What I did after police killed my son

After police in Kenosha, Wis., shot my 21-year-old son to death outside his house ten years ago - and then immediately cleared themselves of all wrongdoing - an African-American man approached me and said: "If they can shoot a white boy like a dog, imagine what we've been going through."

I could imagine it all too easily, just as the rest of the country has been seeing it all too clearly in the terrible images coming from Ferguson, Mo., in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown. On Friday, after a week of angry protests, the police in Ferguson finally identified the officer implicated in Brown's shooting, although the circumstances still remain unclear.

I have known the name of the policeman who killed my son, Michael, for ten years. And he is still working on the force in Kenosha.

Yes, there is good reason to think that many of these unjustifiable homicides by police across the country are racially motivated. But there is a lot more than that going on here. Our country is simply not paying enough attention to the terrible lack of accountability of police departments and the way it affects all of us - regardless of race or ethnicity. Because if a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy - that was my son, Michael - can be shot in the head under a street light with his hands cuffed behind his back, in front of five eyewitnesses (including his mother and sister), and his father was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew in three wars for his country - that's me - and I still couldn't get anything done about it, then Joe the plumber and Javier the roofer aren't going to be able to do anything about it either.

I got the phone call at 2 a.m. on Nov. 9, 2004

. It was my oldest daughter. She said you need to come to the hospital right away, Michael's been shot by the police. My first gut reaction was, "Michael doesn't do anything serious enough to get shot by a police officer." I thought he'd gotten shot in the leg or whatever. When I arrived, I saw the district attorney huddled with about five police officers. The last time I saw my son alive he was on a gurney, with his head wrapped in a big towel and blood coming out of it. I learned that an officer had put his gun up directly to Michael's right temple and misfired, then did it again, and shot him.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Michael Bell shake hands after the former passed a bill into law mandating that investigations of police officers be turned over to an outside party. | Family of Michael Bell

From the beginning I cautioned patience, though Michael's mother and sister were in an uproar. They had watched him get shot. But as an Air Force officer and pilot I knew the way safety investigations are conducted, and I was thinking that this was going to be conducted this way. Yet within 48 hours I got the message: The police had cleared themselves of all wrongdoing. In 48 hours! They hadn't even taken statements from several eyewitnesses. Crime lab reports showed that my son's DNA or fingerprints were not on any gun or holster, even though one of the police officers involved in Michael's shooting had claimed that Michael had grabbed his gun.

The officer who killed my son, Albert Gonzalez, is not only still on the force ten years later, he is also a licensed concealed-gun instructor across the state line in Illinois - and

was identified by the Chicago Tribune in an Aug. 7 investigative story

as one of "multiple instructors [who] are police officers with documented histories of making questionable decisions about when to use force."

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Michael Bell shake hands after the former passed a bill into law mandating that investigations of police officers be turned over to an outside party. | Family of Michael Bell

From the beginning I allowed the investigation to proceed and didn't know it was a sham until many of the facts were discovered. But before long I realized a cover-up was under way.

I hadn't understood at first how closely related the DA and the police were - during his election campaign for judge, the DA had been endorsed in writing by every police agency in the county. Now he was investigating them. It was a clear conflict of interest.

The police claimed that one officer screamed that Michael grabbed his gun after they stopped him, for reasons that remain unclear though he was slightly intoxicated, and then Gonzalez shot him, sticking the gun so close against his temple that he left a muzzle imprint. Michael wasn't even driving his own car. He'd been out with a designated driver, but the designated driver drank and was younger, and so my son made the decision to drive.

Michael Bell is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force.