2 versions of Fricke surface for jurors
A wannabe gangster or man defending himself?
Just what could Jordan Fricke see when he fired four shots from inside his apartment, one of which killed Milwaukee police officer Matthew Rittner?
District Attorney John Chisholm told jurors during opening statements in Fricke’s trial Tuesday that Fricke’s door had been opened by Rittner’s three strikes with a battering ram the morning of Feb. 6.
Only then, Chisholm said, did Fricke shoot. “We’re not going to have to guess what happened,” he said, because the team of tactical unit officers were all wearing body cameras, and jurors will see the disturbing video, including the muzzle flashes from Fricke’s gun, a shortened assault-style rifle “designed to kill.”
Fricke’s attorney, Michael Chernin, said his client had been awakened by loud noises, a boom, and his barking dog. He grabbed the gun from his bedside and went to the kitchen where he saw panels busting out of his door.
“He’s acting in self-defense,” Chernin said, “based on an unknown threat.”
Though prosecutors said police were loudly announcing themselves outside,
Chernin said it was reasonable for Fricke to question that — if he even heard the shouts — because “no one expects police to enter a home in such a violent fashion.”
Chernin said that while panels were broken out of the door, dowels and other pieces of wood obstructed a clear view to the hallway from where Fricke stood, and that as soon as he did recognize the intruders as police, he dropped his weapon and got on the ground to surrender.
“Don’t confuse his intent to protect himself with an intent to kill,” Chernin told jurors.
Chisholm said Fricke made “an intentional decision to fire a weapon,” that used very powerful and deadly 7.62 x 39 rounds.
He described Fricke as “a wannabe gangster” with gangster posters on his wall, who was selling drugs and was infatuated with guns, and even recorded his own little ditty on his phone about Milwaukee’s south side and protecting his “crib” with “choppers” kept by the door and windows. Chopper is a street term for an assault-style weapon.
But Chernin pointed out that Fricke’s drug sale that supported the search warrant was $20 worth of marijuana, and that he didn’t keep or sell large amounts of weed.
He also told jurors that Fricke, who has no prior criminal record, had a concealed carry permit and that all his guns were legal.
Nor, Chernin said, will jurors hear any evidence that Fricke sold guns to felons. The confidential informant who led police to Fricke did, Chernin said, but Fricke had nothing to do with that sale. He only bought guns to collect them and to make aesthetic modifications and resell for profit to other collectors.
Chernin said Rittner was only doing his job, but indirectly questioned why the police would choose to serve a “no knock” search warrant with a full tactical team against someone who had sold $20 of marijuana.
Chisholm told jurors earlier that legally purchased guns often show up used in crimes a short time later.
“Guns, illegal drugs and money — that’s the lethal combination that confronted” Rittner while serving the search warrant, and led Fricke to kill him, Chisholm said.
Lead officer testifies
After the opening statements, jurors visited the scene of the shooting, the upper unit at 2945 South 12th Street and then returned to court to hear from Lane Grady, the lead officer of the eight-person unit that went to execute the warrant. They also saw the deadly encounter on video from Grady’s bodycam, once in slow motion.
The team is seen running from the “jump-out vehicle” to the exterior door of the house. Two officers smash open the door with a battering ram and they immediately begin yelling, “Milwaukee police, search warrant.”
Grady quickly ascends stairs to Fricke’s apartment, tries the door, finds it locked and yells “opens in!” Then Rittner is seen hitting the door three times with a smaller ram, opening about a 16-inch by 16-inch hole.
Immediately after the third strike, Rittner turns away from the door and the shots are heard.
A frenzy of shouting and yelling follows as Grady communicates with Fricke, who he can see is already unarmed, with his hands up, through the hole. Fricke complies with Grady’s commands to crawl toward the door and unlock it. Fricke then opens the door and walks out with his hands up and is grabbed.
Grady testified that when he saw Rittner fall, he believed he had been shot. He said he had to provide cover for the rest of the team so they could remove Rittner, so he stepped in front of the door.
Assistant District Attorney Grant Huebner asked Grady why he didn’t just fire back into the apartment.
“He was no longer a threat,” Grady said. “I didn’t know who else might be in there.”
Grady said that in serving more than 2,500 search warrants over 15 years, Feb. 6 is the only time he’s been shot at.
On cross-examination, Chernin tried to turn Grady’s training and precaution. He had said he wouldn’t shoot without a target and a threat. Chernin suggested Fricke didn’t know the first loud bang was from a ram, and when it began to splinter the door, might have thought it was gunfire and didn’t fire until he saw someone coming through, and then stopped.
Fricke, 27, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, two counts of reckless endangerment of two other officers, and operating a drug house.
Rittner, 35, was a 17-year veteran of the department and previously served in the U.S. Marines, including two tours in Iraq.
Testimony opened with a state Division of Criminal Investigation agent describing some of the scene investigation, explaining photos and a diagram of Fricke’s apartment, and some of the guns recovered there, as well as a used shooting target of a human torso found on the back of a bedroom door.