The racist police officer who claims to have seen Fonny running from the scene of the crime after Mrs. Rogers was raped. This is untrue, but Officer Bell wants to take revenge on Fonny because of a previous encounter in which he found himself humiliated in front of a large group of bystanders. This incident took place when Fonny and Tish went to a grocery store and Fonny ended up having to defend her against a creepy white man who sexually harassed her. Seeing commotion, Officer Bell came over to address the situation, but instead of questioning the white man, he started speaking confrontationally to Fonny, eventually saying that he was going to take him to the police station. At this moment, though, the white grocer intervened and told Officer Bell that Tish and Fonny were telling the truth about what happened. Refusing to let Bell take Fonny away, the grocer disparaged him in front of a crowd of onlookers. Ever since then, Bell has wanted to get even with Fonny, so when he heard about Mrs. Rogers’s rape, he arrested him and put him in a lineup of men for her to identify. Since she’d already indicated that the rapist was black, Bell made sure that Fonny was the only black man in the lineup, all but guaranteeing that Mrs. Rogers would single him out. This kind of blatant racism is characteristic of Bell, as made clear by the fact that he killed a young black boy in Brooklyn several years ago and was never brought to justice.