Joique Bell was a rising football star at Wayne State, driving back and forth from the school's Detroit campus to his home in Benton Harbor, when his godfather, Maurice Burton, a former Michigan State Trooper, started cutting up his old police uniforms and giving Bell the emblems to keep in his car.
Bell, who played parts of six seasons with the Detroit Lions, always had a positive relationship with police in his hometown and law enforcement in general. His father worked for the local sheriff's department, his uncle was a state trooper and his brother-in-law works for the FBI.