Former Boston Police officer who secretly filmed nude child banned from police work

A former Boston Police officer who pleaded guilty to secretly filming a naked child was banned last week from working in law enforcement in Massachusetts by the state’s police oversight board.

The officer, Joe Martinez, faced 15 charges after his arrest in March 2022, including photographing the intimate areas of a child and capturing images of a nude person without their knowledge. Prosecutors later brought an additional charge of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, according to records on file in Norfolk County Superior Court.

Martinez, a Boston police officer since 2008, pleaded guilty to all 16 charges in March of last year. He was sentenced to three to five years in state prison and committed to the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, a maximum security facility in Lancaster.

In a notice posted online last week, the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission said it revoked Martinez’s license for police work, permanently barring him from serving with a police department or sheriff’s office in the Bay State.

Martinez’s conviction has not been previously reported.

The board was created through a 2020 police reform law to increase transparency and scrutiny of law enforcement amid the national reckoning with police misconduct sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.

Under the new law, police were required to hold a certification to work in Massachusetts. Martinez is the 40th police officer to lose licensure since the commission began exercising its decertification authority in 2023.

The board has pulled officers’ certifications for a variety of misbehavior. Many — though not all — faced criminal convictions, which mandate their decertification under state law.

The first officer decertified by the commission was accused of marching in the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Other officers lost their certifications over accusations of on-the-job drug use or falsification of police reports and records.

Martinez was accused of placing a camera in a shower, repeatedly filming the unsuspecting child, the Boston Globe reported after his arrest, citing prosecutors and a police report.

Martinez was placed on administrative leave when he was arrested, the Boston Police Department said at the time.

A department spokesperson said Friday that Martinez had been fired.

The commission will submit Martinez’s name to a national registry of decertified police officers. The move could alert police departments nationwide to the former officer’s history if he attempted to return to law enforcement after leaving prison.

Martinez will be placed on probation for three years after his release, during which he must wear a GPS monitor, stay away from his victim, register as a sex offender, complete treatment and counseling, and seek approval for any employment with his probationary officer.