Two police officers who were called in to testify against their own became "reluctant" witnesses who flatly denied they saw they saw three colleagues beat a biracial male stripper outside a party.

Milwaukee Police Officer Bradley Blum and former officer Joseph Stromei testified Friday they were both at the party held by former officer Andrew Spengler, who, along with co-defendants Daniel Masarik and Jon Bartlett, is charged with substantial battery for the bloody beating of Frank Jude in October 2004.

But Blum and Stromei both claimed they did not see anyone at the scene kick, punch or hit Jude, contrary to previous testimony from the victim and three friends who said they witnessed the alleged attack.

Both men said they knew a confrontation was in progress outside the house, as the host and a group of fellow off-duty police officers attempted to arrest Jude suspecting that he had stolen Spengler's badge from the house. But they both insisted they did not see any violence in the distance they kept from the melee.

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Outside the presence of the jury, Milwaukee County District Attorney Michael McCann begged the judge to reconsider a ruling forbidding the prosecutor from using the term "code of silence" in front of the panelists.

More specifically, McCann has asked to use of the term as it relates to the bond among officers to cover each other's backs, in this case, by refusing to come forward with truthful information to authorities on the alleged attack.

No charges were filed in the case for more than three months because of lack of cooperation from the officers, 13 of whom, including the defendants, were suspended or dismissed for their involvement in the incident, including their failure to report the incident.

"Are you familiar with the use of the term 'rat' in police work?" McCann asked Blum, in an effort to try to get his point before the jury after Judge David Hansher denied him the use of the loaded euphemism.

"Yes," answered Blum, who recently returned to the force after he appealed his dismissal on charges of gross neglect of duty and failure to preserve public peace.

Stromei, who resigned in the face of dismissal, also testified that he was the first person to call a police union representative after the incident.

After the phone call, he admitted that he returned to the scene a few hours later and held his finger up to lips in a gesture of silence to those who were still there, including Spengler and Bartlett.

ID problems

Reliable eyewitness identification has emerged as the central difficulty for prosecutors. Most of their witnesses, including the victim, have been unable to state unequivocally that the defendants punched and kicked the victim.

Even a friend of the victim who accompanied him to the ill-fated party admitted that he fled the scene before he could witness the attack.

Witness Lovell Harris demonstrates Friday the size of the knife allegedly used in the attack on him and a friend at a party.

Lovell Harris, a 33-year-old steel factory worker, testified that by the time a group of five or six people allegedly wrestled Jude to the ground and began kicking and punching him all over his body, he had already run off, after one of the men sliced his cheek with a knife.

Harris, who was dating Jude's sister at the time of the attack, told jurors that he accompanied the victim and two other girls to a party at defendant Spengler's home in the early morning hours of Oct. 24, 2004.

Harris is black, and Jude, biracial. Like others from the group who testified before him, Harris said they decided to leave after getting a weird feeling at the party, where most of the guests were white and there were several white off-duty police officers present.

But before they could leave, about 10 or so of the partygoers surrounded their truck and accused them of stealing Spengler's badge.

"They just kept shouting, 'Where's the f---ing badge, [racial slur]?'" Harris said, corroborating Jude's claims that the men hurled racial epithets and threatened to kill them, despite their insistences that they did not have the badge.

One of the women with them, Katie Brown, testified Thursday that she did not hear any racial slurs used during the incident.

In a courtroom packed with the defendants and their teams of lawyers and investigators, Harris identified Spengler and Bartlett as two of the men in the pack that surrounded the truck and forced them out of the vehicle.

Harris singled out Bartlett as the "bald-headed" man who passed off a knife to another "chunky" man, who then used the knife to slice his cheek.

Bartlett, who is also accused of using the knife to cut off Jude's pants and jacket, faces an extra nine years in prison for the use of a weapon, on top of charges of substantial battery and reckless endangerment.

The apparently nervous witness became irate as the questioning moved to his attempts to identify those involved the day of the incident.

Harris, who had to be reminded several times not to interrupt the lawyers' questions, insisted that he identified the defendants, including Masarik, in a photo array the day of the incident.

When confronted with police reports stating that he failed to identify the defendants that day, Harris accused state investigator Karen Dubis of harassing him during the interview.

"Would it surprise you to learn that there is no record of you identifying anyone in this case on Oct. 24?" Masarik's lawyer, Steven Kohn, asked the witness.

"With this case, wouldn't nothing surprise me at this point," the witness scoffed.

"She accused me of stealing the badge before she even started asking me about the pictures," Harris said before Judge Hansher cut him off.

Testimony resumes Monday.