A judge dismissed all charges Tuesday against a Philadelphia police officer who fatally shot a driver last month.
Mark Dial shot 27-year-old Eddie Irizarry through the rolled-up driver’s side window of Irizarry’s sedan during a traffic stop on Aug. 14.
Dial and his partner, Officer Michael Morris, say they had been pursuing Irizarry for driving erratically and turning the wrong way down a one-way street. Morris testified that Irizarry had a knife in his hand and had started to raise it as the officers approached.
During a hearing, Dial’s lawyers argued he acted in self-defense because he believed the knife Irizarry had was a gun. Brian McMonagle, one of his lawyers, said his client was justified in shooting as he was trying to take cover and had feared for his life during the incident.
“Every tragedy is not a crime,” McMonagle said.
Initial statements from the police department said Dial shot the driver outside the vehicle after he “lunged at” police with a knife, but the department later walked back these statements.
Still, McMonagle said the charges, which included manslaughter, official oppression and four other counts, never should have been filed given the evidence.
“I agree with you 100 percent,” Judge Wendy Pew responded before tossing all charges Tuesday, per the Associated Press.
I can tell you with certainty that a knife inside a car with the doors closed and windows rolled up is not immediately deadly or even dangerous to anyone standing outside of the car. Unless of course the doors opened and the knife was brought out of the car, THAT would be deadly to the officer. But that isn’t what happened. And unless I’ve missed something, no one here has said or implied that the man with the knife was “innocent”
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It sucks we have to live on the same planet as people like you
There wouldn’t be much of a planet if everyone was like you - defending or apologizing for thieves, rapists and murderers.
You are literally defending what appears to be a murderer.
:|
Maybe you missed that part. I mean it was the very first few words of the headline, but clearly you didn’t comprehend it.
Or maybe just maybe they know they’ve already filed for new charges by the DA and didn’t just take 1 article at face value you ignorant fucking twat.
https://themessenger.com/news/philadelphia-cop-mark-dial-cleared-recharged-eddie-irizarry-murder
Court date is for oct 25th.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM seems he’s not as clearly innocent as you want us to believe.
Innocent people pull out knifes on cops. Totally.
Again again again, no one is calling him innocent. Again again again, just because he isn’t innocent doesn’t mean he should have been shot. I mean how the fuck is this so hard to grasp?
Are you suggesting that because the charges were dropped, he’s not a murderer? Because that’s not how language works. Being legally proven to have done a crime is not the same as having done the crime. You can be convicted while innocent or have charges dropped when actually guilty. It’s perfectly valid to call someone a murder even if the legal system is a failure.
The man in question (who is dead) was neither accused nor convicted of being, as you said, a thief, a rapist, of a murderer. So which of those criteria do you think they are defending because in this instance (as per YOUR OWN WORDS), it’s none of them.
Normal, innocent people are quick to pull it out on a cop. Yeah. Of course. Absolutely. And that doesn’t even factor in his erratic driving and going down a wrong way. Nothing of value was lost that day.
“And that doesn’t even factor in his erratic driving and going the wrong way.” All of the crimes you mentioned here are basic traffic violations in Pennsylvania and would be punishable by a single ticket.
Not this time!
What an asshole.
Most people don’t bend over backwards when the government kills a guy for the crime of, having a weapon that couldn’t possibly harm the officer. Unless we’re going to be good with cops shooting everyone with a NRA sticker on their car we probably shouldn’t be good with it here.
If you pull out a deadly weapon on a cop, don’t expect to ever make it home. That’s reality. Trying to act like pulling out a knife is normal behavior and then defending this guy is rather ridiculous.
So if we’re pretending that the cop could be taken at his word and also pretending that while behind a barrier that the cop would be beyond a reasonable doubt threatened by that, that’s still the crime of brandishing a weapon, which isn’t punishable by death in any court. Cops manage to not kill people all the time, it’s not unreasonable to hold them accountable to the already low standards we hold cops to in the US.
Nothing of value was lost that day. Don’t pull knives out on cops. This isn’t a particularly difficult concept to understand.
It’s really worrisome that you keep repeating the rhetoric of “nothing of value was lost that day.” A human life was lost that day. A mother and father’s son was lost that day. So you just believe that because he committed a crime (which, by the way, his only official crimes were traffic violations. Having a knife in his hands in his own car is not a crime), his life doesn’t have value? So should every criminal in our justice system just be put to death? Are you actually a sociopath? Nvm, I know the answer.
Id like to specifically draw attention to “don’t pull a knife on a cop”
6 hour standoff, with swat in Atlanta - captured alive
4 hour standoff with a copkiller - captured alive
police break off car chase in SF, suspect gets arrested anyway
Houston PD leave a traffic stop, because a crowd was unruly and it was unsafe
These are MUCH worse than the current incident started as, and ended with the suspects apprehended alive, unlike the current incident. Use of force continuum dictate that if the other party uses a Deadly Force Assault you are permitted to use Lethal Force. However they ALSO carry that if you can use a lower level to successfully walk away without Violence (the adjective proper) being needed, you have had a successful UoF.
Shooting a man IN the car with a knife is not proper use of force. He was not capable of escalating to Deadly Force Assault on the continuum. Officers preparing to draw their service weapon and giving clear verbal commands can diffuse that. “Do not get out of the car” “drop the knife”. They could hold the door closed, or beging backing away to make distance so that they can draw and/or fire if he exited the vehicle against instructions. At this stage Brandishing, threatening behavior, or even terroristic threats are appropriate charges. If someone gets out of the vehicle without a clear verbal command, and lunges at persons with a knife, 2then him being dead now would be a fair use of force.
In the first 2 pages cited, several violent people got the opportunity to surrender, and various law enforcement entities gave them time to do so. Not cited is one that was ELEVEN hours long. This traffic stop started and ended in like what, 30 minutes?
In the last two, the police decided the situation was unsafe and rather than escalating Use of Force, they decided a lower level was appropriate. In sanfran, they followed him with a heli and apprehended him. In Houston they just…left. they decided the stop wasn’t safe. Those people SURELY threatened them and walked away just fine. But the stop for the man can be a mailed ticket, and did not need to escalate to shooting people.
Your replies make heavy, fast assumptions about how “nothing of value was lost”. However it broadly displays your lack of involvement in fields where use of force is used and the policies that surround it
There’s none of those in his situation. Nice strawman. This dude committed no crime. You’re a lunatic.
Then stop the fucken car and maybe, just maybe, don’t pull out a fucken knife on an officer. But yeah, let’s pretend this guy was some innocent person. The news media will show pictures of him in his sunday best when he was 10 and hadn’t become a total become a piece of shit yet. His grandma will be on the news crying about “my baby!”. Yawn. We’ve all seen this shit before and the excuses run thin.
“Stop the fucken car” - the car was stopped when the officer shot him (he was shot 7 seven seconds after the officer got out of his patrol car according to the official report).
“Don’t pull out a fucken knife on an officer.” - the man was still inside his car with the doors closed and windows rolled up and as per Pennsylvania law, it is legal to have a knife out and in the open in your vehicle. Assuming the man intended to use the knife against the officer, I beg you to give a scenario in which the man could stab his knife through the car door and injur the officer. If you say something like “well, he could have gotten out of his car and stabbed the cop hur dur dur.” Then just save your breath. We could argue all day about what could have happened. The fact is, it didn’t. The man didn’t get out of his car to attack the officer with the knife, and the officer wasn’t in danger. End of story.
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