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Updated April 5, 2006, 10:19 a.m. ET

Witness: Cops planned cover-up after beating unarmed man
Kirsten Antonissen
Witness Kirsten Antonissen testified that she saw a group of off-duty police officers kick a man in the head.

As a police car approached the scene where several off-duty police officers were allegedly beating an unarmed man, a witness told a 911 operator that she could hear members of the group plotting a cover-up, according to testimony Tuesday.

Jurors in the trial of three officers who were singled out in the incident heard the frantic, profanity-laced 911 call Tuesday that Kirsten Antonissen, a college student at the time of the incident, placed as she watched a group of 10 off-duty officers allegedly punch and kick a male stripper she had met earlier that evening.

Defendants Daniel Masarik, Jon Bartlett and Andrew Spengler, are facing substantial battery charges stemming from the alleged attack on 26-year-old Frank Jude. Masarik and Bartlett are also charged with reckless endangerment.

"They're beating the s--- out of him right now," jurors heard Antonissen shout into the phone. "We're being harassed by cops, and I want my mom here." (VIDEO)


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In the phone call, the anger in Antonissen's voice turned to shock as she related to the operator the conversations she heard as the squad car appeared in the distance.

"They just warned each other that the cops are coming, isn't that f---ing nice," she said. "They're trying to frame him for stealing someone's badge."

After the tape ended, Antonissen clarified her statements in the garbled and noisy phone call, which she placed from the street in front of Spengler's house at 2:51 a.m. on Oct. 24, 2004.

"[The officers] were saying that they were going to say he was resisting arrest when the cops came," Antonissen testified. "They were also saying they were going to say we were a traffic stop."

The panel of 10 women and five men has already heard that the altercation began when Antonissen and the victim, Frank Jude, were accused of stealing a badge during the party.

Antonissen testified that the group had no knowledge of the badge's whereabouts. Even so, the men pulled Jude from Antonissen's vehicle, took him to the ground, and began to kick him in the head and punch him all over the body.

"Were you moved to tears by what you saw?" Milwaukee County District Attorney Michael McCann asked the 24-year-old witness.

"Yes," Antonissen said. "I have never seen anything like that in my life."

Lawyers for Bartlett and Spengler insist that their clients were using reasonable force to gain control of Jude as he resisted arrest.

Four officers from the scene who were not criminally charged in the incident previously testified that they also felt Jude, a physically imposing man at 6-feet-tall and 220 pounds, was violently resisting arrest.

Witness Ryan Lemke, who was dismissed from the police force, testified Monday that he assisted Spengler and Bartlett in attempting to restrain Jude, going so far as to kick him in the thigh when the men were unable to handcuff him.

Lemke testified that he did not witness any other acts of physical violence, as did three other police witnesses who were either dismissed or suspended.

But just as her friend, Katie Brown, also testified, Antonissen said she saw Jude being kicked in the head at least 10 times in spite of his pleas for mercy.

"He was a bloody mess," she said.

Police witness

For the first time in the trial Tuesday, an off-duty police officer from the scene seemed to corroborate testimony from the civilian witnesses, including Antonissen.

Jodi Kamermayer resigned after the incident.

Jodi Kamermayer testified that she saw defendant Masarik and another officer who was not charged punch Jude in the body, taking him to the ground.

Kamermayer, who resigned from the force when faced with dismissal for failure to preserve public peace and gross neglect of duty, said she decided to leave the scene after someone punched Jude in the face, causing his nose to bleed.

"It was turning into a fight," she testified. "I decided I did not want to be in the middle of a fight so I got my things and left."

Although she conceded under cross-examination that she confused the names and identities of most of the suspects, some of whom she met for the first time at the party, the witness was unwavering in her account of the physical violence.

Robert Engle provided an alibi for Daniel Masarik.

Her identification of Masarik also struck a blow to his claim that he was nowhere near the scene of the alleged attack.

Earlier in the day, another guest at the party corroborated the alibi by testifying that he saw Masarik on the phone in a bedroom in the house while the confrontation was escalating outside.

Robert Engle testified that even after he left the room to check on the melee outside, Masarik was still on the phone when he returned.

Testimony resumes Wednesday. The trial is being streamed live on the Web at Court TV Extra.

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