OVERSIGHT OF ROOKIE COPS BEEFED UP

Denver police won't be able to use confidential drug
informants without a narcotics detective watching their every move
from now on.

Interim Police Chief Gerry Whitman said that officers inexperienced at
investigating narcotics crimes won't be able to put together drug
cases by themselves, as has been the practice.

About three weeks ago, Whitman said the department began a new policy
governing informant use. The policy requires any officer who intends
to build a drug case through the use of an informant to be supervised
by one of the city's veteran narcotics officers.

Detectives and sergeants will watch as a street officer's drug
informant makes the undercover buy that so often is used to build drug
cases, Whitman said.

The policy is temporary, Whitman said, until a three-person committee
can complete a review of the city's no-knock raid policy. That
committee - composed of Manager of Safety Butch Montoya, Denver
District Attorney Bill Ritter and Denver County Presiding Judge Robert
Patterson - hasn't indicated when its work will be completed.

The decision was in part prompted by a perjury charge that was filed
last month against Officer Joseph Bini, who is accused of lying on a
sworn affidavit to get a no-knock search warrant for a northeast
Denver house in September. That warrant, which police later conceded
was for the wrong house, was served by SWAT officers who ended up
killing Mexican national Ismael Mena as he held a gun.

Whitman said the plan developed several weeks ago with Division Chief
Armedia Gordon, who heads the department's investigative division, and
Whitman while he was the division chief in charge of patrol.

"There are so many levels to review it, it would be difficult to make
a mistake," Whitman said of the new policy.

"We had at first affirmed that we'd want a sergeant there, but now we
want it to go a step further with narcotics involved. I want an expert
detective right there, like a triple fail safe."

Gordon said the department has divided the city into six sectors. Each
will have a team of narcotics detectives and a sergeant assigned to it
to supervise undercover drug purchases set up by their inexperienced
colleagues. Some sectors will share narcotics teams, Gordon said. "The
advantage of using the narcotics teams is for the patrol officers to
familiarize themselves with the teams," Gordon said. "It's a good
check-and-balance system."

Mayor Wellington Webb put together the review committee after the
charge against Bini was announced by a special prosecutor. While SWAT
officers were absolved from any wrongdoing, the incident shook the
community and exposed flaws in the no-knock process as well as the
city's desire to make community policing a staple of the department.

Bini had been using a drug informant to build many of his drug cases,
court records show, and often sent the informant to make drug buys for
him. Those purchases, often for $20, were the basis for several drug
warrant requests Bini authored, including the one for the house where
Mena lived.

However, the affidavit for which Bini is charged doesn't specifically
say he saw the drug deal between his informant and a drug suspect;
only that his informant told him that it took place. Prosecutors later
revealed that Bini's informant had miscounted which house was the
target of the raid.

Court records reviewed by The Denver Post show neighborhood police
officers - usually the most inexperienced on the force - often obtain
no-knock search warrants on their own investigations and often are not
supervised during the actual undercover drug buy. Supervisors are left
relying on the veracity of inexperienced officers, such as Bini, who
was hired in 1995.

That's what happened in Bini's case, records show. The problem,
however, wasn't with the way the warrant was approved but with how the
investigation was put together, prosecutors have said. Whitman said
the new method should curb any potential problems.

In fact, Bini had worked with a couple of narcotics officers in the
past, records show, but he had been allowed to run some of his own
drug investigations.

The detective supervisory rule will not apply to the "knock-andtalk"
procedure many officers do. In that case, officers will still be
allowed to follow up on community complaints and investigate -
provided that no informant is used to make a drug buy.

Department rules previously required an officer to have a search
warrant request reviewed by a sergeant or lieutenant before getting
approval from a deputy district attorney, then a judge.