Former Las Cruces police employee was hired with tattoos against department policy

A former Las Cruces police employee said she was hired to work in the department even with numerous tattoos, several of which were against the department’s tattoo policy.

The former civilian employee, who asked not to be named, was with the department for three years before she quit.

“It was just too much,” the former employee said. “So I just decided that I would go somewhere where my knowledge would be what people were looking for – not my appearance.”

“Some inappropriate body art or tattoos would be vulgar language, showing nudity, female or male orientation,” Montoya said. it could be tattoos of racist origin. those are things that we do not want in our police department.”

The former employee said that she was hired with the department while she still had multiple tattoos and facial piercings, which she has since removed because of medical reasons.

She was not aware of the department’s tattoo policy, which was provided to ABC-7 by Chief Jaime Montoya.

“It’s readily available online on our server,” Montoya said, telling us that employees are required to acknowledge awareness of department policies. “What we should be doing as supervisors as well is notifying our employee, especially if our employee has a lot of tattoos.

Montoya said the department does ban explicit language or vulgar images, including nudity.

“Those are things that we do not want in our police department,” Montoya said.

The former employee had tattoos in both of those categories, including a vulgarity tattooed on her arm and a nude woman’s image on the other arm.

“I wasn’t told that I was going against the policy,” she said.