Michael Bell Sr. has believed for years that Kenosha police officers victimized his family — first by killing his son in 2004 and then, he alleges, by covering up what really happened. Bell initially accepted the police accounts of the shooting, then became skeptical and finally angry. He channeled that anger into action, bringing the police cover-up allegations into the public eye through relentless activism.

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 passage of a state law that bars police departments from investigating themselves in the face of police cover-up allegations.

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

Wisconsin Victims Rights Board Rules Government the Victim Amidst Police Cover-Up Allegations

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

The victims rights board ruled last November that if there was a cover-up, the victim wasn’t Bell, but rather the state of Wisconsin, dramatically shifting the narrative on the police cover-up allegations.

“The alleged conduct is against the government and its administration, not against individual persons,” said the decision, which didn’t detail how the state was victimized.

Jennifer Dunn, the board chair, declined to discuss the board’s decision. The ruling troubled some victims advocates, who termed it a departure from the intent of the victims’ rights movement.

“This is so counter to the purpose and the point of victims’ rights,” said Lenore Anderson, 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’d never seen a ruling that labeled the government a crime victim.

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

Read the full article about police cover-up allegations in Kenosha by Joseph Neff at The Marshall Project.