Whoa! It wasn't the widow of the slain police officer who invited Trump to his wake! [View all]

But it wasn’t Diller’s family that asked the presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump to swing by Diller’s wake on Thursday. Instead, it was a Republican county executive, Bruce Blakeman, who invited Trump to come, seize the spotlight from Officer Diller’s sacrifice, and desperately seek to regain the “law-and-order” mantle that’s been more than a tad tarnished by Trump’s 88 felony indictments. No wonder the 45th president seized the opportunity to stand with a phalanx of cops behind him and a battery of TV cameras in front of him, declaring: “We have to get back to law and order ... We’ve gotta toughen it up, we’ve gotta strengthen it up. This should never be allowed.”

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The biggest problem with using Diller’s killing to score political points is that the points weren’t grounded in reality. Despite the sloganeering by police unions, right-wing politicians, and Murdoch’s Post, there’s no evidence that long-overdue bail reforms had any significant impact on crime rates. Experts now believe the spike in violent crime that did occur in 2020-21 was closely tied to the massive social disruption of COVID-19. Across the nation, crime is mostly falling to pre-pandemic, record-low levels — including in New York, where in 2024 murders have been down 25% year-over-year.

How much of the politicization of Diller’s wake was about reducing crime, and how much was attempted slam dunks on Democrats? The weekend’s strangest moment came when New York’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul made a brief appearance at the viewing, but had to accelerate her exit after a confrontation with an attendee, possibly one of Diller’s relatives, that was captured on video.

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https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/jonathan-diller-death-nypd-trump-win-probability-20240402.html