LAPD Detective Error Leads to Murder

Los Angeles Times, “Interrogation, then revenge,” Joel Rubin, Ari B. Bloomekatz, July 2, 2008.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-interrogate2-2008jul02,0,3759815.story?page=1


This is a rather sad article about a 16 year old named Martha Puebla, who was gunned down due to poor detective work.

Shortly before 2 a.m. on Nov. 27, 2002, a girlfriend of Puebla's pulled up outside her house. The teenage girl, whom The Times is not identifying for her safety at the request of a prosecutor, had come with another friend, Christian Vargas. He stayed in the car while the girl went to Puebla's ground-floor window and asked if she wanted to come hang out.As the girls talked, gunshots suddenly filled the night air. The girl jumped through the window, cowering in Puebla's room. After a few minutes, she approached the car, where she found Vargas' body riddled with bullets. He begged the girl for help and then died, his head slumped against the steering wheel.After early interviews, suspicion fell quickly on Jose Ledesma, a member of the Vineland Boyz -- a notorious, violent gang that controlled much of the drug sales on the streets of Sun Valley. That night detectives searched his family's home. Under his mattress, they found a loaded assault rifle and letters from other Vineland Boyz, many of them written from prison.

Ledesma was eventually arrested and brought to Los Angeles where he was questioned.

To drive home his point, [Homicide Detective Martin] Pinner laid down a "six-pack" -- an array of mug shots that detectives often show to witnesses or victims of crimes. On it, Ledesma's photo was circled, and the initials "M.P." were written below it. "Those is the guy that shot my friends boyfriend" was scrawled along the margin, followed by Puebla's signature.

The issue here is that Martha did not cooperate with the police. The detective lied to try and strong arm Ledesma. The LA Times states that there is nothing legally wrong with lying to a suspect in order to try and get a confession.

The next night, Ledesma reached for a pay phone outside his cell. "Cokester," he said into the receiver, calling his friend Javier Covarrubias by one of his gang monikers, "do you know the slut that lives there by . . . my house? Her name starts with an M . . . I need her to disappear. She is dropping dimes."To the gang, Puebla was a snitch and needed to be dealt with.

She was later murdered on the curb next to her house. The major misstep is that the detectives did not warn Martha Puebla that she was potentially in danger – and also offer protection.

I think people must admit that everyone makes mistakes. Hopefully, the detective did not purposely fail to warn Martha. Perhaps he got busy and simply forgot or maybe it was due to poor training or perhaps he just was sloppy. What is sad is that in certain careers (law enforcement, doctors) a mistake can cost someone their life, which makes it all the more important for people in these types of careers to be even more conscious about checking everything off their to-do list.

I would hope that this LA Times article is read by detectives across the nation, because mistakes like this just shouldn’t happen.