Martin Bartness

Martin Bartness joined PERF in May 2022 as a Senior Principal in PERF’s Center for Management and Technical Assistance. Prior to PERF, Martin served 25 years with the Baltimore Police Department, retiring as a Lt. Colonel/Deputy Chief of Patrol, where he provided executive management, leadership, and command and control of day-to-day operations of the department’s nine patrol districts. His other executive roles included Chief of Staff to the Police Commissioner and Commander of Education and Training, Special Investigations, Strategic Services, Central District, and Professional Standards. He also worked closely with the Department of Justice to advance organizational reform under a consent decree, focusing on policy development and implementation, training, and accountability.

Martin’s career has traversed the intersection of public health and criminal justice. For his work improving police response and building stakeholder partnerships in the areas of sexual assault and child abuse, Martin has been honored by the National Children’s Advocacy Center for “Outstanding Leadership in Law Enforcement,” the Maryland Children's Alliance for “Exceptional Leadership,” and TurnAround, Inc. for “Exceptional Service to Victims of Sexual Assault.” He has also been recognized for his leadership in developing Baltimore’s comprehensive behavioral crisis response system, instituting a focused deterrence violence reduction program, standing up the Homicide Review Commission, and representing Baltimore’s criminal justice community in the National Institute of Justice’s inaugural Sentinel Events Initiative. In the area of police training, Martin has been instrumental in developing and implementing transformational courses on peer intervention (Ethical Policing Is Courageous, EPIC) and de-escalation (Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics, ICAT).

At PERF, Martin has taken a lead role on a wide range of projects addressing some of the most critical issues in policing, including body-worn cameras, recruitment and retention of personnel, response to people in crisis, civilianization, and officer wellness. He has also assumed key roles in management studies of the Washington (DC) Metropolitan Police Department, Fayetteville (NC) Police Department, Chattanooga (TN) Police Department, State College (PA) Borough of Police, Old Saybrook (CT) Department of Police Services, Fairfax County (VA) Police Department, and Houston (TX) Police Department. Additionally, he serves as a subject matter expert on police training and use of force to the Department of Justice/Civil Rights Division in their consent decrees with the Ferguson (MO) Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Martin holds a BA from Creighton University, an MA from the University of Nebraska-Omaha, an MCJ from Boston University, and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he was a Bloomberg Fellow. He is also a graduate of the 73rd Session of the Senior Management Institute for Police. Martin volunteers as the Board Chair of Project Pneuma and as a member of the Maryland Criminal Justice Act Committee.