Philadelphia Police Officer Who Fatally Shot Man Suspended After Video Contradicts Initial Account

They are com­mit­ting these killings ful­ly aware that cam­eras are every­where, often even on their chests. They are so supreme­ly con­fi­dent that they will be pro­tect­ed because of the illic­it doc­trine of ‘qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty’ imposed on the coun­try by the ille­git­i­mate Supreme Court that they are not a bit wor­ried about con­se­quences, even for murder.
The thing that should infu­ri­ate more cit­i­zens into action is not that the police depart­ments are pre­pared to put out total­ly false nar­ra­tives when their mem­bers mur­der inno­cent cit­i­zens but that pub­lic offi­cials like Mayor Jim Kenney refuse to call out the bla­tant act of mur­der they see in the video with their own eyes. No pub­lic offi­cial should be allowed to hide behind the false veil of ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions to avoid con­demn­ing these bla­tant acts against inno­cent cit­i­zens. Nothing in a record­ing changes because some­one speaks out against its content.
No one should pay any atten­tion to the police unions any­more; they are incon­se­quen­tial crim­i­nal-sup­port­ing entities.
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Officials announced Wednesday that a Philadelphia police offi­cer who fatal­ly shot a 27-year-old man last week will be fired for admin­is­tra­tive vio­la­tions. The announce­ment comes after police walked back their ini­tial nar­ra­tive about the fatal encounter, and the attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly released a video con­tra­dict­ing that account. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said Wednesday she has decid­ed to sus­pend Officer Mark Dial for 30 days with the intent to dis­miss him. Dial is not being ter­mi­nat­ed for fatal­ly shoot­ing Eddie Irizarry on Aug. 14, but for vio­lat­ing depart­ment pol­i­cy relat­ed to the refusal to obey orders from a supe­ri­or offi­cer and fail­ure to coöper­ate in any depart­men­tal inves­ti­ga­tion, Outlaw said. Police ini­tial­ly said last Monday that Irizarry got out of his car after a brief car chase with a knife and lunged at offi­cers pri­or to the fatal shoot­ing. Two days lat­er, Outlaw told reporters that body cam­era footage “made it very clear what we ini­tial­ly report­ed was not actu­al­ly what hap­pened.” On Tuesday, Irizarry fam­i­ly attor­ney Shaka Johnson released sur­veil­lance video of the inci­dent, which showed an offi­cer shoot­ing into the dri­ver’s side of Irizarry’s vehi­cle sec­onds after get­ting out of his police vehi­cle. Johnson, who also rep­re­sent­ed the fam­i­ly of Philadelphia police shoot­ing vic­tim Walter Wallace Jr., said he and the Irizarry fam­i­ly believe “there was an inten­tion­al mis­lead­ing of the public.”

“What about what you just saw could ever be con­fused as he got out of the car and lunged at police offi­cers?” Johnson asked at a news con­fer­ence Tuesday. “Not a sin­gle thing. That was an out-and-out, flat-out lie.” When asked about Johnson’s com­ments, Outlaw said it’s “under­stand­able” that there’s a lot of emo­tion involved in the sit­u­a­tion, but she defend­ed the depart­ment. “Once it was brought to our atten­tion that that was mis­in­for­ma­tion that was put out there, we cor­rect­ed it and we did­n’t have to do that … We dis­cov­ered it our­selves and did what we could in a time­ly man­ner to make sure that that nar­ra­tive was quick­ly addressed,” she said.

What does the video show?

Johnson said he and the fam­i­ly were able to obtain sur­veil­lance video of the inci­dent, which shows an offi­cer shoot­ing into the dri­ver’s side of Irizarry’s vehi­cle sec­onds after get­ting out of his police vehi­cle. Surveillance video released by Johnson shows Irizarry dri­ving over orange traf­fic cones as he pulls into a park­ing spot. Seconds lat­er a police vehi­cle pulls up next to his car. Two offi­cers get out, draw their weapons and approach both sides of Irizarry’s car. The offi­cers tell Irizarry to show them his hands as Irizarry appears to roll his win­dow up. Then the offi­cer on the dri­ver’s side, lat­er iden­ti­fied as Mark Dial, appears to fire his gun into the car mul­ti­ple times. The offi­cer runs back toward the patrol car and reports that shots have been fired. The offi­cers then attempt to open the doors of Irizarry’s vehicle.
The thing that should infu­ri­ate most cit­i­zens is not just that police depart­ments put out total­ly false infor­ma­tion when they murder 

What did the police say about the shooting?

Outlaw said last week two offi­cers spot­ted a Toyota Corolla “dri­ving errat­i­cal­ly” and fol­lowed the vehi­cle until it drove the wrong way down a one-way street and parked. She said the offi­cer who approached on the pas­sen­ger side attempt­ed to open the door and alert­ed the offi­cer on the dri­ver’s side that the man inside had a weapon. Outlaw said the man “turned towards” the offi­cer on the dri­ver’s side who then fired his weapon mul­ti­ple times. The dri­ver was trans­port­ed to a local hos­pi­tal and pro­nounced dead, she said. Two knives were found inside the vehi­cle, a kitchen-style knife and a ser­rat­ed fold­ing knife, accord­ing to Peter Marrero, a detec­tive who is inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing. Officials said the ini­tial nar­ra­tive that was report­ed was called into police radio and the body cam­era footage lat­er con­tra­dict­ed that account. Outlaw said Wednesday the source of the ini­tial infor­ma­tion is still under inves­ti­ga­tion and she’s “look­ing for­ward to find­ing out what the answer is.” Outlaw pre­vi­ous­ly said police gave the pub­lic “the best infor­ma­tion that we had avail­able,” at the time. “I under­stand and want to acknowl­edge the hurt and con­fu­sion that fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers can expe­ri­ence when details of inves­ti­ga­tions change, and espe­cial­ly when they change in a very pub­lic way,” Outlaw said last week.

‘We need answers,’ family member says

Irizarry’s fam­i­ly told the Philadelphia Inquirer he came to the city from Puerto Rico sev­en years ago and he did not speak or under­stand English. Outlaw told reporters last week she did not know if there was a lan­guage bar­ri­er between the offi­cers and the dri­ver. Johnson said Irizarry had no crim­i­nal record and strug­gled with schiz­o­phre­nia. He said Irizarry, a mechan­ic, car­ried a pock­et knife that he used for work. ”We need answers. Why?” Zoraida Garcia, Irizarry’s aunt, told the news­pa­per. “Why is this offi­cer still at home? He mur­dered my nephew.”

When will body camera footage be released?

Body cam­era footage has not yet been released pub­licly, and Johnson told reporters Tuesday the fam­i­ly has not been able to view it. The author­i­ty to release the footage to the fam­i­ly or the pub­lic lies with the Office of District Attorney Larry Krasner, accord­ing to Ava Schwemler, direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the city’s law depart­ment. Jane Roh, a spokesper­son for the dis­trict attor­ney’s office, told USA TODAY the office has been in con­tact repeat­ed­ly with the Irizarry fam­i­ly’s legal coun­sel and “intends to keep its sworn oblig­a­tion to seek jus­tice for all those involved in the fatal shoot­ing of Mr. Irizarry, as well as for all those Philadelphians who are not direct­ly involved but who care deeply about fair­ness, jus­tice, and inde­pen­dence.” “We will have more to say about this sit­u­a­tion when we can do so con­sis­tent with pre­serv­ing the qual­i­ty and integri­ty of our inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion,” she said in a statement.

Calls for officer to be fired, charged investigation ongoing

Outlaw said the inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing itself and the inac­cu­ra­cy of the ini­tial account is ongo­ing. She said Dial may face addi­tion­al dis­ci­pli­nary charges if he vio­lat­ed addi­tion­al depart­ment poli­cies. Outlaw again acknowl­edged the dif­fi­cul­ty of regain­ing the pub­lic’s trust. She pre­vi­ous­ly said her depart­ment is con­duct­ing a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and work­ing in par­al­lel with the dis­trict attor­ney’s office. “Once we get a clear­er pic­ture. I will be able to say with cer­tain­ty and make a deter­mi­na­tion whether or not they oper­at­ed with­in pol­i­cy of the depart­ment,” Outlaw said last week. Irizarry’s fam­i­ly and friends gath­ered on the street where he was killed Tuesday again demand­ing that Dial be charged and they be allowed to view the body cam­era footage, the Inquirer report­ed. The city’s Citizens Police Oversight Commission, an inde­pen­dent agency, said its mem­bers have been mon­i­tor­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into the shoot­ing and rec­om­mend­ed the depart­ment ter­mi­nate Dial. Anthony Erace, the com­mis­sion’s inter­im exec­u­tive direc­tor, told USA TODAY this marked the first time the com­mis­sion has rec­om­mend­ed the fir­ing of an offi­cer in its near­ly year­long exis­tence. He said the rec­om­men­da­tion was made before he viewed the video released by Johnson and agreed it was a “fair­ly big step.” Erace said while the com­mis­sion will be inves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances that led to the police depart­ment ini­tial­ly releas­ing incor­rect infor­ma­tion, he believes the depart­ment tried to be trans­par­ent quickly.

“There’s a dif­fer­ence between wrong and rot­ten, right?” he said. “If you’re ask­ing me if I think it was a con­spir­a­cy to con­ceal infor­ma­tion from the pub­lic, I don’t think that it was.” The over­sight com­mis­sion is host­ing a vir­tu­al pub­lic meet­ing Wednesday night for “con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers.” At the city news con­fer­ence Wednesday, Mayor Jim Kenney acknowl­edged that Philadelphia has gone through “rocky times” of unrest after the killings of Wallace and George Floyd in Minneapolis, but said the city is able to recov­er and move for­ward. “This is cer­tain­ly a tragedy and my heart breaks for the fam­i­ly and for the loss of Mr. Irizarry,” he said. “Again, this is an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and I’m not going to have any com­ment or what I think or feel about what I’ve seen or know until this inves­ti­ga­tion is concluded.”