Philadelphia's police watchdog shields documents around police-involved shooting

Flashback: Dial shot Eddie Irizarry on Aug. 14 in a case that was the subject of conflicting police accounts.

• Police initially said that Irizarry was outside his vehicle with a knife and had lunged at police officers before being shot. The police changed its story days later after reviewing bodycam footage.
• Dial was later fired by the police department and charged with murder after footage publicly released by prosecutors showed him shooting Irizarry seconds after Dial stepped out of his patrol vehicle.
• Irizarry, who remained inside his own vehicle, had a small pocket knife by his side. But prosecutors said he wasn't posing a threat when Dial opened fire.
• The murder case was reinstated in October after being tossed during a preliminary hearing in September.

Catch up quick: Axios filed a Right to Know request to obtain the letter sent by CPOC interim executive director Anthony Erace to police and prosecutors explaining why the agency felt Dial should be fired.

• Axios learned about the letter during an Aug. 23 CPOC meeting.
• On Sept 12, the city denied Axios' public records request. We appealed the denial to Pennsylvania's Office of Open Records (OOR), which issued a decision earlier this month.
• CPOC argued the letter was related to a "noncriminal investigation" and couldn't be made public because it contained details gathered during its investigation, plus "analysis and recommendations" about whether Dial followed police policies.

The intrigue: That rationale became a key point of contention, with Axios arguing that CPOC hadn't conducted "the sort of 'systematic or searching inquiry' that would denote an investigation."

Zoom in: CPOC admitted it was limited to "monitoring" the police investigation of the shooting.

• CPOC's director of investigations, Jamison Rogers, told Axios during the Aug. 23 meeting that he responded to the shooting after it happened and watched bodycam footage within two hours of the encounter.
• Rogers said he did not bring the discrepancy about Irizarry remaining in his vehicle to the police's attention "at that time."
• Axios sought the letter to "provide the public with a greater understanding" of why CPOC called for Dial's termination.

• We argued that just because CPOC "has various investigative powers does not mean every activity it engages in is exempt from public disclosure. Doing so would render meaningless the CPOC's mission of increasing the transparency and accountability of the police."

The intrigue: At a meeting in October, Erace seemingly contradicted the agency's position that it investigated the police shooting.

• He admitted under questioning from a commissioner that CPOC hadn't performed any investigations to date.

What happened: In a Dec. 6 decision, OOR appeals officer Tope Quadri relied on representations from CPOC's lawyer, Catherine Twigg, who argued that releasing the letter would "publicly reveal the institution, progress, and/or results" of its investigation.

What they're saying: Gunita Singh, an attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the appeals officer accepted CPOC's claims about its investigation without a "healthy probing" of whether the letter was "truly exempt."

• "The great power we grant police officers must be matched with equally powerful transparency," she said.

The bottom line: Commissioner Rosaura Thomas told Axios that she wanted the letter made public and didn't understand why CPOC fought to keep the letter a secret.

• "We have to be transparent to our communities, to our media," she said.
• CPOC declined to comment when asked whether it would release a version of the letter now that prosecutors publicized much of their investigative findings in the case.