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.
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.
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 in March. 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.
Chandler police did not bring federal agencies or Phoenix police into the operation in which Ledesma was killed. If they had, they would have been expected to split the money.
The lack of coordination between police agencies is a dangerous consequence of the profit motive built into forfeiture laws, said Scott Bullock, senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, a non-profit legal firm based in Virginia.
“It’s a strategic decision based upon what is going to make our agency the most amount of money,” Bullock said.
The Goldwater Institute has recommended repealing existing civil forfeiture laws, or at a minimum requiring money police seize in forfeiture cases be put into a neutral account such as the state’s general fund, to sever the connection between agency operations and direct financial rewards.
Chandler police say their decisions were not influenced by the prospect of seizing a quarter-million dollars.
In July 2010, a confidential informant called Chandler narcotics detectives about a group of men wanting to buy a large quantity of marijuana and willing to pay cash. One of those men was Webber, identified in police reports as the man who initiated the deal and one of the people who handled the money.
On the evening of July 28, 2010, Chandler detectives entered the south Phoenix home to complete the sale. Without warning, one of the suspects grabbed a rifle and started shooting, according to police reports.
The bundles of cash were actually one-dollar bills stuffed into counterfeit $100s, according to police. The total take from the operation was $999.
Four months before the shooting, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix asked a judge in an unrelated fraud case to accept a plea agreement that would allow Webber to avoid any charges in return for his cooperation, court records show.
Webber was on parole for state drug convictions in Kentucky when he was arrested in June 2008, court records show. Conviction on the federal charge in Arizona would have required Webber to return to Kentucky to complete his 15-year prison sentence, in addition to whatever sentence he received for the federal crimes, court records show.
Webber’s lawyer, Michael Souccar, alleged in a court motion that Webber was working as a confidential informant for DEA agents in Phoenix and the state of Washington at the time of the shooting. A few days prior to the shooting, Webber was contacted by a DEA agent about setting up a drug sting, according to the motion. That is what led to Webber’s dealings with other suspects and, eventually, undercover Chandler narcotics detectives, the motion states.
Ramona Sanchez, spokeswoman for the DEA in Phoenix, would not comment on the allegations.
Officials at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix also would not agree to an interview. They did release a statement acknowledging the plea in the fraud case, but denying federal authorities authorized Webber to engage in the drug transaction.
Webber is not accused of killing Ledesma, but faces three counts of felony murder under a statute which allows people involved in certain crimes to be charged with murder even if they are not the actual killers.
Mark Flatten is an investigative reporter for the Goldwater Institute, an independent government watchdog based in Phoenix, Ariz.
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