All language subtitles for Undercover Caught on Tape Season 1 Episode 1 [DownSub.com]

[MUSIC]

Few have what it takes to work undercover.

Living in secrecy and constant danger,

unrecognized beyond their tightest circles.

Undercovers put some of the worst criminals behind bars.

But they never get to tell their stories, until now.

On Undercover, caught on tape.

[MUSIC]

The potential death and destruction that was planned

made the importance of this case far exceed anything else that I touched.

You understand there's a lot of f***ing innocent people out there.

That heart is black. They're not going for revenge.

I don't give a f*** about who is going to kill.

We'd both seen dozens and dozens of bad guys over the years.

Some really hard-edged bad guys.

He was just cold-blooded.

We had to move real quick.

[MUSIC]

Las Vegas, 1995.

Special Agent Terry Clark became concerned about a growing

anti-government movement brewing across the United States.

But at that time, you know, when Bill Clinton became the president,

there was a group of people that became very concerned about their rights

and about guns being seized.

Ruby Ridge was fresh. Waco was fresh.

And there was a movement of people that believed that the government

had grown too big and they were arming themselves

and organizing themselves for resistance.

Las Vegas became a magnet for anti-American militias and activity.

We had an informant that ran a gun store, and he would tell us

when criminals would come in and talk about committing illegal acts

related to guns and bombs, we'd talk to my supervisor,

and we agreed that we should bring in ATF undercovers.

Jay's reputation was one of being a professional,

of being great at undercover, and being somebody you can count on.

My name is Jay Dobbins. I was an undercover ATF agent for 27 years.

It was a natural fit for me.

I think the best thing I had going for me was willingness.

I took cases that other people declined because they felt

they were too dangerous. I always said yes.

My cover story was that I was a debt collector and a gunrunner

and a sympathizer to this movement.

There was a gun shop, and I just started hanging around there,

and I was meeting lower-level people in the movement,

and then they would introduce me to other people and to other people,

and then you branch off, and then pretty soon this network of criminals

grows pretty big and complex.

We would surveil the gun store. We would get their license plates,

or we would follow them. We'd conduct background investigations

to identify them, and then we'd figure out what other illegal activity

they may have been involved with.

They were talking about committing these really heinous acts,

including robbing a National Guard armory, killing federal judges,

blowing up fiber-optic cable, and then the Oklahoma City bombing happened,

and it changed the tone.

At 9.02 a.m. on April 19th, a bomb exploded in front of the

Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people, including 19 children.

Timothy McVeigh was quickly identified as the culprit.

It was devastating, and it really concerned us.

It made us really focus on this case and ensure that these people

didn't commit a crime like that one.

There was a big spotlight shining on us, and I think Terry realized,

and I agreed with him, that it was bigger than one undercover operative.

I needed help.

We asked Vince to come in.

Jay and I started out early on in our careers working together.

I was a natural choice for him and him for me for this one.

He's really smart. He's really fast on his feet,

and he's got a great understanding of the street.

I have a background in psychology, and that helped a lot

in the interpersonal interactions with bad guys.

We ended up spending a lot of time with some real knuckleheads

who sounded like real bad guys.

They were interested in going after the government infrastructure,

power plants, Hoover Dam, anything to strike out against the government.

And it turned out, in some cases, they were in fact bad guys,

but not capable of completing whatever they said they were going to do.

When Jeffrey Tenpenny entered their radar,

Agents Dobbins and Cefalu took notice.

I remember seeing Tenpenny at this weapons training.

We were out in the desert, and it was a big, massive shoot.

There were dozens of people out there with all kinds of firearms

and people setting off explosive devices.

When I met Tenpenny, I was extremely concerned about his attitude

and his willingness to discuss criminal activity in such a quick manner.

It started out with narcotics.

I think he was the first one to mention, "I can get speed. I can get this."

And it was that easy.

Anything he would say or do, we would feed off of.

And, you know, "What kind of weapons can you get?"

"Well, I can get this. I can get that."

Clearly, he did not think we were undercover cops.

With regards to Jeffrey Tenpenny, as soon as we met him, he was a target.

I identified him as being somebody with a criminal record from Florida,

where he had several arrests.

And one of the arrests that he had was for something called terroristic threats.

And that involves him threatening to blow up a car of a pimp

that he was arguing with about a prostitute.

Though Tenpenny was never convicted of those charges,

the allegations got their attention.

He was obviously someone that was on our radar,

someone that we wanted to pay closer attention to.

We stayed in touch with him for a couple weeks.

He starts letting out that he's in the middle of a lawsuit,

that he was injured in an elevator accident at the Golden Nugget,

that an elevator dropped and he hit his head.

His attorney had led him to believe that he was going to make a lot of money

by suing the Golden Nugget and Steve Wynn's corporation.

Vegas was growing explosively at that time.

Steve Wynn was a part of that.

He turned around at the Golden Nugget,

and then he had a vision for the rest of Vegas,

and that was to build these mega casinos.

He built the Mirage in Treasure Island that changed the town.

He obsessed about the attorney for Steve Wynn.

His vendetta arose out of his obsession with her.

Tenpenny focused his rage on the attorney representing Steve Wynn,

because he believed she was the one who decided

whether he got a big cash payout.

All we had to do was poke the tiger.

Any time we would mention the attorney or the casino or the lawsuit,

he'd go off like a rocket.

He'd just start, you know, spouting venom.

"If they don't pay me, she's going to die.

She's going to die, her family's going to die."

We went from someone who we believed to be dangerous or to a threat

to the most extreme levels.

We realized that we had to, like, ramp up our intensity on this case.

We had to take him very seriously.

We contacted the head of the Mirage Casino Security,

and we let them know about the threats of their corporate attorney,

and they advised her to leave town immediately.

We had to pay really close attention to his movements,

and, you know, we didn't know if this guy had a hair trigger

and was ready to go when we left, you know,

and go to the Sleaze House and do harm or whatever.

So we were, like, daily meetings about this.

I mean, it was very high priority.

Dobbins and Cefalu were surprised

when Tenpenny called them up unexpectedly,

asking to meet at a local bar.

And when we pulled into the parking lot, he was waiting for us out front,

and he had this long cardboard tube in his hands.

I remember asking Vince, like, "What is that? What is he holding?"

I had no idea what it was,

but obviously he was there to make an impression on us

because he rolls out blueprints to one of the casinos.

They're the mechanical drawings for the Treasure Island Casino.

He said, "If I don't get my money, I'm blowing this place up.

I'm going to collapse this place on top of itself."

This was going to go from a guy who sold a prohibited weapon

and some street dope

to a guy who's literally plotting the bombing murder of thousands of people.

This murder plan was fanatical.

It was maniacal.

To actually have blueprints of it was pretty unnerving.

It tells us that if he doesn't win his lawsuit,

he's going to blow up all Wynn's casinos,

not just the Treasure Island, but the Mirage and the Golden Nugget as well.

We don't have the privilege to say, like,

"I don't think he can do this," or "I don't think he's serious."

We have to play it out until we confirm that he's not,

because if we get this right,

no one will remember.

But if we get it wrong, no one's ever going to forget.

It was our intention to get him away from the bar,

too much background noise, and wanted to get the best evidence.

So we wanted to get him in the car that we knew was wired up.

So we got in the car, and Jay got in the back.

That sort of tactical move.

Tenpenny was sitting up front,

wanting to get the best camera angle, because we knew where the camera was.

With the recording devices running, Tenpenny continues to talk,

and he continues to discuss his plan.

-C4. -C4.

-Do you know how to use C4? -I can tell you.

-Specialist in C4. -OK.

-OK. -How much would you want?

-I haven't got an actual mount yet.

I know it's going to take at least a month,

but I'm not getting a treasure item.

-The Mirage? -Yeah.

-I don't have the HMG. -The Mirage in itself,

I haven't calculated yet, because I'm going to say,

it's a good thing he's going to be technical with that,

because he's got the hulls that come off,

the substructure and everything else in it is...

you know, pretty complicated.

So I've got to find out exactly where the support walls are,

the load-bearing... and all that, so I can implode it.

He wasn't completely without knowledge of the mechanics

of what he wanted with those bombs.

At this point, Jay and I figured, "This guy is committed.

"He's committed to doing this with or without us."

My fear was that it's not that hard

to get things on the open market.

It doesn't always have to be C4 or dynamite

or a five-gallon jug of nitromethane.

If he would have just gotten some of that

and lit a fuse to it, something that simple,

it could have done a lot of damage,

maybe not as much as C4 or, you know, commercial-grade explosives,

but we just needed to stop this train from running.

So we tried to control the environment

and wanted to make sure that we offered to provide him

with our contact and our explosives and whatever he needed.

Well, let's do this, all right, because I'm going to have you

write down exactly what you want, so there's no...mistakes.

If you want...if you need blasting caps, if you need fuses,

if you need whatever you want. Mm-hm.

But I'm telling you right now,

don't tell me to get it until you're ready to use it.

Right. That's what I was intending to do anyway.

We wanted to know from him what he was looking for

so it would be clear to any jury or anybody else

who heard these tapes that he was going to do it,

whether it was with us or without us.

What are you planning on getting out of this when it's done?

Revenge, bro. Yeah, revenge. Pure revenge? Damn right.

$4.5 million, OK?

The next thing I'm going to bring, then you're going to buy this one.

It's a...air elevator, OK?

Now, they have had me arrested, they tried to kill me.

Like a contract hit? Yeah.

They have done all kinds of...

...your life up pretty good. Yeah.

Having worked a lot of bombings in my day,

seeing the carnage that they create,

the injuries and the maiming and mayhem,

I was just kind of horrified.

It was hard for me to maintain my composure

during that conversation.

You understand there's going to be a lot of...

...innocent people are going to... Yeah, I know that.

There's going to be a lot of innocent people die.

I know that. All right.

See this tattoo, man? Yeah.

That says "Blackheart".

That heart is black.

When I go in for revenge, I don't give a...about who he's going to kill.

Just get going.

But either way, they're going down.

They're going to go down unless they give me what I'm asking.

Which is? $10 million.

He had this lawsuit, and he was on the hunt for millions of dollars.

That was his number one objective.

If he didn't get the money out of that lawsuit,

he was going to make Wynn pay one way or the other.

He was clearly ruthless.

Just his complete disregard for who might be hurt

or what might happen,

that was probably the scariest thing about him.

The case conference is the 22nd.

It's two days. Okay.

All right?

The day that case conference comes down

was the day I was going to have all my...

Well, if you need it by the 22nd,

we're going to need to, like, know today what you need, how much you need.

He had some kind of pre-trial conference or something coming up

that had him really agitated.

And if he didn't get any satisfaction out of that,

I remember him saying, you know, it was a goat.

See if you can get me some ID,

and me and my guys, we're going to go down to Mexico for a while.

Dude, you're talking about causing a serious...storm at this time.

Well, I was looking at it also like this.

It would also be beneficial for your guys,

even if they decided to take, you know, credit for it.

Right.

You know, they can sit there and say,

"Yeah, no, we mean business with the gun laws,"

and one side and the other, and don't **** with us.

If you can take out Steve Wynn, we can take out two, too.

Part of the reason that he was working with Jay and Vince

was he believed that they were militia types.

And so his idea was that he was going to get his vendetta

and they were going to take the credit for the bombing.

This was beyond street talk.

This was beyond just bravado.

I don't think Vince or myself was convinced of anything other than

this guy is going to do this with or without us,

so we need to make sure it's with us.

Do me a favour for me, just because we know what's going on, man.

Don't do anything without letting us know,

because we want to get our **** out of the town, too.

You know what I'm saying? No sweat.

I know you know what you're doing.

I just want you to be fully aware of what you're getting yourself into.

How long do you think you'd do in prison for this?

If you don't like something, yes.

Real life?

Oh, yeah. If they don't want to try your ****.

And you're not scared of doing life or getting none of that?

Don't look scared.

No, you don't look scared to me, man.

Don't fear. Don't fear.

We'd both seen dozens and dozens of bad guys over the years,

some really hard-edged bad guys, some real cold-blooded bad guys.

And he was just cold-blooded.

We had a responsibility now to make sure that what this plan was

was never going to happen.

The clock is ticking now.

Thousands of lives are at stake, and we're way behind the power curve.

This guy has articulated and then reinforced a plan to kill thousands of people,

and it's resting on our shoulders.

[♪♪]

When I go in for revenge, I'm going to give up **** about it.

Who is going to kill?

One mistake could cost the lives of thousands of people

in the investigation of Jeffrey Tenpenny.

When we found out what his plans were,

we needed to make sure that we stayed close to him

to ensure that he didn't go commit any of these acts on his own.

The goal was to stay good with him, stay in a good position with him,

stay on his good side, enhance our credibility, make him believe in us more.

In order to ensure that we had that type of control and that awareness,

Jay and Vince met with him at the Treasure Island Casino

and walked around with him.

We started doing a walkthrough,

and he was pointing out where he would place the devices

and pointing out where the most populated areas in the casino were,

in the gaming area or what have you.

He specifically pointed out some places, like, "See this pillar right here?

I'm going to put one of them right here.

See this load-bearing wall right here?

This is where the other one's going to go."

I was in the surveillance room with the head of casino security

for the Mirage and Treasure Island.

I was up there while they were videotaping the meeting.

I got the videotape, and they had an ability to print out still shots

from the video, which I gathered, and that became evidence for the case also.

He wanted them to be remote-control.

He wanted to be able to remotely detonate them.

He wanted them camouflaged as something that was common,

something that wouldn't draw attention.

I remember he wanted to put a satchel charge down somewhere,

like in a black bag, a gym bag.

I'd dealt with some pretty wicked people in my time,

but this was, like, a very detailed, like, well-thought,

maniacal, like, nightmarish-type scheme that was in his head.

On June 22nd, Vince gets a call from Tenpenny.

His case conference with the Wynn Corporation

didn't deliver the payout he wanted.

The bombing would go as planned.

He made it crystal clear it's a go.

He wanted to go forward with it.

He was pretty much unhinged at that point.

Now all of our wheels were spinning towards delivering

these explosive devices to Tenpenny.

We knew that delivering these devices to Tenpenny

was ultimately what he would be charged behind.

We had one of the best explosives experts in the country

working for us, a guy named Jerry Taylor.

Under the statute, you don't actually have to have a working bomb,

you just have to have a combination of parts

designed or intended to be used as a bomb.

We had to give him a bomb that actually had the working parts,

even though it wouldn't detonate for him

if he didn't know how to do it.

We made the device, one, out of a beer cooler that was mine,

and the other one was a briefcase.

So in the briefcase, you see that there's a timer on it,

and the timer was set so he could have the time delay

between when he set the device and when he escaped,

and the other one is a remote control device.

Inside these containers, you have real C4 and you have fake C4.

There's a live blasting cap, it's attached to the fake C4,

and there's a fake blasting cap, and it's attached to the real C4.

We received a briefing on how they work and what the components were

because we had to be able to articulate and explain what we were delivering.

Then the second step was to make arrangements

as to how and when we were going to deliver the devices.

And then it wasn't like just me and Vince were going to show up

and drop these off to him.

An enforcement operation had to be built,

a raid team had to be built and assembled and strategized.

We ended up delivering the devices to Tenpenny in the garage at his house.

[♪♪]

We walk into his garage.

He pulled the garage door down, so now we're isolated in his garage.

[♪♪]

Basically so no one could see or hear what was going on.

[♪♪]

It was absolutely tense. There's high explosives in there

and you don't know what he's going to do.

So, what do you think?

At that point, I just didn't want to blow it.

I didn't want to say something or do something

that would get him to back off or ruin the credibility of the case.

And this is for that one? This is for this here.

We showed him the device, explained to him how it worked,

and he was beside himself. He just couldn't be happier.

You got a deal?

We confirmed with him that this is what he wanted.

We made sure that he understood that he knew how they worked.

Let's do it. Get the money.

He paid us for the devices.

The cover teams were outside listening to us,

and then we had a pre-designated bus signal.

A little way to celebrate.

Just as my own little gimmick historically,

as either a bus signal or a staging signal,

I'd always had a PEZ dispenser with me.

It was meant to give the cover team an advance notice,

like, "We're getting close. Get ready, boys.

We're getting ready to take him down."

I popped open my PEZ dispenser.

I said, "Dude, we got to celebrate with a PEZ."

We have a PEZ after every deal.

Vince took one. I took one. Tenpenny took one.

Then the cavalry came.

Police! Get out of the car!

All of a sudden, everything's opening up,

and all the raid guys are coming in.

I remember windows breaking.

There was guns pointed through the windows.

We all came in very rapidly,

because we didn't want to give him a chance

to acquire some other gun and to shoot his way out.

So we came straight to the defendant

and put him in handcuffs on the ground.

He was very shocked.

He believed that Jay and Vince were who they said they were,

and he didn't know how the police could find this out.

He thought that they were militia guys

and that he was secure in his criminal activity with them.

We took Jay and Vince into the car,

put them in custody as if they were actual suspects too,

because we didn't want him to know that they were undercovers.

He didn't know until after he'd been booked

that they actually were undercovers.

The charges he pled guilty to

were possession of explosive devices,

possession of unregistered weapons.

There's a huge sense of relief,

because now we know at least this plan,

this scheme, is not going to happen.

Felt great to know that we prevented

so much carnage, potentially, and loss of life.

Well, after Tin Penny was arrested,

we celebrated, went out for some drinks,

and we stopped at a bar near the Showboat Casino,

and it's called the Dew Drop Inn.

And we posed in front of this bar,

kind of like a teen picture.

During the course of my 27 years as an ATF agent,

I participated in one way or another

in over 500 undercover operations,

some big ones, some long-term ones,

some that got a lot of publicity,

but none of them were ever as important as this case.

[♪♪♪]

2016, Chicago.

DEA agents put their lives on the line every day

to prevent the trafficking of drugs like fentanyl,

heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine.

Undercover agent Mario Elias thought he had seen it all.

There's other jobs that I've done

that you would think would be more dangerous and weren't.

I've done deals for 200, 400 kilos,

a million dollars, five million dollars.

Those could have been very dangerous,

and they turned out routine.

When the Godinez case came up,

I was so far into my career that it became routine,

which it should never be routine,

'cause a drug deal is never routine,

and anything can go sideways.

We need one medic, we need one medic!

So you just never know.

My name is Mario Elias.

I'm a retired narcotics detective.

I've been in law enforcement 29 years,

28 years of which I spent working undercover.

In August of 2016, I received a call from another DEA group.

They said that they had a confidential source

that had information about a guy

trying to sell 2 kilos of cocaine.

He worked at a factory.

He had been asking people that worked at the factory

if they knew anybody that wanted to buy cocaine,

which is kind of odd.

This guy had even showed him pictures on his phone.

He would walk around the factory showing different people

the photos and asking, "Hey, do you know anybody

that's looking to buy some cocaine?"

When I heard that, that led me to believe

that this guy might be an amateur,

or maybe this is the first time he's done this.

He had no criminal history, no record whatsoever,

or it could also be a rip that he's trying to rip

somebody off for money.

At the start of this operation, when I was presented this,

the goal was to meet up with him.

If he did in fact have 2 kilograms of cocaine,

have him bring it out, see if maybe there's more.

We don't want just the person that brought it.

We want to get whoever he got it from.

It's always best to bring an undercover in

because they have first-hand contact with these people,

and you get better evidence, better testimony,

and the cases are much stronger when you have an undercover

testifying against the individual.

We came up with a plan that I buy and sell houses,

but that I sell cocaine on the side,

and that the confidential source was a former client of mine.

I called him.

[phone ringing]

Hey, bro, what's up?

My impression of Mr. Godinez on the first phone call,

he was very polite, very accommodating.

Whatever I said, he was willing to go along with.

That kind of raised some red flags because it seemed too easy.

Right there, that kind of tells you,

well, maybe this might not be what it seems it is.

I got a couple of properties that flooded out and stuff,

and it's just been a nightmare,

so I'm kind of finally cleaning up here and stuff, you know?

I said, "I heard you have some work,

which is code for narcotics.

Is it still available?"

Oh, OK.

Oh, for Morris, OK, OK.

For the first meeting, I showed up.

He showed up probably a couple of minutes later,

gets into my car, we have a conversation.

[speaking Spanish]

He tells me that he has 2 kilograms of cocaine

at $18,000 apiece for a total of $36,000.

He offered up a sample,

and normally drug dealers will give you a sample

so you can see the quality of it.

[speaking Spanish]

What was a little bit off about this one

was that he took the sample back,

which is very odd that drug dealers never do that.

When they give you a sample, it's usually like a gram.

They'll let you keep it so you can try it out.

But he wanted it back.

Then again, that showed me that this guy is new to this.

OK.

[speaking Spanish]

I work it into the conversation.

I still have cocaine with me that I have to get rid of.

But once I do, then I'll give him a call,

and that buys a little bit of time for me

to do a little more background on him and set up the deal.

We end the meeting.

I tell him I'll call him in a few days when I'm ready to go,

and we can come to an agreement.

But I did agree to the 2 kilos for $36,000.

The case agent started doing background checks,

and his brother has had previous gun-related charges.

And you start to think that, well, maybe this guy is legit.

Maybe he does have ties to narcotics.

Maybe he does have a way to get his hands on.

But it also raises red flags that when you start seeing

things like that, like, things could go sideways on this.

A couple days after the initial meeting,

I get a call from the case agent that says,

hey, we're ready to go, can you set up a deal for this date?

And then at that point, I called Mr. Godinez and said,

hey, listen, I'm getting rid of the last bit of stuff that I had.

Can we meet on so-and-so date? Would you be ready?

I arranged to meet him on a Tuesday at the Joliet Mall,

but I didn't give him an exact location.

What I normally do and what I did that day is,

we're going to meet in this area, this mall,

but I won't give him an exact location

until we are set up and there so that he doesn't have

an opportunity to get there and set up before us.

Even though there's a few red flags,

meaning Mr. Godinez seemed like he's new to this game,

and now all of a sudden you add family members

that have been arrested for guns and drugs,

even though there's some red flags, I'm feeling good about the deal.

I'm thinking, okay, this is going to go easy,

I'll be home in time for dinner.

At the time when I met Adan, Mr. Godinez,

I had my daughter and my goddaughter living with me,

and at the time I was divorced, so it was just me and the 2 girls,

and I had custody of both.

That morning when I left my house, I told my daughters,

I'll be home in time for dinner, don't worry about it,

I'll make dinner for you guys.

But I never made it home for dinner.

Normally I don't carry a gun to a lot of deals

because it's hard to conceal a weapon on your person,

but this particular day I thought, maybe I'd better carry a gun today.

In Chicago, Illinois, undercover detective Mario Elias

prepares for what he expects to be a routine drug buy.

Prior to me setting up at the location,

we have a briefing with a whole group

and outline what we intend to do, what everybody's job is.

At that point, my boss says to me,

something doesn't feel quite right here, can't put my finger on it,

it might be a rip-off, it might be nothing,

something doesn't feel right about it.

When I first arrived in the parking lot of the Joliet Mall,

it was a beautiful day, it was sunny, it was nice out,

I see people, some people walking around, not very many.

It wasn't very crowded that day.

Set up in the parking lot, we had surveillance set all around us.

Once they had a good angle on me where they could see me,

at that time I called Mr. Godinez.

[phone rings]

[speaking Spanish]

He said that he had two girls for me,

which is code for two kilograms of cocaine.

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

Approximately 30 minutes later,

I get a call from the surveillance guys

telling me there's a vehicle circling the parking lot.

We believe it's him, and there's two guys in the car.

At that moment, another flag comes up,

because now there's two people involved,

and I'm not just dealing with Mr. Godinez,

I'm dealing with somebody else in the vehicle.

The numbers are 2 to 1, so you have to be on your toes.

The tension rises a little bit more hearing that.

A few minutes pass, I see a vehicle pull up right next to me

and park directly to my passenger side.

I see Mr. Godinez get out of the car,

walks over and gets into my vehicle.

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

After Mr. Godinez gets in the vehicle with me,

I get a text from the surveillance unit saying

that his brother is the one driving the other vehicle.

Tensions start to rise because now there's two people

that I'm dealing with, and I'm no longer dealing

with just this guy that's an amateur,

I'm dealing with possibly somebody that knows what they're doing.

All of a sudden you add family members

that have been arrested for guns and drugs,

you have to take it serious.

[speaking Spanish]

He asked me if I want to see them, which I said, yeah, please,

I would like to see, make sure that they are whole or in one piece.

He went to get it, he went to get it.

He exits my vehicle, goes back to the other vehicle

where his brother is at, grabs one, puts it in his shirt,

comes back to my car, pulls it from under his shirt,

and hands it to me.

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

I asked him if I could see all of them,

which he says, yeah, let me go get them.

He's getting it.

He goes back to his brother's vehicle and grabs a bag.

Once he grabs that bag, he starts walking back to my car.

I see out of the mirrors that the brother moves the vehicle

to another parking spot, and out of my view.

So the surveillance team, they're focused in on my car.

Once the other vehicle moves, now they got 2 vehicles

they have to keep an eye on, so it gets a little bit harder.

Mr. Gonitos gets in the car with me, and at that point,

gives me the bag, and I start looking, and I could tell

that there's a full 2 kilograms of cocaine.

I thought, this is great, we're getting what we came here for.

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

Once I see the cocaine in the bag, that's when I give

the arrest signal to the surveillance guys

and the surrounding officers.

I place a phone call to one of my partners, says,

hey, everything looks great, bring me the money.

That's when they know that that's the arrest signal

for them to come in and take everybody into custody.

[speaking Spanish]

The plan was, once I give the arrest signal,

one team would go to the second vehicle, the brother's car,

and then another team would come to my vehicle

and take Mr. Gonitos into custody.

The most tense moment of a drug deal is when you first

place your phone call and say, hey, you give the arrest signal

and they're coming in.

It feels like a lifetime, but it's only

a matter of a couple of minutes.

That particular day, it felt like it was forever.

I'm looking around to see which angle they're coming in at,

but you don't want to make it too obvious

like you're looking all over the place.

I try to catch them before he sees it, but a minute later,

I could see in my mirror all these cars pulling up

on the second vehicle, Mr. Gonitos' brother's vehicle,

and I could see it in my mirror.

The one team arrived at the other vehicle.

There must have been a delay.

They didn't arrive in my vehicle.

At that point, Mr. Gonitos also saw it

and heard the screaming of police, police, get out.

By then, it was up.

Everything was up.

He went into a panic.

In his eyes, he sees that his brother's getting arrested.

[interposing voices]

You're serious, right?

Oh, my--

You're not my man.

[music playing]

Hey!

[gunshots]

[interposing voices]

It feels like it was slow motion.

[music playing]

Mr. Gonitos freaks out.

I could clearly see him reaching the waistband, getting a gun,

getting out of the vehicle.

I did clearly hear him grab his gun, slide the rack back,

and chamber around into the gun, which was clear as day,

and start firing.

[gunshots]

However, I didn't hear any of the shots.

[gunshots]

I grabbed my gun from the side pocket.

I get out of my vehicle, go to the rear of my vehicle,

and I see him running and shooting.

[gunshots]

At that point, I started shooting at him.

And the arrest teams realized that they were being shot at.

They turned around and also focused on Mr. Gonitos

and started firing.

[gunshots]

[interposing voices]

[gunshots]

Don't move.

Hold your fire.

Hold your fire.

[interposing voices]

[gunshots]

At which point, he is shot in the leg,

and he drops to the ground.

[interposing voices]

Mark, step back.

Step back.

We need one medic.

We need one medic.

Once he dropped, arrest teams went over there,

took the gun away, and applied the tourniquet to his leg.

And he was shot in the leg.

[gunshots]

[interposing voices]

[gunshots]

[interposing voices]

[gunshots]

[interposing voices]

[gunshots]

[interposing voices]

[gunshots]

[interposing voices]

That's a lot of shots.

They say that it's very common for a shooting event like that

that you have tunnel vision, where you only focus on one thing,

and you don't hear anything around you.

And that's what happened to me.

It could have turned very ugly.

If he would have stopped and took a stance and shot,

yeah, I think quite a few of those guys would have got hit.

You'll see my vehicle here, and then see my vehicle here.

And then see how they box it in, so when they do an arrest,

they'll box the vehicle in so he can't drive off.

So this is my vehicle here.

This is the arrest team with the second vehicle.

As Mr. Gondinas exits my vehicle, he starts running this way.

And so I have an angle this way, and the arrest team

has an angle that way for the shots that were fired.

As he got out of my vehicle, he started running away

but shooting back, so that's what actually saved us,

is the fact that he's running.

After the shooting, there was people everywhere.

There's news trucks.

I mean, everybody came out of the woodwork.

News of the shootout in the Joliet Mall spread quickly.

All major news outlets covered the story.

I placed a call to my daughters to make sure that they knew

what had happened, because I wanted them to hear from me,

just in case they saw it in the news.

It went from a simple, which--a simple drug deal,

which is 2 kilos--we do them all the time--

to an actual shootout.

It was a shootout, not a drug deal.

Both brothers were charged.

Fernando Gondinas was the one in the other vehicle.

Mr. Adan Gondinas was charged with the shooting

and also with the delivery of the cocaine.

If he would have just taken the arrest the way it was,

he might have gotten maybe 5 years,

because he had no criminal history that works in his favor.

But at the end, he ended up with a lot of years.

Later on, when Mr. Gondinas was at the hospital

and he was talking about me, if I had gotten arrested,

I think if he would have known that I was a police officer,

things could have probably been worse for me,

where he might have turned around and shot at me.

To this day, my boss still tells me, "See, I told you so.

I was right." And he was. He was.

I was supposed to come home and fix dinner,

but I ended up getting home probably around 1 o'clock in the morning.

I made sure that my daughters, that they're in their rooms,

and I made sure that they had a good drink.

Good stiff drink.

Even though everybody walked away,

it still opens your eyes to the possibilities

of what can happen day in and day out,

and a lot of times we take that for granted.

That's when the light clicks that this could have been really bad.

It was life-changing. Makes you see things differently.

[♪♪]

[MUSIC]