The district attorney and the police commissioner traded public criticism this week over the 2023 acquittal of the man now charged in Sergeant Seiber’s killing.
Philadelphia’s district attorney and police commissioner spent this past week criticizing each other in public, a rare open break between the two offices that work the same cases every day.
The dispute centers on the 2023 acquittal of Eric Lewis, the man now charged in the killing of Sergeant Shane Seiber. Lewis, 35, is accused of fatally shooting Seiber and wounding Officer Hector Rodriguez on October 10, 2026, while the officers responded to a report of a person with a gun in West Philadelphia. Seiber, 40, was a 10-year police veteran who was posthumously promoted to sergeant. Rodriguez, 33, was shot 12 times and was released from Penn Presbyterian Medical Center on Saturday, October 24, to begin a long recovery. All charges against Lewis are allegations, and he is presumed innocent.
The argument looks backward before it looks forward, to a case from 2019. Lewis was arrested in November 2020 in connection with the fatal shooting of Christopher Williams, 32, in West Philadelphia on August 31, 2019, after what District Attorney Larry Krasner has described as a road rage dispute. A judge acquitted Lewis at trial in April 2023, after a two-day bench trial. The trial judge referred a detective in the case to the Police Department’s Internal Affairs unit, according to Inquirer reporting.
Krasner addressed that acquittal publicly on October 13, in a video posted days after Seiber’s death. He called the 2019 investigation “deeply flawed” and said some conduct by one police officer and one detective was “arguably criminal.” He said his prosecutors “did everything humanly possible” with the case, and that the judge had no choice but to acquit.
That video is what drew the public response from Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel. On Thursday, October 22, federal prosecutors announced an indictment against Lewis tied to the October 10 shooting, including robbery and firearm charges. At the news conference announcing those charges, Bethel addressed Krasner’s video for the first time.
He called it “absolutely unacceptable” while officers and the city were mourning, according to Inquirer reporting. Bethel did not directly name Krasner, but his remarks were plainly aimed at the district attorney’s public comments about the earlier case.
“I’ve been at this work for almost 40 years,” Bethel said. “Never once have I stood up in front of an audience and talked about my conflicts with the District Attorney’s Office. … I’ve never seen that in my entire career where when my family was suffering, the city was suffering … the community was suffering, my officers were suffering, and you stand up and you talk about something that is unnecessary.”
Bethel also indicated that prosecutors bore some responsibility for making sure detectives collected enough trial evidence, according to Inquirer reporting. He closed by apologizing for potentially taking attention from the partnership between his department and federal prosecutors, calling it an “emotional week” and saying, “I don’t want that to be the distraction.”
The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 5 weighed in the same day. Its executive board released a statement calling Krasner’s remarks “disgraceful” and “poorly timed,” and claiming Krasner “misrepresented” facts about the case to deflect from his office’s “failure.”
Krasner answered on Friday, October 23, at a news conference of his own. “I am here once again because I’m forced to be here because misinformation has been provided,” he said.
His account of how the dispute started differs from Bethel’s. Krasner said a member of Bethel’s “inner circle” had told members of the media that Lewis was acquitted in 2023 because two attorneys in the DA’s office “blew it.” He called those remarks “character assassination” and said he “had no choice” but to correct them when he posted the video. He did not name the person he was referring to.
“The truth is that that acquittal was the direct result of one of the worst investigations that I’ve seen in my nearly 40 years of criminal practice,” Krasner said.
He went further on Friday, saying his office is considering criminal charges against at least one, and possibly more, people connected to the 2019 case. He said his office had held off in 2023 to give Internal Affairs space to investigate and refer the case back, which he said never happened. Krasner named former Officer Naeem Crawley, saying Crawley was dating Lewis’s sister at the time and falsely claimed he received an anonymous tip about another suspect. Bethel said Thursday that Crawley had been terminated from the police force.
Krasner also said he had texted both Bethel and Mayor Cherelle Parker after Seiber’s shooting, inviting them to communicate with his office “at any time, for any reason.” “Unfortunately, this lack of communication is familiar,” he said.
By Friday, the Police Department was signaling it wanted the public exchange to stop. Spokesman Sgt. Eric Gripp said in a statement that Bethel stands by his Thursday comments, adding, “Our focus remains on Sgt. Shane Seiber’s family and on P/O Hector Rodriguez and his family as he continues his recovery. These families have endured enough, and we will not prolong their pain through a public back-and-forth. We will continue supporting them and focusing on the work ahead.”
Krasner, for his part, said in a statement Thursday that he supports the new federal charges and would keep trying to facilitate dialogue between the offices. “I will continue to make outreach to (Bethel) and (Parker) with hopes to work together in supporting our city and law enforcement colleagues through this difficult time,” he said. “For now, I will await their returned communication.”
What happens next is unresolved. The cases against Lewis are pending, and neither office has said how, or whether, the two leaders plan to speak directly. For now, the public record is two news conferences, two statements, and two very different accounts of who spoke out of turn, and why.
