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.
If a police officer can’t tell the difference between a knife and a gun, they shouldn’t be a police officer.
It is worse than that. They can’t tell if a person is inside a car or outside a car lunging at them. They clearly lied to cover up their incompetence. This person should not be a cop.
No one should be (unless they want to violently uphold a white supremacist system while pretending they are “protecting” people).
Why would some “innocent” person be lifting a knife at all, let alone to a cop?
We going to pretend that knives aren’t deadly? Especially at close range?
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.
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.
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.
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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So “Im not innocent” = “I deserve to be killed by a cop” now? By that logic the US is gonna lose half its population in a very short time.
They are, but you’re not close range sitting in your car with a rolled-up window between you and the guy outside. Even if he just cracked the window and tried stabbing through the opening it’d take a couple seconds.
And here I thought we had silly things like rights, like being able to face our accuser in court instead of being shot in the streets!
Here’s an idea: people who love extrajudicial punishment should be given the same jury as the people who’s misfortune they gleefully celebrate: none.
Here’s another idea: Don’t pull a knife out on a cop. Not too complicated. Not particularly difficult to follow. In fact, for sane, innocent people, it only makes sense.
This is a fun game.
You really need to grow up, mate. You have the logic and reasoning skills of my 8 year old nephew.