New York City was shaken Monday by the shooting death of NYPD officer Jonathan Diller, 31, during a car stop in Far Rockaway, Queens. Diller reportedly sensed something was off about the Kia illegally parked, blocking a bus stop, and approached. After Diller repeatedly asked Guy Rivera, 34, to step out of the passenger seat, Rivera shot the officer through the door, fatally hitting him below his bulletproof vest.
Known as a selfless, already-decorated public servant, Diller lived on Long Island with his young bride and one-year-old son. His cold-blooded murder resonated with New Yorkers’ growing personal fears of crime and lawlessness. In a recent Citizens Budget Commission poll, barely a third of New Yorkers report happiness with their neighborhood’s safety. Less than half feel even somewhat secure riding the subway during the day, down from over 80 percent across recent decades; at night, that figure drops to 22 percent. And no wonder: Monday’s 6 p.m. gunfire sent those at the nearby Rockaway–Mott Avenue station scattering in terror.
The nightmare of such violence and of Officer Diller’s death should be understood as a referendum on New York’s current elected leadership, which takes every opportunity to undercut basic solutions to danger. Despite overwhelming evidence that police, prosecution, and incarceration are how cities keep citizens safe, New York’s clueless progressive leaders continue to demand laws barring these tools, advocating instead for magically curing crime’s “root causes.”
This hubristic approach was epitomized at last week’s city council hearings by New York City Public Advocate and gubernatorial hopeful Jumaane Williams. After helpfully invoking “peace and blessings,” Williams insisted that crime is just a misperception, and that, since New York State enacted bail reform in 2019, “recidivism rates are pretty similar and some points have even gone down.”
Not true. As NYPD’s Crime Control Strategies Chief Michael Lipetri corrected: “That’s not accurate. Recidivism is at its highest levels [since] 2017.” Officer Diller’s murderer could himself have refuted Williams’s outrageous claim. Rivera had 21 prior arrests, nine for felonies. In 2021, he was released on parole after a half-decade in prison for selling drugs; earlier, he served three years for assault. When Diller approached him, Rivera already had a shiv stuffed up his rectum in anticipation of cycling back to the slammer.
The record of Rivera’s associate Lindy Jones, 41, who was in the driver’s seat, also attests to recidivism being an accurate “perception.” Jones had at least 14 arrests, including for robbery and assault, and spent a decade in prison for attempted murder and robbery, getting out in 2013. He was most recently arrested last April, for walking around Far Rockaway with a loaded illegal gun.
It’s suspected that, on Monday, Rivera and Jones were actively casing nearby stores or passersby for fresh robberies at the time of the shooting, making them part of a growing cohort of rapid reoffenders. As Chief Lipetri noted, the percentage of robbery arrestees committing another felony within 60 days leaped from 8 percent in 2017 to 25 percent by 2022.
Williams objects to this comparison pre- and post-bail reform because, he says, “Obviously if someone is in jail, they can’t recidivate.” Uh . . . yes. He went on to suggest that the NYPD “can skew numbers to make it seem like if you’re just keeping someone in jail, you’re solving the problem.” Uh . . . yes, again. “We should look at the recidivism rate,” Williams allowed, but “there’s another root cause. And if we keep looking at keeping people in jail, the problem won’t be solved.”
The city’s public advocate, wearing a large BE LOVE lapel button, does not want the city to implement solutions that prevent violence and crime, such as incarcerating dangerous men. He wants to reach into the cosmos and prevent Guy Rivera from being the kind of guy who leaves his house in the morning with a shiv up his rear and a gun in his waistband. Divorced from reality, Williams also champions replacing cops with “credible messengers” and other alternatives. But crime always seems to go up after police deployments are “removed,” he complained last week. Uh . . . yes, again!
Instead of reading this fact as evidence that police prevent crime, Williams and city and state leadership ignore the failures of de-policing; of bail, parole, and discovery reforms; and of gutting enforcement for “low-level offenses”—like Monday’s idling in a bus stop. Instead, they self-righteously maintain their idiotic search for root causes at the expense of actual public safety.
If New York’s leaders really want to find the root causes of our current crime predicament, they should look in the mirror.
Here on planet Earth, a conscientious police officer remains the best solution to disorder and danger. Brave men and women like Officer Diller continue to do their job, despite a 20 percent rise in assaults on cops over the past 14 months—including a 72 percent rise in officer stabbings.
Next time a suspicious car driven by armed felons is blocking a bus stop, maybe Jumaane Williams can take it upon himself to go knock on the window and check things out. Failing that, he might try to show an ounce of the humility the rest of us feel today about Jonathan Diller’s ultimate sacrifice.
Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images