I'd also like to know which law Mr. Bell was breaking at the time three men pointed loaded weapons at him.
Blood alcohol showed that he was legally impaired to drive a motor vehicle. This, however, is irrelevant, since the officers did not know or suspect this at the time, and this was not the basis for their approach to the vehicle.
This whole thing seems to come about because of suspicion of a firearm. But even that seems to have involved a consistent exercise of bad judgement.
One undercover detective tells another that he saw a man inside the club wearing a white sox baseball cap make a gesture towards his wasteband, while telling a dancer that he would take care of any problems that she might have.
This leads to the suspicion that there is a firearm inside the club. No gun is actually seen. No suspicious bulge is observed which might indicate a firearm. There is no direct or indirect statement heard that he has a firearm. At best, its a somewhat ambiguous gesture, and an inference from an ambiguous remark.
Maybe this guy had a gun, maybe he didn't. The club security watches for firearms so strictly that the undercover officers had to leave their firearms behind. So....
They search for the man in the white sox cap for fifteen minutes, and never find them. From this point, the man in the white hat vanishes entirely from the story, never to be heard from again.
But he's left his mark...
"getting hot on liverpool for real," one of the officers says on the phone. "I think there's a gun."
It appears that they were predisposed to seeing or acting on firearms, but based on what? A guy in a white hat.
A group of eight men, including Bell and Guzman, are arguing with the owner of a black SUV.
The owner of the SUV is seen to put his hand in his jacket pocket. This is seen as evidence of a firearm. Perhaps its a meaningless nervous gesture, perhaps its a bluff, he's outnumbered eight to one. Who knows. Again, there is no actual sight of a firearm. There is no bulge or visual description which suggests that there might be a concealed firearm. There is merely an ambiguous gesture believed to be suspicious.
If it was a bluff, it seems successful. Members of the group of eight felt that the man was armed. Perhaps he was, it was never followed up on. He may well have had a gun. But if he did, we'll never know.
At this point, attention turns to Guzman:
Another man in the group, identified as Guzman, is heart to say "Yo, get my gun, get my gun."
Now, I'm sure that this was part of the cross examination, but I would assume that the undercover officers are not standing right there in the group of eight. They would be some distance off (they clearly weren't in a position to intercept before Bell and Guzman entered their vehicle, which means they weren't close), they're listening to a group of people.
I think its clear that these were not optimum eavesdropping conditions. The persons involved in the conversation have had alcohol, there may be slurring of voices and overlapping of voices, and none of the persons are familiar to the officers so as to allow them to adjust for voice or speech.
The officers have heard something from someone in the group, and attributed it to Guzman. You're watching a group of eight guys talking, in the middle of the night from a short distance. No telling who is necessarily saying what.
There is no outside corroboration that Guzman said any such or similar thing. No gun was ever found.
So what's going on here?
The officers were clearly predisposed to look for someone with a gun. Their attention shifted from the Man in the White Hat, to the Man in the Black SUV, to Guzman. In short, they had no idea who had a gun, but they were sure that someone had a gun. Under the circumstances, this is major league bad judgement, and a predisposition to bad judgement.
So, the officers hear something, and because they're predisposed to look for a gun, it sounds to them like they hear someone claiming they have a gun, or going to get a gun. It may not be that at all, but they're predisposed, suggestible, and the conditions are poor enough that they're preconceptions are read into it.
So they focus on Guzman, who, five seconds ago, they'd had no interest in at all.
Basically, sloppy and shot through with bad judgement.