BINI CAN'T REGAIN HIS CREDIBILITY

Jan. 17, 2001 - And so it has been decided that Joe Bini, a Denver
police officer, should be penalized three months' pay for causing an
innocent man's death.

That, plus $400,000 in cash from the city's taxpayers, may be what our
system sets as the price for the killing of an innocent person.

But that's only the start.

Joe Bini is still a Denver cop, and he is eligible to return to the
job.

He has his badge, his gun and his authority, but those aren't all of
the tools he needs to do his job.

He also needs credibility ... He needs to be believed by a judge
and/or a jury.

Unless that can happen, he is useless as a cop. After all, if a cop
makes an arrest and shows up in court to testify, he has to have a
reputation as the basis for his integrity.

Joe Bini doesn't have that.

He is the cop who signed an affidavit that provided the facts for a
no-knock search warrant to raid the house where Ismael Mena was sleeping.

On the basis of Bini's sworn statements, a Denver police SWAT team
swarmed into Mena's apartment.

When he was awakened by the noise of Denver police scrambling up the
stairs to his apartment, Mena reached for a gun to defend himself. And
as the blackclad SWAT team burst through the door of his apartment,
seeing Mena with a gun in his hand, the invading police force shot him
dead.

It was all a mistake.

Mena, as the facts turned out, was a hard-working father of a large
family in Mexico, working the night shift at a job in Denver to
provide for his family south of the border.

He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And so were, as it turned out, the Denver police.

The difference was that Ismael Mena was dead.

As details emerged, it became apparent that Ismael Mena was the victim
of a terrible error by Bini, who carelessly depended on an informant
who wrongly provided the address of a supposed crack house, the
address of a building where Ismael Mena was sleeping.

Based on Bini's affidavit, Denver SWAT crashed into Mena's house and
shot him to death not knowing that they had the wrong man in the wrong
house.

Mena was dead, the victim of a Denver cop's recklessness.

Mena had done nothing wrong, yet he was dead.

That was the ultimate penalty for being in the wrong place at the
wrong time.

But that is no crime. The real culprit was Joe Bini, a Denver cop who
made a fatal mistake.

His penalty turned out to be a misdemeanor conviction for first-degree
misconduct, costing him a mere three months' loss of pay, and he
remains a full-fledged member of the Denver police force.

The city's taxpayers ought to ask themselves: Should we be paying the
salary of a cop whose credibility will forever be challenged in every
case he testifies in?