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Michael Bell, left, discusses his son's police-involved death with state Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, center.

(Samantha Marcus/NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

TRENTON — Ten years ago, a police officer in Wisconsin held a gun up to Michael Bell's 21-year-old son's head, leaving a muzzle stamp on his head, and fired. This, Bell said in a news conference Friday, followed what witnesses described as a "Rodney King-style beating."

The police department held a review board on his son’s death, and cleared itself of wrongdoing within 48 hours, said Bell, who eventually won a $1.75 million settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit.

For the next decade, Bell fought to change the system, succeeding earlier this year when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — a friend and potential presidential rival of Gov. Chris Christie — signed a law to reform the procedures for investigating police-involved fatalities.

Bell on Friday joined with Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer), who is pushing to change New Jersey's law by requiring that independent prosecutors be appointed to review all officer-involved deaths in the state.

The legislation is timely, Gusciora said, following last month's NJ Advance Media investigation into the 2008 death of Kenwin Garcia, 25, of Newark, after a roadside struggle with State Police troopers. That investigation revealed differing police accounts of what happened, questions about the official cause of death and how troopers treated Garcia, and conflicts of interest in the system that cleared two troopers of wrongdoing.

In addition, police policy and civil rights experts, as well as a former state attorney general, said New Jersey’s system often leaves the public in the dark about the facts of incidents when someone dies in police custody, what authorities examine in their investigations, their findings and what action, if any, they take.

“At the end of the day the victim’s family has a right to know whether the officer’s actions were valid. There should be some kind of, there’s never closure, but some kind of finality,” Gusciora said at his legislative office in Trenton.

Bell, a retired Air Force officer, said such reforms are needed in every state.

“The problem I had is this,” he said, “If a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy could be killed under a spotlight, and there’s five eyewitnesses, and his father is a retired lieutenant colonel who flew in three wars for his country, and I can’t get this done, and I can’t get a fair justice system on it, then how is the African-American family, the Hispanic family, the Asian family, how are they going to get this done?”

Under the bill (A3756), the probes would be conducted by prosecutors from outside the county where the death occurred.

Gusciora, a municipal prosecutor, said the legislation is rooted in the "common sense" that an agency not be allowed to investigate itself. The bill has the dual effects of legitimizing investigations and eliminating conflicts of interest, he said.



Gusciora said he intends to add language that would require a report be published when an investigation is complete, even if no charges are filed. Existing laws allow, but do not require, that a report be released.

Any costs associated with the reforms would be worth ensuring the investigations are valid, that officers are punished if wrongdoing is proven, and possibly preventing future incidents, he added.

There’s a built-in mistrust in any department’s ability to investigate itself, said Alexander Shalom, senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.

“I think [the legislation] is borne out of this common sense and well-supported understanding that the more removed a person is from a particular department, the more independent the department is,” Shalom said. “That’s true both of the reality of the investigation and the perception of the investigation. And they both matter.”

Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for Christie, declined to comment Friday. Christie has said previously he did not think anything about the system of investigating officer-involved deaths needed to change.

Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com . Follow him on Twitter @samanthamarcus. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.

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