Week 73: Manny Valenzuela
The work of a police officer is never easy. They put their lives on the line every day, and nearly every interaction they have with people is when the people are at the lowest moments in their lives. It was an even harder career for one of Chandler’s first Latino police officers, Manuel “Manny” Valenzuela, who often faced racism in the daily act of carrying out his sworn duty to protect and to serve.
Born in Queen Creek in 1941, Manny grew up in the labor camp located in today’s Ocotillo neighborhood of Chandler. His mother married when she was 12, bore 9 children, and as if that weren’t enough to make life difficult, her husband left her in 1944. She worked the surrounding farm fields for as little as 50 cents an hour, and managed to raise the family on meager means. Manny and his siblings would do what they could to help out, including selling homemade tortillas or shining shoes in downtown Chandler.
The family’s financial situation forced Manny to drop out of school to pursue full time employment. He travelled across the Southwest, taking work where he could find it in Arizona and California. Finally, a friend who happened to be a sheriff’s deputy in Queen Creek, convinced him to go back to school. Through night courses at Phoenix College Manny earned his GED, then tested for the Chandler Police Department. He was burning debris in an irrigation ditch when he learned that he had been hired as a police officer.
Manny encountered many challenges during his time with the Chandler Police department. Not only did he deal with the same day to day dangers and stresses faced by every other officer, he also had to deal with racism leveled at him from the community and even from within the department. In one incident, Manny was assaulted while walking his beat. In his words, the assailants “cleaned his clock,” and hurled racial slurs at him. He also recalled a supervisor telling him he had only been hired because he was Latino. Using much stronger language, the supervisor swore he would fire Manny at the first opportunity.
Despite this adversity, Manny quickly rose through the ranks of the department. He became Chandler Police’s first Latino supervisor when he was named Detective Sergeant in 1973. Soon other promotions followed, including Lieutenant in 1974, and Captain in 1977. His quick rise caused hard feelings from some of his fellow officers. He recalled that “some of the other officers didn’t respect me, but they had to respect the rank.”
Manny’s groundbreaking career carried over into the certifications he earned. In 1976, he became one of the first Latinos to enroll in and graduate from the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. His son, not coincidentally, graduated from the same program 27 years later. Manny was also the first Latino officer to graduate from the Arizona Polygraph Association. His polygraph skills were so good that he was called to testify in the infamous trial of former Arizona Governor Evan Mecham. By 2007, his son estimated that Manny had conducted between 18,000 and 20,000 polygraph tests in his career.
One of Manny’s greatest sources of pride was his service to the community. He offered free Judo classes to underprivileged children in Chandler on weekends. He coached Little League baseball for many years, and left a strong impression on his players for his philosophy that everyone, regardless of skill or ability, deserved a chance to play. He initiated a program called Dope Stop, a predecessor to the national DARE program, that worked with Chandler schools to stop drug use among students. Manny’s greatest legacy, according to an unknown audience member at a presentation he gave at the Chandler Museum in 2007, was serving as a role model for Latino children in Chandler.
Manny suffered a heart attack in 1979 which forced him to retire from the Chandler Police Department one year later. He operated a series of private investigation and security companies before he retired for good. Manny and his wife, Ann, still call Chandler home today.