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James Jenkins
CIBOLA COUNTY, N.M. – Former New Mexico State Police Sergeant James Jenkins knew that he wanted to be involved in law enforcement from a very young age. According to Jenkins, who is originally from Detroit, Michigan, he wanted to be involved in law enforcement since he was about three or fours years old because his uncle was an officer and inspired him to follow that path as well.
By the time high school came around, Jenkins still wanted to go into law enforcement, but decided to go into the United States Marine Corps first. “When I got into the marine corps, I knew immediately. As soon as I got out of boot camp, I knew immediately that was going to be my career… Some people, you know, they either love it or they hate it, but I knew right then and there that I loved it.” Jenkins served in the U.S. Marine Corps for about 20 years, and then retired as a gunnery sergeant.
Just before retiring from the U.S. Marine Corps, Jenkins decided he was going to move to New Mexico. He moved to Cibola County in June of 1999 and has been here ever since. After six weeks of residing in Cibola County, Jenkins was taken on by the Cibola County Sheriff’s Office, where he then worked for three years. Jenkins started “eyeballing” the New Mexico State Police and was immediately drawn in whenever he learned that NMSP was a paramilitary organization – meaning they used the military, and specifically U.S. Marine Corps doctrine as a basis for their education and training. As Jenkins recalls, he fit right in.
Since then, Jenkins’ entire law enforcement career has been within District 6 of Cibola County. Jenkins never transferred, and he has lived in the same district that he worked in and raised his kids in for a little over 22 years. During that time, Jenkins has really been able to familiarize himself with the people in his district and in Cibola County, establishing a fairly good rapport with many. When speaking about some of the benefits of his years within law enforcement, Jenkins said, “I met a lot of good people – a lot of outstanding people.” Jenkins also added that another rewarding aspect was learning how to communicate with people and talk about things in an efficient way without any escalation.
This lesson came in handy during a vast number of interactions that Jenkins had as an NMSP sergeant. One of these interactions included Jenkins saving a woman, not once, but twice, from jumping off of a bridge. The first time, Jenkins helped the woman by talking her down from the bridge. The second time, Jenkins recalled, “I happened to be on duty, but I was in Grants at the time, and I was talking to her on the phone. I could hear people in the background, and I could hear her just hollering and screaming at people. She had my number, she called me, and I basically flew to Gallup, right where she was at, and then she was hollering at other officers there, and I just remember I just walked up behind her, and I threw my arms around her back and pinned her down to the rail, and I just told her, ‘I got you.’ And she knew right away it was me.”
After that incident, Jenkins told the woman to call him anytime she needed to vent, and according to Jenkins, “Sometimes she would call me and just cuss me out, and that’s what she needed.”
Apart from the rewarding aspects of that field of work, Jenkins also described some of the struggles as well. One of those struggles including mounting up to the assumptions that people held, such as law enforcement being unfair or law enforcement hating them because of even something as simple as their last name. “You hear a lot of stuff like, ‘You hate me because of this’ or ‘You hate me because of that’, but you know, it’s like, it ain’t got nothing to do with hate.”
Jenkins described one of his main priorities as trying to always be fair with everyone and working with people rather than always bringing the hammer down on them. Jenkins talked about the field of law enforcement being a career, not a job, and he encourages anyone who wants a career in law enforcement to keep fairness a priority. “To me, the biggest thing is you always have to be fair with people,” expressed Jenkins.
Jenkins also opened up about the struggle of seeing things, in both the Marine Corps and law enforcement, that will never leave his memory. “There’s stuff that I’ve seen that is engrained in my memory for the rest of my life,” Jenkins reflected.
However, despite the rough parts, Jenkins is extremely grateful for his time in both the U.S. Marine Corps and NMSP, and the deeply rewarding lessons that they provided him with. According to Jenkins, one of the most rewarding things was to see the fruits of efforts he made earlier in his career appear later in the form of someone having gotten their life together because of something he said to them. “Not everybody’s a bad person,” stated the retired sergeant. “Majority of people are good people; they just do stupid things at the wrong time.”
Having officially retired from NMSP in May of 2021, just a couple months over 22 years of law enforcement service, Jenkins is now looking forward to taking it easy, but also staying active, spending time outdoors, going on hikes, doing home improvement work, and just enjoying his life as a double retiree.