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topicnews · September 30, 2024

A Wisconsin agency says the real victim of police misconduct is… the government • Wisconsin Examiner

A Wisconsin agency says the real victim of police misconduct is… the government • Wisconsin Examiner

This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.

Michael Bell Sr. has believed for years that Kenosha police officers victimized his family – first by killing his son in 2004 and then, he claims, by covering up the true events.

Bell initially accepted the police accounts of the shooting, then became skeptical and finally angry. He channeled that anger into action. He sued the city of Kenosha, its police department and four officers, resulting in a $1.75 million settlement, and took a leading role in passing a state law banning police departments from investigating themselves .

But no one in the Kenosha department has admitted wrongdoing or, Bell says, adequately explained why his son was shot.

Michael E. Bell on one of the many billboards his father bought to raise awareness of internal police investigations after his son was fatally shot by police in Kenosha in 2004. (Photo via Bell’s Plea For a Change Facebook page).

At the suggestion of the governor’s office, he filed a lawsuit with the Wisconsin Crime Victims Rights Board in 2022, alleging that he was the victim of a long-running official cover-up of his son’s murder. The board is a five-member agency that can issue public or private reprimands against officials who violate the rights of crime victims.

The Victims’ Rights Commission ruled last November that if there was a cover-up, the victim was not Bell, but the state of Wisconsin.

“The alleged conduct is directed against the government and its administration, not against any individual,” the decision says, which does not elaborate on how the state became a victim.

Jennifer Dunn, the board’s chairwoman, declined to discuss the board’s decision. The ruling alarmed some victim advocates, who described it as a departure from the intent of the victims’ rights movement.

“This completely contradicts the spirit and purpose of victims’ rights,” said Lenore Anderson, a former prosecutor and author of “In Their Names: The Untold Story of Victims’ Rights, Mass Incarceration, and the Future of Public Safety.” She said she had never seen a ruling that called the government the victim of a crime.

The victims’ rights movement arose in the 1970s because crime victims felt invisible or ignored in the criminal process, she said. Crime victims were given the right to information about cases, the right to speak at sentencing or parole hearings, and other rights.

“It would be impossible to interpret any of these rights to apply to the state,” Anderson said.

Bell is appealing the board’s decision.

Bell’s appeal is unusual. Few crime victims sue alleged violations because most lack resources, said Mariam El-menshawi, a professor at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law who specializes in victims’ rights.

In general, laws grant victims of crime access to the criminal process but do not provide control over prosecutorial decisions.

“Victims have no veto power,” El-Menshawi said. “You can’t force an investigation.”

Kenosha police declined to comment for this story. So did Kenosha’s current district attorney and attorney general.

Shortly after 2 a.m. on November 9, 2004, Kenosha police confronted 21-year-old Michael E. Bell after he parked in front of his home. Police said he was drunk and uncooperative. There was a fight in the yard that spread to the driveway. His mother and sister came outside in bathrobes. Police shocked Bell three times with a Taser. As they pinned him on the hood of a car, an officer yelled that Bell had grabbed his gun; Another officer then shot Bell in the head at close range.

It took two days for police to declare the shooting justified. Then-District Attorney Robert Jambois followed suit twelve days later and placed the blame squarely on Bell.

He said the young man was driving drunk, then didn’t obey officers’ commands and decided to fight. His report described a life-and-death struggle over an officer’s gun, in which Bell tried to draw the weapon while the officer struggled to keep the gun in the holster.

The prosecutor concluded that the police feared for her life.

The elder Bell, a retired lieutenant colonel who piloted planes in three wars, initially trusted the judgment of law enforcement.

He wore an Air Force uniform for 24 years and was unabashedly pro-police, he said, until he hit what he calls a blue wall of lies and cover-ups. “I was such a supporter of a uniform that I couldn’t believe someone wearing a uniform could behave like that.”

Bell didn’t even believe his daughter or Michael’s mother, who saw her son killed. But during months of family counseling, Bell became skeptical of the police.

“As I described in detail what they saw, I realized they weren’t making it up,” he said.

Bell sued Kenosha and its police department in 2005. The lawsuit extracted damaging evidence.

Police described an exhaustive struggle over a weapon, but tests found no trace of Bell’s DNA on the weapon.

And the officers’ reports contradicted one central fact: the bullet’s entry and exit wounds in Bell Jr.’s head. Police said the fight occurred on the left side of a car in the driveway. An officer had his arms around Bell and was pushing him against the hood. A second officer yelled that Bell had grabbed his gun. A third officer in front of the car shot Bell at close range in the left side of his head.

However, the autopsy revealed that the bullet entered Bell’s skull just above his right ear, leaving soot and a muzzle burn, and exited on his left side, leaving a bloody trail along the hood to where the officer said he confessed.

Bell said the evidence shows that the officer who fired was standing between the other two officers when he fired.

“The question of life and death immediately disappears when an officer steps between the detained suspect and the officer claiming he has my gun,” Bell said. “You move the hand, you don’t kill the person.”

After that discrepancy was revealed in a trial deposition, police developed another scenario consistent with the gunshot wound, and then a third. In both cases, the shooter was in the front of the car. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy described it as “forensically impossible.”

Images from newspaper advertisements
In November 2021, Michael M. Bell purchased a two-page ad in The New York Times to publicize his call for a new investigation into the 2004 police shooting of his son. (Wisconsin Examiner photo illustration)

In 2010, the city of Kenosha settled the case for $1.75 million. Bell put the money into activism. He put up billboards and bought full-page ads in the New York Times. He pushed for a 2014 law that prohibits police from investigating on their own. In February of this year, he offered to donate $200,000 to a Kenosha charity if the city would have the bullet examined by an independent ballistics expert; He withdrew the offer on Sept. 16 after the city declined. He helped sponsor a conference arguing that police shootings should be investigated while the National Transportation Safety Board investigates plane crashes to establish the facts and prevent future shootings.

After the settlement, Bell found an unlikely ally: retired Detective Russell Beckman, who had served on the Kenosha Police Department for 28 years. He called Bell, told him the police were being shady and offered to volunteer to help with whatever Bell needed.

In 2012, Beckman compiled compelling evidence that Bell Jr. never grabbed the officer’s gun. First, Bell’s DNA was not on the gun. But the key was the driver’s side mirror, which was broken after the fight and was dangling from the car. Beckman said the officer caught his gun in the holster on the mirror, which caused his gun belt to be pulled to the front of his body.

Jambois, the former prosecutor, said in a recent interview that Der Spiegel could explain why the officer yelled that the young Bell had his gun.

Regardless, Jambois said the shooting was still justified regardless of whether Bell Jr. had his hand on the gun or not. The officers feared for their lives.

Michael Bell Sr. may well feel like a victim, Jambois said.

“Who can’t feel compassion for a man who has lost his son?” he said. “I can understand he would be so terribly, terribly unhappy and angry.”

November marks the 20th anniversary of his son’s shooting. Bell never imagined he would spend two decades seeking justice for his son while, he says, law enforcement investigated itself.

“It’s all about self-protection,” Bell said. “It’s like the NFL team owner and the referees are all on the same page.”

In July, a judge heard arguments in Bell’s appeal of the Crime Victims Rights Board’s decision. He noted that regardless of its decision, the case — and the question of who the victim really is — will likely go to the state appeals court and then to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

“I don’t have the final say,” he said.

For more Wisconsin Examiner coverage of the Michael Bell case, click here.

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