"These guys were armed," he says. "They were going to do a home invasion, a rip. These guys had been involved in torture. Not a one of them was innocent going in. Not a one of them."
Ubieta and his fellow cops say stings such as the Redland operation take violent career criminals off the streets, one way or another. Gonzalez's crew alone was responsible for 19 robberies in six months, he says. Miami-Dade's Street Terror Offender Program (STOP) has busted 53 home invasion gangs since 2005, Ubieta boasts.
Courtesy of Ladonna Florence
Antonio Andrew celebrates his son A.J.'s first birthday in 1995.
Michael E. Miller
The Redland house where Miami-Dade police ambushed the robbers.
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But three of those stings have gone wrong, and all in a disturbingly similar way: with suspects getting shot despite apparently never firing at police. In all three cases, cops chose the location and positioned dozens of officers with sniper rifles nearby. Each time, they seemed better prepared to kill than to capture their prey. And the same officers were involved in several of the killings.
The first STOP operation that turned deadly happened September 7, 2006. Detectives staged an elaborate setup. Using a confidential informant, they tricked six career criminals into thinking a tractor-trailer with 80 kilos of cocaine was parked behind a Medley warehouse. The robbers arrived wearing fake FBI and DEA shirts. Two of them, with guns in their hands, approached the truck and screamed "DEA" and "FBI." That's when the real cops opened fire.
Jorge Torres, 21, was shot five times and died at the scene. Joe Guevara, 23, was shot but survived. He and four other suspects were convicted of gun and drug charges. The Special Response Team (SRT) officers who fired their weapons said they saw Torres and Guevara raise their guns as if to shoot. All eight cops were cleared of wrongdoing.
A year later, STOP detectives planned another, nearly identical ambush. This time they targeted a seven-member gang led by three brothers. Again, a confidential informant suggested a drug heist, telling the gang that a tractor-trailer parked in another Medley warehouse was packed with 70 kilos of cocaine. Even better, he told them, the driver would be asleep on the job.
The gang drove in a black Ford Expedition to the warehouse district, where at least two dozen cops were waiting for them. As they pulled into the parking lot, 12 snipers followed them from perches on surrounding buildings. Three Ryder moving trucks were ready to pull out and block the vehicle's escape. But there was no need. The Expedition's driver stopped the SUV and ran up to the cab of the trailer. He had a nickel-plated pistol in his hand and a mask over his face. As soon as he pointed it at the cab, an SRT officer hidden inside a metal box on the roof gave the "takedown" command. Lt. Luis Alvarez then stood up and shouted, "Police! Put your hands on your head and don't move."
The man turned and raised his gun. Suddenly, bullets struck him in the head, chest, and abdomen, killing him instantly. Four more snipers — believing they were being shot at — opened fire. They rattled off more than 30 rounds in ten seconds. When one of the would-be robbers climbed out of the Expedition to apparently take refuge behind it, the snipers shot him in the face, stomach, and wrist. When cops later searched his dead body, they discovered he was unarmed. The two other men in the SUV were also shot multiple times but survived.
The two deadly ambushes shed light on what likely happened last summer in the Redland. If anything, records show that the firepower used in 2011 was even more overwhelming. Eleven SRT marksmen fired their assault rifles that night, according to a use-of-force report for one of the officers involved.
As Andrew, Gonzalez, Betancourt, and Lemus crept toward the house, there were no warehouses for snipers to perch on. Instead, interviews with neighbors suggest the officers were hidden around and perhaps inside the house. More snipers were in the van that burst through the gate.
As in 2006 and '07, police apparently didn't wait for the suspects to shoot before opening fire. There is "no evidence that shows that the subjects fired their weapons," a police spokesman told New Times.
There was also a concerning overlap between the ill-fated operations. Records show three of the officers who fired their weapons in the Redland had also pulled the trigger in the 2006 shooting. Two other officers discharged their guns in both the '06 and '07 stings.
Yet as troubling as it seems for cops to lure criminals into a trap and then mow them down, police have the right to open fire whether they're being shot at or not, says Maki Haberfeld, chair of John Jay College's Department of Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration. In fact, the more cops know about a suspect's criminal record — like Gonzalez's violent past — the likelier they are to perceive a threat and use deadly force.
"The police subculture is well defined as black and white: the good guys and the bad guys," she says. "When you know for sure that you are facing the bad guys, then you have zero hesitation in how you respond. The moment you think they are reaching for their gun, there are no more qualms about reading the situation wrong."
