A single undercover detective and his informant walked into the house full of armed men, ready to close a deal for 500 pounds of marijuana that was supposed to lead to the seizure of a quarter-million dollars in cash for the police department in Chandler, Ariz.
There had been glitches throughout the day.
The sale was supposed to take place at a house on West Maldonado Drive in south Phoenix, miles away from suburban Chandler. At one point the deal fell apart because the buyers could not produce the cash. They later called the police informant, saying they had the money in hand and wanted to close the deal, but at a different house.
They called again, switching the location back to the house on Maldonado.
Chandler police agreed to each of the demands. And now they were staged to make the sale, swoop in with their SWAT team, arrest the suspects, and confiscate the money.
There were as many as a dozen suspects inside the house. It is unclear from the police reports whether police saw any guns at that point.
The undercover detective checked the money, but apparently did not count it. He called in the other two officers who were driving nearby, giving them the signal to bring the marijuana to the house and back into the garage. When the delivery car arrived, the detective noticed more men get out of another car parked nearby and walk inside, according to an account he later gave to Phoenix police.
As several suspects checked the marijuana, the officers were told to come inside the house to count the money. Detective Carlos Ledesma and a second officer wound up in the living room. The detective who had been posing as the seller followed one of the suspects into the pool room to count the money.
As he approached the pool table, the detective said “esta bien,” Spanish for “it’s good.” At that point, one of the suspects walked toward the garage, looked out at the load of marijuana – briefly going out of sight – then came around the corner armed with an AK-74 rifle.
The lead detective ran into the kitchen and toward the living room. As the gunman rounded the corner he fired four times, mortally wounding Ledesma.
The other two detectives pulled their pistols from their waistbands and began firing at the cluster of men who poured into the room. Within seconds the officers were hit and fell to the ground.
The SWAT team was still 30 seconds to a minute away.
When the shooting stopped, Ledesma was dying and one of the suspects was dead inside the home. The two surviving officers were badly wounded. Another suspect stumbled out of the house and was helped into a car by his fleeing cohorts, and was dead by the time they were stopped by Chandler police a short distance away.
Another suspect had multiple gunshot wounds to his legs and a shattered pelvis.
Inside the black bag on the pool table, police found bundles of $1 bills stuffed into counterfeit $100s. The total take from the operation: $999.
Chandler police went to the drug deal expecting to seize $250,000, the amount that had been agreed upon for the 500 pounds of marijuana they said they could supply. The confiscated cash would have made its way to the agency’s coffers under Arizona’s forfeiture law, which allows police to keep money and property they claim was related to certain crimes.
Chandler police made about $3.2 million in forfeitures in the year prior to Ledesma’s death. In the last five years, state and local agencies throughout Arizona have raised about $204.5 million through forfeitures, using it for everything from salaries to bullets.
The law creates a financial incentive to target certain crimes, and to stage high-risk operations such as “reverse stings” like the one Ledesma was killed in, said Clint Bolick, director of the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.
“Police work is inherently risky,” Bolick said. “But profits from asset forfeiture can distort priorities and magnify risk, both of which are unacceptable trade-offs.”
Commander Dale Walters of the Chandler Police Department would not comment on the operation that led to Ledesma’s death. But he did say money was not the motive for the investigation, and that “nothing was forced” to close the deal.
“We do not force things for money,” he said. “We do not force things unnecessarily for arrests. This is an inherently dangerous job. Unfortunately, horrible things happen sometimes.”
Eight suspects were charged for the events that transpired that night. Two face the death penalty if convicted.
The two Chandler detectives wounded in the shootout returned to limited duty.
Ledesma, who was 34 years old when he died, is survived by a wife and two young children.
Coming Tomorrow: Part 4, Reforming drug forfeiture laws could limit the danger from ‘reverse stings’
Mark Flatten is an investigation reporter for the Goldwater Institute, an independent government watchdog based in Phoenix, Ariz.
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