Police Officers in Kenosha Wisconsin are Cowards!

[KC]

At least four cops in Kenosha are cowards, but also cold blooded murder's. Those would be officer Stausbaugh, officer Weidner, officer David Kruger and officer Gonzales.

The following link is a mothers website that details how the police officers allowed her and her daughter to watch their son/brother get murder by the Kenosha Wisconsin goon squad, right before their very eyes.

Read and see the evidence of how these cops lied and got away with murder.

michaelbell.samsbiz.com/

[KC]

Jan. 05, 2005 - Shooting stirs up man's family; Police killed Michael Bell; his Kenosha When the pain starts to overwhelm Shantae Bell, she tries to remember her brother alive. Like the time he won a dollar bet for shoving an entire cheeseburger into his mouth. Or the time she taught him to dance the electric slide in their living room. Or the time he rode a mechanical bull at a country bar and fell off, laughing, after six or seven seconds.

She tries to forget watching him die.

Kenosha police fatally shot Michael Bell in November. Another deadly Kenosha police shooting in March was the fourth such incident since December 2003. In the 14 years before that, there were just two fatal shootings by officers. The recent spate of deadly force incidents, along with an unprecedented publicity campaign still being waged by the Bell family, have garnered national attention and may have influenced a judicial race.

The officers present the night 21-year-old Bell was shot in the head recently received a dedicated service award for the incident from the Wisconsin Professional Police Association. The Kenosha County district attorney declined to charge the officers, and says they acted with "courage and distinction." The only person responsible for Michael Bell's death, District Attorney Robert J. Jambois says, is Michael Bell.

Bell's family members won't accept that. They waged a grass- roots campaign to stop Jambois district attorney for 16 years from being elected a judge. They paid $80,000 for ads about the case in newspapers around the country, including The New York Times. They spend their weekends leafleting cars, hoping that if they raise enough awareness, something will change.

"My number one goal is, I don't want this to happen to another kid. I don't want any other family to have to go through what we went through," said Michael Bell's father, for whom the son was named.

A few hours before he was shot early on Nov. 9, the younger Michael Bell, who had struggled with alcohol addiction since his early teens, went to a tavern with some friends, his family said. He had a court appearance the following morning on a felony charge of marijuana possession and several misdemeanors, was free on bond and was not supposed to be drinking or driving. The arresting officer in that case was one of the four who confronted Bell the night he died.

Around 2 a.m., Bell slid into the driver's seat of his friend's Ford Explorer, since he was the less drunk of the two, the friend told investigators. By the time he pulled up in front of his mother's house, a squad car was behind him.

The first images recorded on the police car's camera show Bell getting out of the SUV and walking toward the squad with his hands in his pockets. An officer takes Bell by the arm and leads him off camera.

What happened next is the subject of debate.

In the police version, the first two officers couldn't control Bell and called for backup. They used their Tasers on Bell four times, to no avail. .

Sounds of the struggle woke Bell's sister and mother, who saw two officers fighting with Bell. The women heard one of the officers yell, "He's got my gun!"

The officers, who declined to be interviewed for this story, later told Jambois that Bell had grabbed the weapon, still holstered, and moved it from the officer's hip to the front of the officer's body. If he'd fired the gun, the bullet could have severed the officer's femoral artery, causing him to bleed to death in minutes, Jambois said.

Shantae Bell, 26, and Kim Bell didn't see that. They panicked when they heard the officer yell, "He's got my gun!"

"No, he doesn't have your gun," Shantae remembers screaming. "Please don't hurt him. Please don't kill him. He doesn't have your gun."

A different officer pressed his gun barrel to Bell's temple. His lieutenant yelled, "Shoot!"

The gun went off. Bell fell.

His mother fell, too.

"I'm crawling. I couldn't stand up," Kim Bell said. "I wanted to go over to him, but they wouldn't let me."

The family's notice of claim against the city a precursor to a civil lawsuit says the officers pulled over the vehicle and tried to arrest Bell without probable cause. The officers' use of Tasers and the pain they inflicted caused Bell to run from them, escalating the situation, the family says. When Michael Bell was shot, he was pinned against the hood of a car with his arms behind his back, according to their claim.

Tests from the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory reveal no evidence of Bell's DNA on the gun, according to a lab report obtained by the family's attorney, Patrick Dunphy.

Within days of the shooting, Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Wade ruled it justified. Within weeks, Jambois reached the same conclusion.

"There is no jury who would convict these officers," he said. "You do not have the right to fight with a cop. Nobody does."

When the Bell family questioned Jambois' decision, he sent a box of materials about the shooting to state Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager. She sent it back, saying she doesn't have the authority to second-guess him.

Campaigning against Jambois

In the view of Bell's family, that's a problem. The elder Michael Bell, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, said when a military plane crashes, there's an independent investigation.

"The hope is that they'll be able to identify a problem and identify a solution so it doesn't happen again," he said.

He thinks the criminal justice system should take the same approach with police shootings, with objective experts reviewing the facts, and he is pushing for a state law that would require it. Officers also need more training about when it's appropriate to use Tasers and when they should use lethal force, he said.

The Bell family said building public support for a new law and for retraining is the main reason for the publicity campaign, but there are others. The newspaper ads were a form of protest against the officers' awards. The leaflets started out as a plea to legislators, then evolved into campaign literature when Jambois ran for Circuit Court judge.

"I wouldn't want him to make a life-altering decision if I was in front of him," Shantae Bell wrote in the fliers, which encouraged voters to reject Jambois as judge.

Jambois lost the April election. He said he isn't sure if the leaflets were a factor, but he acknowledged that his political fortunes in Kenosha County have changed in recent months.

"I think I would have preferred to have won. I don't like losing things," he said. "Maybe if I wouldn't have had to make decisions about four officer-involved shootings . . . that election may have turned out differently."

Although Jambois hasn't had an opponent in a district attorney race in several years, he said he hasn't yet decided whether he'll run again in 2006. If he does, Kim and Shantae Bell plan to campaign against him.

Jambois says he doesn't blame them. "What they saw was incomprehensibly awful for them. To see a person they loved shot right in front of them," he said. "If it gives them some measure of peace . . . to go after me, then God bless them. I hope they find peace."

[WaTcHeR]

Wisconsin Law To Protect Police from Lawsuits

01/05/2006 - A new Wisconsin law requires local municipalities to pay for legal expenses under some circumstances for police, fire and emergency services personnel who have acted legally in the line of duty.

SB 132 was signed into law by Gov. Jim Doyle last week, after the Senate and Assembly approved it on voice votes.

"We need to protect our first line of defense from lawsuits that could devastate them financially," said Sen. Ted Kanavas, R-Brookfield, who sponsored the bill in the state Senate.

"If an officer acts in the line of duty and is innocent, we should pay those legal bills. Conversely, those officers that act outside of the scope of their employment and are found guilty should have to foot the bill themselves."

The law requires a city, village, town, county, school district or technical college district to reimburse reasonable attorney fees in connection with a charge or legal action brought against an officer in the officer's official capacity.

The bill allows reimbursement for legal bills only in specified cases during a criminal trial or inquest proceeding.

A municipality would not have to pay legal costs if: the officer is convicted of a crime, the officer's employment is terminated for cause, the officer resigns for reasons other than retirement before the expenses are incurred, the officer is demoted or reduced in rank or the officer is suspended without pay for 10 or more working days.

"The employees who protect our safety and well-being need to know that if they have acted properly in the line of duty that we will protect them legally from burdensome legal bills," said Rep. Brett Davis, R-Oregon, who sponsored the bill in the state Assembly.

"When officers are out in the field making split-second decisions, the last thing that they need to think about is whether or not their legal bills will be covered."