Chandler police Detective Carlos Ledesma was sitting at a card table when the drug bust went sour. He did not even have time to stand before being cut down by four rifle shots to the chest, and he died a short time later.

When the carnage ended, two other Chandler narcotics detectives lay bleeding on the floor of the home in west Phoenix last July. One suspected drug peddler died by the front door, another a short distance away in the back seat of a getaway car.

Officers from the suburban Arizona police department were not after drugs when the undercover operation went terribly wrong. They were after cash – a quarter million dollars that the violent and heavily armed men they were dealing with had agreed to pay for 500 pounds of marijuana the detectives said they could supply.

Police were running a “reverse sting,” a controversial and high-risk tactic in which undercover officers pose as sellers of large quantities of marijuana or other drugs.

In a traditional drug sting, the cops pose as the buyers and show up with the money. If successful, they walk away with nothing but suspects and evidence.

But in a reverse sting, the police get to keep the cash they seize under Arizona’s forfeiture law, which allows them to take property they say has been used in certain crimes and keep it for their own use. Police can spend the money to buy equipment, build new buildings, travel, or hire outside help. They can even use it to pay for more police to bring in more money.

Critics warn the built-in profit motive of forfeiture laws distorts priorities of police, enticing them to pursue risky operations in far away cities rather than more destructive street crimes in their own communities.

The most blatant example of abuse cited by critics is reverse stings.

“This has become a very sophisticated, very dangerous and very high revenue-generating speed trap,” said Tucson attorney Richard Jones, who has handled more than 100 forfeiture cases in his 27 years of practicing law in Arizona. “That’s really all it is. You are taking a less effective, more problematic law enforcement technique and choosing that because of the money it generates.”

Defenders of the law say money is not the motive in forfeiture cases. Police use the money to break up criminal gangs and strip them of their financial resources, they say.

Chandler has made extensive use of Arizona’s forfeiture law. In the last five years, Chandler police raised more than $6.8 million through forfeitures, according to disclosure reports.

Their favored technique for seizures is the reverse sting, according to a review of all cases that resulted in forfeitures for a one-year period that ended in July 2010, when Ledesma was killed. Of the $3.2 million Chandler police raised through forfeitures in those 12 months, more than $2.7 million came through reverse stings, court records show.

There were 35 forfeiture cases in all. Twenty of them were reverse stings.

The operations almost always take place far away from Chandler, most often in west Phoenix. In the year’s worth of cases involving reverse stings reviewed by the Goldwater Institute, only one resulted in the seizure of a large amount of drugs, which turned up in a vehicle search after the transaction was complete.

All 20 reverse stings staged by Chandler police targeted would-be marijuana peddlers, according to court records. Chandler police rarely go outside the city on traditional undercover operations to buy large amounts of marijuana. Last fiscal year they only did it twice, city reports show.

Money raised through forfeitures goes into special accounts for the exclusive use of the agency that recovered it.

Chandler police insist they are not going after money when they run reverse stings, such as the one in which Ledesma was killed. They describe the tactic as an effective tool – one of many they use – to target high-level dealers who use the Phoenix area as a hub to distribute marijuana and other drugs across the country.

Drug dealers do not respect city boundaries, said Commander Dale Walters of the Chandler Police Department. Closing down a would-be smuggling operation in Phoenix helps dry up the supplies throughout the Valley, which ultimately benefits the citizens of Chandler, he said.

“It’s not about the money,” said Walters. “For us, the ultimate goal is the disruption of drug organizations. If you take a large amount of money and a large number of people and put them in jail, that sends a significant ripple effect through a drug organization. The ultimate goal for us is to put bad guys in prison.”

Coming Tomorrow: Part 2, Arizona police collect millions from dangerous ‘reverse sting’ investigations

A Goldwater Institute Watchdog Report

By Mark Flatten

Mark Flatten is an investigation reporter for the Goldwater Institute, an independent government watchdog based in Phoenix, Ariz.