President Biden's decision to attend a $25 million fundraiser in Manhattan while the NYPD mourned one of their own 40 miles eastward was denounced by a former FBI special agent who said Biden was also notably absent when two of her then-partners were killed in Broward County, Fla. in 2021.
Retired Special Agent Nicole Parker, who previously said she left the bureau in part over its increased politicization, broke down on Fox News on Thursday as she mourned NYPD officer Jonathan Diller, who was allegedly murdered in Far Rockaway earlier this week by a career criminal.
Diller and his partner initiated a traffic stop on Guy Rivera and Lindy Jones on Monday in the oceanfront neighborhood before being fatally shot. Rivera was charged with murder of a law enforcement officer. Jones faces weapons charges.
"These are human beings. They have families," Parker said. "This beautiful wife is now alone with her 1-year-old son, Officer Diller's 1-year-old son will never know his father on this earth and that is absolutely devastating."
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While Biden planned to attend the Radio City fundraiser alongside former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, former President Trump made a point to head to Long Island.
Parker said her "heart [was] pounding out of [her] chest" as she watched coverage of Diller's wake in Massapequa Park, N.Y., in part because it made her recall her own experience losing two colleagues to criminal gunfire while she was with the bureau in Miami.
In February 2021, FBI Agents Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger were investigating a child pornography case in Sunrise, Fla., when a suspect fired upon them. The two agents were killed and three others wounded.
Parker recounted that in that case, Biden was noticeably absent from the funeral. She said both situations illustrate a lack of support for law enforcement.
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"[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," she said.
"Officer Diller's life is worth more than $25 million. But 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 was not intending to make a Republican versus Democrat contrast, but that it is easy for lawmen to tell which individual officials support police and law enforcement – while also illustrating the importance of a return to "proactive policing" policies.
"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 was a clean shoot," she said.
Parker was echoed Thursday by former New York federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who told Fox News he sees a retreat in tough-on-crime policies in places like the Empire State.
"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," McCarthy said on "The Story."
"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 to levels that people would have said were impossible in the 1990s."
McCarthy said that in the proverbial bad old days in New York, the solutions weren't clear yet, but that now "we know what works in law enforcement – but progressive politicians are not letting those policies be implemented."
Earlier Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden spoke with New York City Mayor Eric Adams but did not have any "private communications to share" regarding any potential discussions with Diller's kin.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
