BAD ADDRESS A REPEAT MISTAKE

Prosecutors say Bini listed wrong street in 1998 drug case

Aug. 29, 2000 - When a Denver police officer last year provided a SWAT
team with a wrong address, leading to the fatal shooting of a Mexican
immigrant, it wasn't the first time he'd given a bad address,
prosecutors said Monday.

In June 1998, officer Joseph Bini had recently become a neighborhood
police officer. And in an affidavit requesting a search warrant for a
drug case, Bini listed a Forest Street address in the final paragraph.

But the correct address was on Vine Street, prosecutors wrote in court
papers.

Days after the search warrant was issued, but not yet executed, the
mistake was caught by Bini's lieutenant and a corrected affidavit was
issued.

The supervisor told Bini that "in the future he needed to exercise
greater care in his affidavits," said prosecutors Charles Tingle and
Mark Randall.

Bini faces two counts of first-degree perjury and one count of trying
to influence a public servant in connection with a September 1999
search warrant affidavit that sent a SWAT team to the wrong address.

SWAT officers were confronted by a gun-wielding Ismael Mena, 45. They
shot and killed him in what was later ruled a justified shooting.

But the perjury counts against Bini accuse him of lying in a search
warrant affidavit and to Denver County Judge Raymond Satter - who
approved the Mena search warrant - about the circumstances surrounding
a drug buy.

The other charge, influencing a public servant, relates to Bini's
alleged attempt to deceive Satter, court records say.

The prosecutors are scheduled to argue at a hearing Friday before
Denver District Judge Shelley Gilman that the information about the
earlier mixup should be heard by a jury when the case goes to trial,
scheduled for early October.

The prosecutors will also ask Gilman to let them present evidence of
the circumstances surrounding the botched Sept. 21 Mena raid to give a
jury a complete picture of what happened.

At a hearing Aug. 11, Bini's lawyers tried to blame the mistake on his
informant and two officers who were assisting him, partners Kelly Ohu
and Reyes Trujillo.

But prosecutors say Bini must accept full responsibility.

In Monday's court papers, they said Bini was the acting sergeant
because the regular sergeant was on vacation.

"The idea for the operation was Bini's, the informant was officer
Bini's and officer Bini was using this operation to train other
officers," wrote Tingle and Randall.

The prosecutors said that at the end of the operation, a search
warrant was prepared for the home of 3738 High St., which was the
wrong house. It should have been 3742 High St., said the
prosecutors.

"Officer Trujillo typed the affidavit at the direction of officer
Bini, from the information of officer Bini and officer Ohu," the court
papers said. "Officer Trujillo was in a surveillance vehicle during the
operation, and saw nothing in conjunction with the purchase of
cocaine."

Trujillo had never typed an affidavit and was asked to as part of his
training by Bini, said the motion. The problem, said the prosecutors,
was that "several statements in the affidavit were not accurate.

"Officer Bini, the affiant, reviewed the affidavit and requested Judge
Satter to sign the warrant," said the prosecutors.

Mena had been working in Denver to support his wife and seven of their
nine children, ages 8 to 20, who were living in Mexico.

Trujillo told The Denver Post that Bini was acting as his and Ohu's
supervisor and that Bini was teaching them to write search warrant
affidavits.