President Joe Biden’s decision to attend a $25 million Manhattan fundraiser while the NYPD mourned one of their own 40 miles to the east was denounced by a former special agent for the FBI who said the president was also notably absent when two of her then-partners were killed in 2021 in Broward, County, Florida.
Retired Special Agent Nicole Parker, who said prior she left the bureau partly because they are increasingly politicized, broke down on a news station Thursday as she mourned Jonathan Diller, NYPD officer, who was allegedly murdered in Far Rockaway earlier in the week by a lifelong criminal.
On Monday, Diller and his partner initiated a traffic stop on Lindy Jones and Guy Rivera in the neighborhood before being shot fatally. Rivera was charged with murdering a law enforcement officer. Jones is facing weapons charges.
“These are human beings. They have families,” said Parker. “This beautiful wife is now alone with her one-year-old son. Officer Diller’s one-year-old son will never know his father on this earth, and that is absolutely devastating.”
Although President Biden planned to attend the Radio City fundraiser alongside former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former President Donald Trump made a point to head to Long Island to participate in the officer’s wake.
Biden’s actions show Biden’s lack of support for law enforcement
Parker said her “heart [was] pounding out of [her] chest” as she viewed coverage of Diller’s wake in Massapequa Park, New York, partly because it made her remember her own experience losing to colleagues to criminal gunfire while she was with the Miami bureau.
In February 2021, FBI Agents Laura Schwartzenberger and Daniel Alfin were investigating a case of child pornography case in Sunrise, Florida, when a suspect fired on them. Three agents were wounded, and two agents were killed.
Parker recounted that in that case, the president was noticeably missing from the funeral. She explained both situations illustrate a lack of law enforcement support.
“[Biden] was not there [for Schwartzenberger and Alfin], and we did not feel that he supported our law enforcement officers. I don’t know why, but to see that he is currently at a fundraiser and is going to potentially raise $25 million is insulting,” said Parker.
“Officer Diller’s life is worth more than $25 million. However, I can also tell you that there are officers and I understand and agree when you don’t feel supported. It’s actually better that you don’t show up to the funeral because it is insulting.”
Parker stated she wasn’t intending to make a GOP versus Democrat contrast but that it’s easy for lawmen to tell which officials support law enforcement and police. She also showed the importance of policies of “proactive policing.”
“If you’re a police officer and you’re being proactive, you could potentially go to jail. If you’re in a shooting. And we call them ‘clean shoots’ when deadly force is justified, for instance, and you are in a situation and you have to protect yourself or those around you. Starting around the summer of 2020, we knew that we could potentially go to jail even if it were a clean shoot,” said Parker.
Andres McCarthy, former New York federal prosecutor, echoed Parker Thursday, saying he retreats tough-on-crime policies in places like New York.
“The tragedy of this is, when I was a young prosecutor, we were still having a crime wave in New York, and we were having a lot of crime in cities throughout the country. And then we had a revolution in how you do law enforcement,” said McCarthy. “And from the early 1990s until about, I want to say probably about 2015 or so, you had record drops in crime. We had an amazingly flourishing society precisely because we had driven down crime levels that people would have said were impossible in the 1990s.”
McCarthy said that in the ‘bad old days’ in New York, solutions were unclear, but that now “we know what works in law enforcement — but progressive politicians are not letting those policies be implemented.”
Earlier on Thursday, Karine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary, said Biden spoke with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, but didn’t have any “private communications to share” regarding any possible discussions with Diller’s family.
