Milpitas police chief Corpuz to retire after 30 years

MILPITAS >> Police Chief Armando Corpuz, who grew up in Milpitas, will retire later this month after a 30-year career in law enforcement, he announced recently.

“It has been an honor and a privilege to serve as Milpitas’ chief of police,” Corpuz said in a city statement.

“I consider it a blessing to be given the opportunity to serve a city where I was raised and a place where my parents still reside. It is a bittersweet decision, but I leave with a heart of gratitude for a rewarding career.”

Corpuz, 51, will have been at the head of the department for about three years when he retires on Dec. 30, and Assistant Police Chief Jared Hernandez will take over as acting police chief Dec. 31, the city said in a statement.

“I am very grateful for Armando’s leadership in our city. He has always been focused on transparency and open communication and genuinely cared for the community in which he was raised. He will leave big shoes to fill,” Milpitas Mayor Rich Tran said in a statement.

Corpuz grew up in the city’s Sunnyhills neighborhood and had worked his way from shoes

department employee to a loss prevention officer at a local department store.

When a local cop invited him on a ride along to see what policing was like, Corpuz instantly gravitated toward the career, he said in an interview Thursday.

“Before that ride along, I was a young person who just graduated high school and was going to college, I thought maybe I’d like to be an engineer,” he said.

“But I went on that ride along and I was wowed at the job, and I made a decision after that ride along, this is what I want to do,” Corpuz added.

He joined the local Police Department in 1990 as a reserve officer and a year later became full time.

“There is an intangible when you grow up knowing community members. Many people that I grew up with are still in town, so having those community connections is really beneficial to the work we’re doing.”

He worked in many roles in his three decades at the department, including as a beat officer, a SWAT team member, a detective and a sergeant, and he has been a commander since 2009. He was promoted to chief in January 2018.

Corpuz said he was considering retirement all year long, but due to many factors including the pandemic, the social unrest after the police killing of George Floyd, and some command staff retirements in the summer, he extended his time.

“So as I am winding down the year, the department is in great shape and it’s in great hands with the current command staff and city leadership, and I start to think more about my personal life and the next chapter, spending more time with family, or taking on some other challenge,” he said.

The department currently has about 84 sworn officers, Corpuz said, with more in training on the way, and though serious uses of force are rare in the city, there are always challenges and improvements to be made, he said.

Earlier this year, an officer fatally shot a young man who had stabbed his stepfather during a mental health crisis and then charged at the officer with a knife, shouting, “Kill me!”

“That incident was a tragedy for everyone involved,” Corpuz said.

But before that incident, and before protests locally and around the country after Floyd’s killing, Corpuz said the department has been working to beef up and consistently add training for officers, and plans to beef up training in combating implicit bias and work with experts in cultural and special-needs areas in the coming year.

Though many protests locally and around the nation have called for pulling money from large police department budgets and moving them to mental health and social safety net services, Corpuz said each community is different and thinks many Milpitas residents don’t want the department shrinking.

“They want a robust Police Department that is going to provide service to them,” he said. But he noted police have often become the default responders to all kinds of needs, even outside their expertise.

“If there is a desire to steer those calls for help to others, I would support that,” he said, and thinks many other police leaders do, too.

He met with local protest organizers in the summer and said he hopes communities come closer together as a result of the call for action and changes seen this year. “We value many of the same things and we want the same outcomes; it’s just a matter of working together to get there.”

In a long career, he has a lot of rewarding moments to reflect on.

“But what I will remember most is the opportunity that I got to help people,” he said. “I never had any aspirations to be police chief when I was young. Really, my aspirations were just to do a good job.”