DENVER POLICE: FIRE BINI

Oct. 7, 2000 - It's bad enough that prosecutors had to plea-bargain to a
misdemeanor for Officer Joseph Bini, the Denver cop whose botched search
warrant indirectly cost Mexican immigrant Ismael Mena's life in September
1999, but allowing him to cop an "Alford plea" is an outrage.

Bini, who pleaded Thursday to a count of first-degree official misconduct,
put the wrong address on an affidavit for the no-knock drug raid during
which SWAT officers shot Mena. An Alford plea means Bini isn't admitting
guilt but fears conviction at trial.

The plea permits Bini to sidestep responsibility for the killing of Mena -
and may give him a better chance to hang on to his job. Mena, who was
supporting his wife and seven of their children in Mexico, was startled when
heavily armed officers burst into his darkened bedroom at 3738 High St. He
supposedly pulled a .22-caliber revolver and fired at the intruders.

(Bini's court documents punctiliously note that he speaks, reads and
understands English - a courtesy that wasn't accorded the Spanish-speaking
Mena by the Anglophone SWAT officers.)

When Bini filled out the affidavit for a raid on a house where an informant
had bought illegal drugs earlier that September, he got the address wrong.
Bini blamed an informant for the error - the buy actually took place at 3742
High St.

No drugs were found in Mena's home, but when the right house finally was
raided in December 1999, crack cocaine was found there.

Special prosecutors from the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office
charged Bini with two counts of first-degree perjury and one count of trying
to influence a public servant. But District Judge Shelley Gilman, ruling the
facts could be prejudicial to Bini, suppressed any mention of Mena's death;
that the address was wrong; that no drugs were found at Mena's house; that
drugs were found when the correct house was subsequently raided; and that
Bini got the address wrong in another case.

The state Supreme Court upheld Gilman on appeal. The Jeffco DA's office,
which handled the case to avoid a possible conflict of interest with the
Denver DA's office, decided that, without these key facts, it couldn't win a
felony case.

Even if we accept that judgment, we still believe prosecutors could have
held for out for a better result. First, they should not have accepted the
Alford plea. Second, they should have taken the case to trial on the
misdemeanor count. That way, the public might have gotten a fuller account
than is presented in the sterile plea-bargain documents - including an
explanation of the mysterious "new evidence" prosecutors have begun alluding
to. Had Bini been convicted of a felony, he automatically would have lost
his job. Not so with a misdemeanor. Now it remains for city officials,
including Manager of Safety Ari Zavaras and Police Chief Gerry Whitman, to
decide Bini's future. He should be fired, even at the risk of the action
being reversed by the Civil Service Commission.

Bini's incompetence already has cost the city a $400,000 settlement in the
wrongful-death lawsuit that Mena's family brought.

This is a cop who couldn't find his hip pockets in the dark, let alone the
crack house up the street. It's too much to ask the citizens of Denver to
let him keep his badge and gun any longer.