In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 99-2003

United States of America,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

Garland Lightfoot, Jr.,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Western District of Wisconsin.

No. 98-CR-113-C-01--Barbara B. Crabb, Judge.

Argued February 8, 2000--Decided August 9, 2000

 Before Cudahy, Manion, and Diane P. Wood, Circuit

Judges.

 Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judge. Garland Lightfoot

was convicted by a jury of possession with intent

to distribute cocaine and cocaine base, in

violation of 21 U.S.C. sec. 841(a)(1). He

received a stiff sentence for his crime--315

months’ imprisonment--but his appeal concerns

three evidentiary rulings made by the district

court during the course of the trial. Some of the

evidence in question was indeed graphic, but we

conclude that the district court did not abuse

its discretion in any of the rulings he

challenges, and we therefore affirm.

I

 The crime itself requires no further

explanation. The way the police learned about it,

however, is important. On October 30, 1998,

Detective Dennis Gerfen of the Madison,

Wisconsin, Police Department received a 911 call.

The caller turned out to be Antoinette Eleby, and

Eleby wanted to tell Gerfen about her roommate’s

drug dealings. The roommate was, not

surprisingly, Lightfoot. Eleby told Gerfen that

Lightfoot had a large quantity of cocaine and a

gun with him inside their apartment. She also

told him that Lightfoot was asleep right then,

and that if Gerfen came over he could seize the
drugs and the gun.

 Gerfen, along with some other officer, promptly

went to the apartment and knocked on the door. A

female voice inside said "I didn’t call." After

a moment, Eleby opened the door and identified

herself to the officers. They saw, in addition to

her, two small children, a woman in the dining

room, and Lightfoot. Eleby confirmed that she had

placed the earlier 911 call, and she consented to

a search of the apartment.

 The search produced exactly the results Eleby

had predicted: the officers found 136 grams of

powder cocaine, 155 grams of crack cocaine, and

a .380 semi-automatic handgun and ammunition for

the gun. Lightfoot’s fingerprints were on the

bags containing the drugs, on various dishes used

to process the drugs, and on the gun.

 At the trial, Lightfoot attempted to defend

himself by alleging that he was set up by Eleby,

who was the real drug dealer. The prosecutors

countered his version in several ways: with the

officers’ testimony, with Eleby’s testimony, with

the fingerprint evidence, and with evidence that

Lightfoot had physically abused Eleby. The last

evidence is the focus of Lightfoot’s first

challenge to the district court’s rulings: given

the nature of the evidence of abuse, which we

describe briefly below, he claims that it failed

to meet the relevance standards of Fed. R. Evid.

404(b) and that it served only to suggest that he

was a bad man; in the alternative, he argues that

it was so prejudicial that the court should have

excluded it under Fed. R. Evid. 403. The second

evidentiary ruling Lightfoot attacks concerned

the court’s decision to preclude Lightfoot from

asking Eleby certain questions about her own drug

dealings, from asking a detective about names in

Eleby’s address book, and asking his own

witnesses about their prior drug dealings with

Eleby. The district court excluded all three

types of evidence as cumulative. Finally,

Lightfoot objects to the court’s decision to

permit Detective Gerfen to testify as an expert

that the amount of cocaine they retrieved was so

great that it had to be destined for resale.

II

 The district court denied Lightfoot’s motion in

limine to exclude evidence of his abusive

behavior toward Eleby. The jury was therefore

permitted to hear her testify that Lightfoot beat

her when she called the police; that he regularly

beat her (once a day, she estimated); that he

struck her not only with his fists but also

occasionally with objects like a hanger, a belt,

or a bat; that he threatened to kill her if she

called the police; and that when he suspected she
was trying to contact the police, he urinated all

over her, including in her mouth.

 We have no doubt that the jury was revolted by

this account, but that does not necessarily make

the evidence inadmissible. The government offered

two grounds for its admissibility: first, it

argued that this evidence was necessary for the

jury to have the full picture of what was going

on, and thus it was not 404(b) evidence at all,

see United States v. Gibson, 170 F.3d 673, 678-79

(7th Cir. 1999), and second, it argued that this

evidence was relevant because it tended to refute

Lightfoot’s argument that Eleby was the real drug

dealer and he was just an innocent pawn at best.

We find the latter ground persuasive. If the jury

believed Eleby’s account of the way Lightfoot

behaved toward her (as it ultimately did), this

would have been strong circumstantial evidence

that Lightfoot was the one in control, not Eleby.

 Even relevant evidence may be excluded under

Rule 403 if the prejudicial effect of the

evidence outweighs the benefit the jury would

obtain from considering it. But balancing under

Rule 403 is the quintessential job for the trial

judge, who is in a far better position to weigh

the advantages and disadvantages of admitting

particular evidence. Here, despite the obviously

prejudicial effect of Eleby’s testimony, we

cannot find that Judge Crabb abused her

discretion. Indeed, it was important for the jury

to have some way of assessing Lightfoot’s

defense, and this evidence helped it to do so.

 We similarly find no merit in Lightfoot’s

complaints about the various limits the district

court placed on his cross-examination of Eleby.

Lightfoot wanted to explore her drug dealing

boyfriend by boyfriend, location by location, and

the district court properly found that this was

not necessary. Lightfoot was able to bring out

the key point, which was that Eleby had dealt

drugs before. The district court has broad

discretion to impose reasonable limits on both

scope and extent of cross-examination, see United

States v. Span, 170 F.3d 798, 802-03 (7th Cir.

1999), and it did not exceed them in this

instance. We reject Lightfoot’s challenge to the

limits the court placed on his questioning of his

own witnesses (whom he wanted to ask about prior

drug purchases from Eleby, or if they knew Eleby)

for the same reason.

 Last, Lightfoot claims that the court should

not have permitted Detective Gerfen (who was also

a fact witness) to testify in an expert capacity

about the quantity of drugs the officers

recovered and the fact that this was a commercial
quantity, not a personal use amount. Gerfen had

nearly 25 years’ general experience as a police

officer, 8 years’ experience investigating

narcotics, and he had received training from the

Wisconsin Division of Narcotics Enforcement. As

it is clear that there is nothing wrong with

having a police officer testify both as a fact

witness and an expert witness, see United States

v. Penny, 60 F.3d 1257, 1265 (7th Cir. 1995),

Lightfoot is reduced to claiming that Gerfen’s

testimony should have been excluded because he

admitted that he was unfamiliar with the odor of

crack cocaine during the cooking process. That

admission, however, has no bearing on Gerfen’s

general familiarity with the cocaine business. He

was amply qualified to testify as an expert, and

Lightfoot was free to impeach him with details

like the odor evidence. It was up to the jury to

assess the weight of his testimony.

III

 We Affirm the judgment of the district court.