for state employees against violence on the job, saying Martinez should not have died in vain.
“This is absolutely the most painful thing that I have ever had to experience — and as much as I wish that I was alone, I know that I’m not,” said Gypsy Barrientos, Martinez’s girlfriend, who spoke on behalf of his family at a vigil honoring him Monday evening.
“Law enforcement officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, teachers, state highway workers, social workers, parole agents and more. These are public service jobs that expose our loved ones to unknown threats every day,” she said.
Her comments came at a memorial for Martinez that also served as a rally, with members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Maryland Council 3 and other labor unions gathered on Lawyers Mall in front of the State House.
About 100 people turned out on a chilly January night to sing, mourn and light candles in Martinez’s honor — and to push for passage of the “Davis Martinez Public Employee Safety and Health Act.” It calls for the appointment of an assistant commissioner of Labor and Industry specifically to oversee the safety of public employees, and to specify that workplace protections extend to workers while they are in the field, among other measures.
Martinez was in the field when he became the first Maryland parole agent killed in the line of duty. He was conducting a routine visit on the morning of May 31, 2024, in Silver Spring when he was brutally slain.
Martinez had gone to the home of Emanuel Edward Sewell, who was out on parole after serving 21 years of a 40-year sentence for sex assaults and burglary. Martinez’s supervisors did not check on him until well into the evening, after coworkers expressed concern for his well-being.
Police found Martinez dead at Sewell’s house with multiple stab wounds. Sewell, who was arrested a day later in West Virginia, has been charged first-degree murder for the death of Martinez.
The Davis Martinez Public Employee Safety and Health Act aims to provide better oversight of state workplaces while expanding employee protections and safety measures out to field work, among other measures.
“We are essentially setting up an entirely new unit … to specifically focus on the health and wellbeing and safety of public employees in their workplace,” said Del. Jared Solomon (D-Montgomery) Monday afternoon, before the vigil. He is the sponsor of the House version of the Martinez bill, HB 176, which has a companion bill in the Senate, SB 26, sponsored by Sen. Benjamin F. Kramer (D-Montgomery).
Solomon said one of the key provisions of the legislation is that it expands workplace inspections to include “inspection of the places where our public employees are actually doing their jobs. Which in the instance of Agent Martinez, is not just his office in Silver Spring, it is the places in which he has to do his actual job.”
“It’d be the same thing as, unfortunately, the passing of the sanitation workers in Baltimore City,” he said. “Their workplace is not just the depot where they need their trucks. It is the streets of Baltimore where they do their jobs.”
Solomon was referring to two Baltimore City Department of Public Works employees, Ronald Silver II and Timothy Cartwell, who died in separate incidents while on the job last year.
The legislation would require the state to develop plans and programs to protect public workers against “workplace violence,” which the bill defines as a “violent act or the threat of violence that occurs in at a place of employment,” excluding situations of self-defense or the defense of another.
The legislation would also create a unit within the Maryland Division of Labor and Industry to oversee the safety and health conditions for public employees and create new regulations to further protect state workers. The Public Employees’ Safety and Health unit would conduct regular and unscheduled workplace inspections to ensure that state employees have safe work environments.
AFSCME Maryland Council 3 President Patrick Moran said that while the legislation is named after Martinez, the workplace protections are meant to help all state workplaces be safer, not just those of parole agents.
“It has a much broader focus,” Moran said. “You have social workers that go out to homes all the time … settings around mental health issues, a number of situations.
“I think people realize the importance of this — the lack of guidelines and procedures,” Moran said. “They’re just not in place, and so we need to address that.”