Topline
Former President Donald Trump arrived for a wake for Jonathan Diller, the first New York Police Department officer killed in the line of duty in over two years, on Long Island on Thursday—following months of claiming crime in New York City was on the rise.
Key Facts
Diller, 31, was shot and killed while making a routine traffic stop of a car illegally parked behind a bus in Far Rockaway, Queens.
The suspected shooter was identified as Guy Rivera, a 34-year-old with 21 previous arrests, who was shot and injured by Diller’s partner.
Rivera remains hospitalized, but was charged with Diller’s murder earlier on Thursday.
About 1,000 mourners showed up at the Massapequa Park funeral home for the wake, the New York Daily News reported, including the former president and New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Trump briefly spoke to reporters outside the Massapequa Park funeral home, where he said “police are the greatest people we have, there’s nothing and there’s nobody like them, this should never happen.”
Key Background
Trump first weighed in on Diller’s murder in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, calling his killer a “murderous career criminal,” adding that “the ‘thug’ in question has 21 prior arrests and just recently got out of prison – he NEVER should have been let back out on the streets.” He continued to decry the state of crime in New York at Diller’s wake on Thursday. “We have to stop it. We have to stop it. We have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently because this is not working. This is happening too often,” Trump said outside of Diller’s wake on Thursday. Diller was the first NYPD officer killed in the line of duty in a little over two years, since Wilbert Mora and Jason Rivera were killed by a gunman in Harlem while responding to a domestic violence call in January 2022. A study from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund found that deaths in the line of duty across the country fell dramatically last year, decreasing by 39% in 2023. The study found that 136 officers were killed in the line of duty across the country, down from a total of 224 in 2022. Of those 136 deaths, only 47 were killed by gunshots—also down from 63 gun violence-related deaths in 2022. Violent crime rates have also fallen in New York City over the last year, according to the NYPD’s data. Although some crimes like felony assault and grand larceny rose over the course of 2023, many violent crimes, including shootings and murder, fell significantly.
Tangent
Trump was one of four presidents and former presidents in the New York metro area on Thursday, as former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama arrived for a major fundraiser for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan. The president’s campaign said it already raised $25 million, a record for a single fundraiser.
