SAN ANTONIO – A former San Antonio police officer accused of assaulting his girlfriend, a fellow officer, after looking through her phone, will not get his job back.
In a Mar. 10 ruling, a third-party arbitrator said there would have been cause to fire Philip Ortiz Jr., even if he hadn’t been arrested on Nov. 7, 2021, on a misdemeanor assault charge.
Ortiz’s then-girlfriend, Officer Martha Martinez, was also given an indefinite suspension, which is tantamount to being fired, after investigators found a cellphone video of a separate April 2021 incident in which she pointed an unloaded gun at Ortiz and pulled the trigger several times.
“Both parties emotionally and physically abuse one another often out of jealousy and control. Both parties are victims and abusers who cycle from violence to reconciliation and back again,” Bill Detwiler wrote in his ruling, which KSAT obtained this week.
Despite the couple’s messy history, the arbitrator agreed that the determination of who was the primary aggressor should only be determined by the case at hand.
Detwiler ruled that SAPD chief William McManus acted in accordance with a zero-tolerance policy for domestic violence and relied fairly on the facts of the investigation, which found Ortiz to be the primary aggressor in this instance.
Though the criminal case against Ortiz was dismissed in November 2022 due to insufficient evidence, the city still didn’t want Ortiz back in the department.
“If you are found to have credible allegations of domestic violence, you cannot hold a gun and a badge for the city,” Erica Matlock, an attorney representing the city, said during Ortiz’s December appeal hearing.
Detwiler noted there was “considerable discussion” surrounding Ortiz’s arrest, but it wasn’t his purview to find probable cause or apply a “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of proof.
“The Hearing Examiner finds just cause exists by a preponderance of the evidence in support of the indefinite suspension and would have found so even absent the arrest,” he wrote.
‘Nobody is going to believe you’
Ortiz and Martinez were driving back from a wedding when the city says he went through her phone while she was sleeping.
After Ortiz found a man on the phone whom he thought had been blocked, the city says he assaulted Martinez in the truck, pushing her head against the window and pulling her hair.
Once they were at the home, Matlock said, “it got even more physical,” and that Ortiz threatened to kill Martinez and himself before heading into a bedroom, where Martinez said she knew he had a gun.
“I don’t honestly know if he would have, but at the same time, I’m by myself,” Martinez told investigators in a video-recorded interview from that night shown during the hearing. “I don’t have my phone. I don’t have my keys. What am I going to do? Let him shoot me? Let me die there?”
Martinez went to retrieve her own gun from another room. Though Ortiz did not come back with a sidearm, they wrestled over hers, which fired twice during the struggle.
As he restrained her, Ortiz also started recording a video without Martinez’s knowledge. On it, Ortiz is repeatedly heard denying Martinez’s accusations that he hit her. He also tells Martinez he doesn’t want either of them to get in trouble.
“Now I’m all scratched up,” Ortiz is heard saying. “You hit me, love. They’re not — nobody is going to believe you."
Ortiz also called 911 and restrained Martinez until fellow SAPD officers arrived at the house. He has denied hitting Martinez or making any threats.
Ortiz’s attorney, Ricardo Garcia-Tagle, pointed to his client’s injuries — a busted lip and a mark near his eye — as evidence Martinez was the primary aggressor, not Ortiz.
However, SAPD’s primary investigator for the case, Sgt. Zachary Oliva said, “the totality of the circumstances for this case” indicated otherwise.
Martinez had bruises she said were from that night, Oliva said, as well as a red scalp he said was consistent with her hair being pulled.
Ironically, investigators looked at Ortiz’s secret video recording as evidence he was the primary aggressor.
“It kind of struck us a little bit because she’s again unaware she’s being recorded, and she’s just responding to his questions, you know, almost confused as to, like, ‘Hey, why are you saying this? It didn’t happen this way. It happened this way.’ So it led us to believe that a lot of those questions were almost staged,” Oliva said.
Detwiler also wrote in his decision that the staged video “significantly belies (Ortiz’s) credibility.”
Oliva said he also investigated accusations against Martinez for assaulting Ortiz in the past. Though Oliva said there were “several” altercations between the couple, investigators couldn’t determine an offense based on what they had.
While Oliva said he does believe Martinez was guilty of a family violence offense in the past, he also believes she was the victim “in this case.”
KSAT found no evidence of any criminal charges against Martinez. The appeal of her indefinite suspension is still pending.
