The man accused of initiating the drug buy that led to the 2010 death of a Chandler, Ariz., police officer made a plea bargain with federal prosecutors four months earlier to avoid a long prison term, and worked as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration at some time prior to the deal erupting in gunfire.
But Chandler police did not know John H. Webber had been working with federal officials when they ran a “reverse sting” targeting a quarter-million dollars that Webber and his cohorts agreed to pay for 500 pounds of marijuana supplied by undercover officers. Had the deal gone down as planned, the police would have kept the money under Arizona’s forfeiture law.
But after the marijuana was delivered, one of the suspects opened fire with an AK-74 rifle, mortally wounding Detective Carlos Ledesma, according to police reports. Two other undercover detectives were shot, and two suspects were killed during the shootout on West Maldonado Drive in south Phoenix, about 16 miles from the Chandler border.
Chandler police did not bring in the DEA, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, or Phoenix police to help in the operation. If they had, any money obtained through forfeitures would have been split among the law enforcement agencies involved. It also would have given them a chance to learn one of the suspects had been working with federal agents.
Sgt. Joe Favazzo, a Chandler police spokesman, said the agency did run a check of the Phoenix house through a regional database that is supposed to identify potential conflicts between law enforcement agencies running undercover operations. That check did not indicate any other agency, including the DEA, was involved in any investigations in the same area, Favazzo said.
Maricopa County prosecutors said in court motions related to the ongoing murder case that Webber had worked as an informant for the DEA. However, the agency had stopped using him by the time of the shootout, and he had no authority to initiate the drug deal that led to Ledesma’s death, prosecutors argue.
The Goldwater Institute detailed the events that led to the shooting, and the extensive use of reverse stings by Chandler police, in a report published March 14, 2011. The agency raised about $3.2 million through forfeitures in the year prior to Ledesma’s death, more than $2.7 million of that from reverse stings, according to city and court records.
Reverse stings have long been used by the agency, according to a review by the Goldwater Institute of all Chandler forfeiture cases in the 12 months leading up to Ledesma’s death. Of the 35 cases, 20 were reverse stings. Most took place miles from Chandler’s borders, typically in west Phoenix.
The lack of coordination between police agencies is a dangerous consequence of the profit motive built into state forfeiture laws, according to Scott Bullock, senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, a non-profit legal firm based in Virginia. When a police department brings other agencies into an investigation that leads to the forfeiture of money or property, both law and protocol dictate that the assets be split between them. As a result, there is good reason for a police department not to share cases that could produce a high-dollar return, Bullock said.
