Last month, Eddie Irizarry was driving his Toyota Corolla through the Kensington neighborhood in northern Philadelphia. Two police officers claimed that Irizarry was driving erratically so they followed the car, which turned the wrong way down a one-way street. Irizarry pulled into a parking spot midway down the block.
Officer Mark Dial leapt out of the police cruiser with his gun drawn and within seconds was yelling expletive-laden instructions at Irizarry, who’d only committed the crime of bad driving. This can happen if someone is drunk or high, yes, but also if they’ve suffered a stroke or some other medical issue. Nonetheless, Dial warned that he “will shoot” Irizarry, though that “warning” was more a description of what was happening. Dial quickly fired multiple shots through the driver’s seat window and directly into Irizarry. According to The New York Times, Dial “called in ‘shots fired, shots fired’ to his radio, and Mr. Irizarry can be seen covered in blood, his head bobbing.”
What’s actually news here is that this has been treated like the murder it is. Mark Dial was charged Friday with voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, simple assault, possession of an instrument of crime, reckless endangerment of another person and official oppression in Irizarry’s shooting death.
Irizarry wasn’t entirely dead after Dial unloaded his weapon into him. Dial ordered Irizarry to “keep those hands up right where I can see them” as Irizarry slumped over in his seat.
Dial’s partner, whose identity has not been released, at least seemed to realize that Irizarry wasn’t just refusing to follow instructions but was possibly mortally injured. He said, “Mark, we’re going to have to get him out.”
Dial dragged the dying man out of his car and shoved him into the officers’ police cruiser.
Neighbors can be seen watching from their front steps. Mr. Dial instructs the other officer to stay with Mr. Irizarry’s car “so no one grabs anything.”
When Mr. Dial arrives at a hospital, he appears to take Mr. Irizarry by the belt and pulls him out of the car. Hospital personnel can be heard saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” what appeared to be in response to the way he pulled Mr. Irizarry, as the personnel load him onto a gurney and one member of the attending staff begins CPR.
Eddie Irizarry was pronounced dead at the hospital later that day. That’s probably when the usual coverup began. Dial claimed that he shot Irizarry in self-defense after Irizarry lunged at him with a knife. Even now, Dial’s lawyer, Brian McMonagle, insists that Dial was defending himself and generously rushed the man he’d fatally shot to the hospital “in an effort to save his life.”
The problem for Dial is that the officers’ body camera footage debunks their convenient fiction. Police officials admitted two days after Irizarry was killed that he was still in the car when Dial shot him. There was no lunging. As Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia district attorney, said at a Friday news conference, “The videos speak for themselves.”
“Firing six consecutive shots at close range at a vital part of the body of a person, under the law, is strongly supportive, together with other evidence, of all of these charges,” Krasner said.
Investigators did find two knives in Irizarry’s car — a kitchen knife and a serrated folding knife. Irizarry’s sister told the Times that he always carried a pocketknife with him but “always as a tool, not as a weapon.”
Guns are obviously more lethal weapons than knives and, in many parts of the US, just as easily accessible. But I’m sure that Dill’s defense will make a big deal about the knives. We can also expect the usual post-mortem smearing of the victim. The Times reports that Irizarry’s family has described him “as a quiet man who liked to work on motorcycles and was being treated for serious mental illness, including schizophrenia. He had moved to Philadelphia about seven years ago from Puerto Rico and had difficulty understanding English.”
McMonagle called the charges against his client “appalling,” and while that is a fair description of Dill’s actions on August 14, he’s actually directing his ire at DA Krasner, the “progressive” prosecutor who’s dared to prosecute a crime committed by a cop.
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I'm sure we will all roast like chicken before this happens, but I'll throw it out there again. No policemen need a gun to hand out an illegal left turn ticket. In fact, they don't even have to pull that person over. They can send them a ticket in the mail along with the video footage of them breaking the traffic law. If they are pursuing a vehicle that is stolen or a car driven by somebody wanted by the police, then by all means carry a taser or a gun. This isn't hard. The police have always used mild infractions as an excuse to abuse citizens. Don't give them the opportunity anymore.
"Video appears to contradict original police version of events."
Every goddamn time.