New York City lost a hero Monday night as 31-year-old police officer Jonathan Diller, a three-year veteran of the NYPD, died after being shot in the stomach during a traffic stop. The passenger in the car, who shot Diller, was a career criminal with a lengthy rap sheet, as was the driver of the car. Familiar cries of quality of life and bail reform quickly arose, but former NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton says the people to blame for Officer Diller’s death are not located in City Hall or Albany. Bratton appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program and pointed the finger at the general public.
“Ultimately the votes are to blame for the conditions in the subways [and] in the streets,” Bratton told Berman and Riedel. “The voters, who put these people into office in the city, but also up in Albany. The parole board has let out dozens- dozens- of cop killers on parole, since they were appointed first by Governor Cuomo and subsequently appointed by Governor Hochul. So, everywhere you look, there is political resentment of the police and political undermining of them and the work they do, and when they give their lives for this city, how are they treated? The people that killed them are basically being released from prison in droves.”
Bratton further excoriated the people who run the city and state for fomenting an atmosphere of disrespect towards law and order. “You have this very progressive majority in the city council who basically are still trying to defund the police, who have tremendous resentment against them, to the extent that, in his budget request, Mayor Adams has not sought to increase the size of the police force. Why? Because it would be a political defeat, because he knows the City Council will not support hiring more cops. They want to hire more gang interventionists. They want to hire more people to deal with the mentally ill, but they don’t want to hire the people who are most effective in dealing with all these issues- more cops. And so, what do they do? They bellyache when the police department, of necessity, has to spend overtime because they don’t have enough cops.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images