Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, “restorative justice” District Attorney, Larry Krasner, and his army of inept minions, in their eagerness to prosecute city police officers, nevertheless failed in court on Tuesday:

A Philadelphia judge on Tuesday dismissed all charges against former city Police Officer Mark Dial, ruling that prosecutors had not presented enough evidence to show that his fatal shooting of Eddie Irizarry while on-duty last month was a crime.

The result? The Usual Suspects decided that a riot was in order!

At least 20 arrested as groups break into stores, vandalize businesses across Philadelphia, police say

The looting stretched from Center City to North Philadelphia, police said.

by Ellie Rushing and Robert Moran | Tuesday, September 26, 2023 | 9:12 PM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, September 27, 2023 | 7:15 AM EDT

Large groups of young people broke into numerous stores across Philadelphia Tuesday night, stealing merchandise and vandalizing property, Acting Police Commissioner John Stanford said.

Mr Stanford is the acting Commissioner because his predecessor, the completely failed Danielle Outlaw recently resigned.

By midnight, police had arrested upward of 20 people, many of whom were juveniles, Stanford said, and at least two guns were recovered. The unrest stretched across the city, including Center City, the Northeast, and West Philadelphia, with business corridors along Aramingo Avenue and Walnut Street targeted through the night.

Initial reports of break-ins near Rittenhouse Square began just after 8 p.m., shortly after protesters had dispersed from a peaceful gathering at City Hall, where marchers called for justice for Eddie Irizarry, who was shot and killed by a Philadelphia Police officer last month. Earlier Tuesday, a judge dismissed all charges against the officer who killed him, setting off a wave of outrage in the community.

Stanford was quick to make clear that Irizarry’s supporters had nothing to do with Tuesday night’s unrest. He called the young people who looted “criminal opportunists” who were not affiliated with the earlier gathering.

As Mr Stanford stated, this wasn’t about the dismissal of charges, but about support for criminals, and against law enforcement, in general. Prison abolitionist Robert Saleem Holbrook tweeted that Judge Wendy Pew — and, of course, he misspelled her name — would be targeted at the ballot box in three years, because while he hates that criminals have been imprisoned, he sure wants Officer Dial locked up.

Another prison abolitionist, state Representative Rick Krajewski, was also highly upset that Mr Dial might not go to jail.

The Inquirer’s long-time columnist, Helen Uniñas, waxed wroth that the charges were dismissed, calling it a “welcome and rare reminder that police are not above the law when Officer Mark Dial’s bail was revoked” last week, to jail him before trial, and yesterday was pissed because “prosecutors apparently did not present evidence that (Officer Dial) had committed a crime.” Shouldn’t her ire be reserved for the District Attorney and his minions, who failed to “present evidence that he had committed a crime”? Does Miss Ubiñas believe that all criminals should be held behind before bars before they are tried and convicted? How else can one interpret that revocation of bail was a “welcome and rare reminder that police are not above the law”?

Some wag on Twitter, whose name I cannot recall, mused that Mr Krasner sought the revocation of bail for Mr Dial to get him at least some time behind bars because he knew that, in the end, he wasn’t going to win a conviction.

Mr Krasner quickly refiled the charges, including “Murder in General,” under PA Title 18 §2502, which lists three classifications for murder in the Keystone State.

• 18 §2502(a) Murder of the first degree. — A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the first degree when it is committed by an intentional killing. Under section (d), “Intentional killing” is defined as “Killing by means of poison, or by lying in wait, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing.” In the District Attorney’s office claiming that Officer Dial committed first degree murder — which was the cause of the revocation of bail — Mr Krasner and his stooges had to have been claiming that the Officer had decided beforehand, in a premeditated manner, that he was going to kill Mr Irizarry.
• 18 §2502(b) Murder of the second degree. — A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the second degree when it is committed while defendant was engaged as a principal or an accomplice in the perpetration of a felony. Under section (d), “Perpetration of a felony” is defined as “The act of the defendant in engaging in or being an accomplice in the commission of, or an attempt to commit, or flight after committing, or attempting to commit robbery, rape, or deviate sexual intercourse by force or threat of force, arson, burglary or kidnapping.” Such is clearly not the case, as this was a traffic stop.
• 18 §2502(c) Murder of the third degree. — All other kinds of murder shall be murder of the third degree. Murder of the third degree is a felony of the first degree. Under Title 18 §106(b)(2), “A crime is a felony of the first degree if it is so designated in this title or if a person convicted thereof may be sentenced to a term of imprisonment, the maximum of which is more than ten years.”

Bail is usually denied when the prosecution is seeking a life sentence, but while third degree murder could yield a life sentence, it is pretty unusual.

An at least reasonable case could be made for charging PA Title 18 §2503 Voluntary Manslaughter, a first degree felony, but there’s a high bar for the prosecution to surmount.

• 18 §2503(b) Unreasonable belief killing justifiable. — A person who intentionally or knowingly kills an individual commits voluntary manslaughter if at the time of the killing he believes the circumstances to be such that, if they existed, would justify the killing under Chapter 5 of this title (relating to general principles of justification), but his belief is unreasonable.

Mr Krasner would have to prove that Officer Dial had an “unreasonable” belief that he was justified in shooting Mr Irizarry. Mr Irizarry had been driving erratically, and when he finally pulled over, he kept the car window up, was non-compliant, and raised his hand while holding a knife.

A copy of the refiled charges can be seen here.

Commissioner Stanford was correct when he called the rioters “criminal opportunists.” What does looting a Lululemon or an Apple cell phone store or a Foot Locker — and it’s always a Foot Locker! — have to do with the charges being dismissed against Officer Dial?

The answer is: nothing! Nothing at all, it’s just the Usual Suspects, probably the very same people who rioted over the unfortunate death while resisting arrest of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl addled previously convicted felon George Floyd, which had nothing to do with Philly, going bonkers and stealing what they could, just because they could.

William Teach noted that Target is closing nine stores in response to retail theft, all in major cities run by not just Democrats, but the far-left Democrats, cities which have over-tolerated crime. The George Soros-sponsored prosecutors believe that they are somehow helping the poor and disadvantaged, by pushing ‘decarceration,’ by not punishing crime, but what they have done is to excuse crime, and enable further crime.

So, the criminals get a break, right? The evil capitalists are covered by insurance, right?

But what about the neighborhood? What happens when grocery stores and general merchandise retailers, and the like simply give up, close their doors, and move out? Well, the employees lose their jobs, and if, in this story, Target has offered the employees jobs in other stores, it’s unlikely that all of them will be able to take advantage of the offer due to distance, travel, and other issues. The customers who chose Target, or whatever stores closed, have to choose other retailers, perhaps stores which are higher prices or further away.

Some crime-ridden neighborhoods, virtually all in large cities run by Democrats, have what some have called “food deserts,” areas in which all of the major grocery stores have moved out, and all that are left are the corner bodegas, which offer a much smaller selection, often more heavily geared to worse food, a lot of it snack food, at higher prices.

In the end, the Usual Suspects are hurting not only Teh Man, but their entire neighborhood!

The Inquirer tweeted about protests by Mr Irizarry’s family, but, to me, it was the background of the video which was more important. We’ve shown this kind of thing before, a neighborhood which is so crime-ridden that the owners of the rowhomes had to put themselves in jail, had to install bars and locked gates on the porches of their houses to keep out the criminals!

How is that a way to live? How can anyone look at that rowhome, one reasonably nicely maintained, at least to judge by what we can see of the condition of the paint, and think that yeah, I want to live in that house?

The rioters, the “criminal opportunists,” have turned large swaths of the City of Brotherly Love into just another [insert slang term for feces here]hole, in which the tolerance for crime, the election of police-hating and criminal-enabling leftists as chief prosecutors has hurt everybody.

Robert E Howard famously wrote, “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” As you look at the murder rates in Chicago and Killadelphia and Baltimore and St Louis, you are seeing cities in which civilization is breaking down, in which the ‘impolite’ are getting their skulls split by the offended.

I take no position on whether Officer Dial committed a crime, but I have to wonder: in a city in which civilization is breaking down,  and the District Attorney favors criminals over cops, would it be much of a surprise that Officer Dial, that any Philadelphia Police Officer, might be quicker to see his life in danger at the slightest questionable movement by a criminal suspect?