MAYOR ORDERS CITY TO SETTLE ANY CLAIM BY MENA FAMILY

Mayor Wellington Webb, acknowledging Denver police killed an innocent man,
on Friday ordered city lawyers to quickly settle any claim Ismael Mena's
family files.

"A tragedy has taken place, and a death did not have to occur," Webb said.
"Our goal is to expedite working with the family."

Mena had been sleeping in his second-floor bedroom in northeast Denver when
a police SWAT team executed a no-knock search warrant looking for drugs --
based on a reported $20 sale of crack cocaine eight days earlier.

The officer who wrote the warrant was charged Friday with felony perjury.

The mayor said settling claims from Mena's widow and nine children, some of
whom are arriving in Denver this weekend from out of state and from Mexico,
will be given "the highest priority" by the city attorney's office.

"We feel very bad about what happened to the Mena family," he said.

Robert Maes, attorney for the Mena family, said Friday that he will meet
with City Attorney Wallace Wortham on Tuesday.

The family has not formulated their demands for compensation, but beyond
that the family wants a thorough review of the no-knock raid policy, Maes
said.

"They want to make sure something like this cannot happen again," he said.

Webb, in addressing those concerns, called Friday for a review of the
no-knock raid policy by Manager of Safety Butch Montoya, District Attorney
Bill Ritter and Denver County Court Presiding Judge Robert Patterson.

Webb wants them to address what kind of criteria is used in requesting and
granting such warrants; what sort of process is used to review the warrant
requests; how often are the warrants used and how effective they are.

Some family members are active in the grass-roots Justice for Mena
Committee, which will rally at 2 p.m. today on the east side of the City and
County Building.

"The family and myself as their lawyer support what the committee is doing,"
Maes said.

Police practices that led to raiding the wrong house and killing Mena
"corroborate our feeling that there is an indifference to human life," Maes
said.

Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas, who was named special
prosecutor in the Mena shooting, said his review led to questions about
training and supervision in the Denver Police Department that "were of some
concern."

He would not specify the particular problems, but said he'd discussed them
with Denver officials.

"This particular incident as a whole is a great concern to a great deal of
people," he said.

But Police Chief Tom Sanchez said training is not the problem.

"It gets back to the issue of veracity," he said. "We train our people to
tell the truth."

Sanchez said his department still is investigating a claim by a veteran
officer in District 2, which includes the Mena home, that she felt pressure
from superiors to make it appear there was a history of trouble at the
house.

Thomas and Ritter found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, but Sanchez said
his Internal Affairs staff will look into the claim.

The fact that one of the superiors implicated in the allegation, District 2
Capt. Marco Vasquez, is married to a sergeant in the internal affairs
bureau, Rosa Vasquez, won't affect the outcome, said the chief.

Sanchez said Sgt. Vasquez can't be involved in the investigation because
only equal or higher-ranking officers can investigate other cops.

Sanchez said police also continue to work on tracing the .22-caliber
revolver found in Mena's room.

Mena owned a .380-caliber handgun, but that weapon had been confiscated two
weeks earlier when Mena was frisked by police in an unrelated incident.

Sanchez said the gun Mena used during the raid is a German-made Burgo
revolver that hasn't yet been traced from Germany to an American seller.
Mena's supporters want to know if it's possible it was planted at the scene
to justify the shooting.