LANSING CASE NEEDED THE 3-MONTH TEST

July 20, 2000 - I call it the "lunch-plus-three-months" disclosure test.

In the interest of preserving trust, it's a simple formula for figuring out
what decisions, circumstances or events must be revealed no matter how
innocent the actual situation is.

It goes like this: A married man has lunch with a female friend, co-worker,
client or other business associate. It's a completely professional,
above-board lunch of the sort that if he told his wife about it immediately,
she wouldn't be upset.

When he's talking to his wife that evening, it may come up in casual
conversation, e.g., "Honey, I had lunch at that new Italian place by the
mall and the food was great." "Oh really, did you have a meeting there?"

"Yeah, I was with Jane Doe from Central Bank. We were working out the final
details in our bid." It's discussed, it's a non-issue, and they move on.

This particular lunch might also survive the "three-months" test. Say that
three months later, husband and wife go to that same Italian restaurant and
he says, "Oh, I forgot, I have eaten here. I had lunch a few months ago with
Jane Doe over at Central Bank. The food was great." Despite the delay in
reporting the lunch, his wife still may not be upset with him. She's not
threatened by that professional lunch.

However, this type of information can spoil just like dairy products in your
refrigerator. Serve the milk the day you purchase it and it'll be tasty and
refreshing. If you try it after three months, it's going to be hard to
swallow and someone's going to get sick.

The Denver Police Department would do well to employ the "three-months"
test.

The police are getting hammered these days because the public is just now
learning that Colorado Rockies second baseman Mike Lansing was on a
ride-along when the SWAT team crashed Ismael Mena's house and shot him to
death.

There's nothing suspicious about a ride-along; many journalists,
politicians, celebrities and other citizens have traveled with the police,
some of them in the back seat, as part of the department's
"free-ride-to-jail program." There's nothing wrong with a citizen being
safely in the car when a shooting takes place; that's a possible outcome on
any ride-along.

The problem is that, in Lansing's case, the police made a secret of
something that could never be expected to survive the "three-months" test.

If the reports had revealed Lansing's presence from the start, his name
would have generated short-term public interest and curiosity but, if he had
nothing to add to the investigation, that interest would quickly have waned.

By waiting 10 months to tell us that Lansing was there, the police have
allowed curiosity to turn into suspicion.

Since the shooting, we've learned that the police went to the wrong house
and killed an innocent man. We've followed the investigation, the perjury
charges that were brought against Officer Joseph Bini (who got the warrant),
the $400,000 wrongful death settlement awarded to Mena's family, and the
changes made in Denver's no-knock warrant procedures.

After all of that, we now learn that there was a potential civilian witness
who was spirited away after the shooting, who was never interviewed by
investigators and whose name was never mentioned.

That's suspicious.

It may be that someone was simply trying to do Lansing a favor by keeping
his name out of the papers. Or there may be some other innocuous
explanation. But whatever the reason, keeping Lansing's presence a secret
was a foolish mistake that never would have been made if the officers
involved had given it the "three-months" test.

Former Denver Broncos player Reggie Rivers writes Wednesdays on The Post
op-ed page and is a talk-show host on KHOW Radio (630 AM, weekdays from 3 to
7 p.m.).