City Council may declare the ruling in the Eddie Irizarry case ‘erroneous’ | Council roundup
If Council approves Quetcy Lozada’s resolution next week, it would represent a stark and unusual criticism of one branch of city government by another.
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City Council resolutions are usually noncontroversial, symbolic statements of lawmakers’ opinions that pass unanimously. But a new one from Councilmember Quetcy Lozada could be an exception.
Lozada on Thursday introduced a resolution to recognize “the immense pain caused to the family of Eddie Irizarry, the residents of the 7th District, our Latino community, and the city of Philadelphia by Municipal Court Judge Wendy L. Pew’s erroneous decision to dismiss all charges against Mark Dial.”
She represents the Kensington-based 7th District, where Dial, who was a Philly police officer at the time, shot and killed Eddie Irizarry during a traffic stop last month. Prosecutors filed charges against Dial including murder, but Pew this week threw out the case. District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office is appealing the decision.
It’s not uncommon for individual politicians to sound off on decisions important to their constituents. But if Council as a whole approves Lozada’s resolution calling Pew’s decision “erroneous” at next week’s meeting, it would represent a stark and unusual criticism of one branch of city government by another.
Lozada acknowledged she was asking her colleagues to make a hard call.
”It’s a tough decision to make, right? It’s a tough position to have. But it’s necessary,” she said after Council adjourned Thursday. “To us, as a community who doesn’t understand the judicial process and just are looking at what everyone else saw, that was a wrong decision.”
What was the week’s highlight?
Safe injection site: As expected, Council voted 14-1 Thursday to override Mayor Jim Kenney’s veto of a bill that will prohibit supervised drug consumption sites in most of the city, ending the showdown between lawmakers and the administration and delivering a blow to the yearslong effort to open a facility in Philadelphia.
The law, authored by Lozada, takes effect immediately and changes the city’s zoning code to designate supervised drug consumption sites as a prohibited use in nine of the city’s 10 geographic Council districts.
Kenney said he opposed the legislation because it is “anti-science and misleading.” He vetoed it Wednesday, knowing that Council would likely push it through anyway.
The only Council district not included is the West Philadelphia-based 3rd District, which is represented by Jamie Gauthier, the only district Council member who did not want to ban the facilities in their backyard. But Gauthier ended up voting in favor of the veto override on Thursday, saying she “respects [her] colleagues and the way they represent their districts.”
Councilmember Kendra Brooks, who as an at-large member is elected citywide, cast the lone vote against overriding the veto. She is a member of the progressive Working Families Party and has said she favors overdose prevention sites because they can help save lives.
What else happened this week?
Medical deportations: Councilmember Jim Harrity introduced a bill that could deter so-called medical deportations, in which extremely ill, undocumented patients are sent out of the country in what lawyers say are attempts by health systems to cut costs.
“I believe that the medical deportation issue is a civil rights issue, and it’s a human rights issue,” Harrity said.
» READ MORE: Immigration activists try to stop Allentown hospital from sending comatose woman out of the country
His bill would require that patients and their families get more information and control over whether they return to their home countries.
For years, these private deportations have gone on unregulated and ungoverned in Pennsylvania and around the country, with most occurring “in the shadows,” concluded a joint study by the Seton Hall University School of Law and the nonprofit New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.
Who was there?
Words of wisdom: Council’s public comment period can be eye-opening, combative, and kooky. But it’s rarely as eloquent as it was this week when Oyewumi Oyeniyi, Philadelphia’s youth poet laureate, graced the chambers with a piece about the nature of community.
“Community is an ocean, each human part of an overwhelming, barely understood ecosystem, each individual a drop of water, complex in their own right, despised for that very complexity,” Oyeniyi read in Council.
» READ MORE: Philly’s new youth poet laureate says writing is her way to ‘detox from everything.’ Here is her story.
Oyeniyi, 17, is a senior at Cristo Rey Philadelphia High School. Council on Thursday approved a resolution authored by Brooks that honored her.
Quote of the week
Jimmy-on-Jimmy violence: At the end of the Council session, Harrity gave an impassioned speech denouncing how Kenney has described Council’s efforts to ban supervised drug consumption sites in most of the city through Lozada’s bill.
He was referring to Kenney’s comments last week in an interview with WHYY in which the mayor said, “If you really want to say that you want to fix this problem or address this problem, then address it, and stop trying to put your head in the sand and say this doesn’t work because it works.”
Staff write Jeff Gammage contributed to this article.