OFFICER BINI'S WRIST-SLAP

The Issue: Denver Officer Punished For Role In Tragic No-Knock Raid

Our View: Official Explanation Is Baffling

The Denver manager of safety describes the decision to keep Joseph Bini on
the city's police force almost as an act of courage. "Politically, it would
be very expedient for us to terminate Officer Bini," Ari Zavaras says. "I
have never operated that way in 35 years and I'm not going to start making
someone a scapegoat now."

Zavaras is certainly correct that terminating Bini would have saved the
Webb administration from a good deal of public criticism. Yet a decision
doesn't merit praise just because it courts controversy. So while we
respect Zavaras' resolve to do what he considers right, we still consider
the decision to be wrong. Bini shouldn't be allowed back on the force.

The inescapable fact is that Bini signed an affidavit in which he stated
that he "observed the informant make his/her way on foot to the location in
question" -- that location being a house on High Street in which a drug
deal was supposed to have occurred.

But the statement in the affidavit is false. The officer did not observe
the informant make his way to that location. Police were nearby when the
informant was supposed to have purchased drugs, but they relied on him to
give them the address -- and there was a fatal miscommunication. An
innocent man died after a SWAT team crashed into the wrong house.

Would that man be alive today if the affidavit had admitted that no officer
actually observed the informant at 3738 High St.? Would a judge still have
issued a no-knock warrant for that address? We don't know, but the point is
that the standard for a no-knock raid is supposed to be rigorous, involving
the next-best thing to absolute certainty on the part of police. Yet police
in this case adopted a casual attitude toward the evidence and then
concealed the resulting uncertainty from a judge.

What does Zavaras mean when he says a three-month suspension for Bini is
enough because the department "has to step up and accept its share of what
happened"? Is he suggesting it was the norm for officers to sign statements
presented to a judge that they knew to be a stretch of the truth?

Actually, Zavaras went beyond saying the punishment is fair. He said it is
severe -- "way off the charts for similar situations." If so, the charts
need revision. In the civilian world, false testimony that resulted in an
innocent man's death is the sort of thing that could land the culprit in
prison.

Of course, neither Zavaras nor Chief Gerald Whitman bear responsibility for
the lax no-knock standards of the past, and they are to be commended for
tightening up procedures for such raids. We just hope Bini's punishment
isn't a sign of the sort of discipline to come in future cases.

One more thing: Ever since the shooting of Ismael Mena, Denver officials
have occasionally resorted to blaming the victim for his own death. We
thought this line of argument had been shelved, but John Wyckoff of the
Denver Police Protective Association revived it again this week.

"This is a tragedy for the Mena family and the police department," Wyckoff
said, "but Mr. Mena would still be alive today if he didn't have a gun and
if he had not fired it."

Thanks for reminding us why the public should be relieved that Denver
police reduced their number of no-knock raids from 129 in 1999 to 42 in
2000. If Wyckoff's view is at all common in the force, perhaps the only
safe number of no-knock raids is zero.