Donald Trump is out on the campaign trail pitching an idea that should be a winner, at least among his conservative base and right-leaning independents. It’s something that I’ve been shouting about here from the rooftops for years. His proposal is a simple one. Any person convicted of killing a uniformed law enforcement officer in the line of duty would automatically receive the death penalty. The idea won’t win him any support among leftists who still clamor to defund or “reimagine” the police, but they were never going to vote for him anyway. But the groundswell of national support for the family of slain NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller will likely fuel a renewed look at such a policy. The career criminal who murdered Diller seemingly at random needs to pay with his life as a lesson to others. (NY Post)
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday demanded a mandatory death sentence for cop killers in the wake of the horrific murder of NYPD Det. Jonathan Diller.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, 77, was speaking at a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wis. where he called on Congress to pass legislation to ensure that those convicted of killing a police officer receive capital punishment — just days after he attended Diller’s wake in Long Island.
“I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk ensuring that anyone who murders a police officer will receive immediately the death penalty,” Trump told the crowd, a line that drew a standing ovation.
This is hardly a new position for Trump. He promoted the idea during his first presidential campaign in 2015. He even suggested that he would sign an executive order mandating the policy. This isn’t the sort of thing that should be done via an executive order, however. Congress should enact it as a federal law. The states can’t be forced to enact such a law, but murdering a police officer should make the killer eligible for federal charges nonetheless.
I understand and can even respect the position of principled conservatives who believe that the death penalty is never appropriate because only God should decide when someone’s life is to come to an end. But that is a difficult principle to put into practice broadly because the state kills people on a regular basis in other circumstances. The police routinely kill violent suspects who are attacking them or other civilians. Should they not be able to defend themselves? Soldiers are regularly called upon to kill the enemy in wars. Should the country never go to war or have the right to defend itself when attacked? We take out terrorists on a regular basis using various methods (well… not so much these days) and you rarely hear people complaining about it. As I see it, the death penalty is simply justice delayed.
Some have attempted to argue that allowing capital punishment for cop killers while not allowing it for the murder of civilians (at least in some states) places unequal value on the lives of police officers. I must disagree. Killing a random civilian while committing a crime is abhorrent, but it is still the murder of one human being. When someone murders a uniformed police officer acting in the line of duty, they are doing far more than taking a single life. They are attacking one of the foundations of our society. They are breaking down our ability to jointly agree to draw a line between the law-abiding and the lawless. Killing law enforcement officials is an act of anarchy and the penalty for that needs to be very high.
Unfortunately, we are currently living through an era where respect for the rule of law is sagging to dangerously low levels. Crime rates continue to rise, regardless of what the White House and the legacy media are trying to tell you. If law-abiding citizens can no longer feel comfortable leaving their homes with the expectation that they can travel around their neighborhoods safely, one of our fundamental tenets of civilization is being destroyed. That’s why the entire proposal to defund the police was such an unmitigated disaster. That trend needs to be reversed in a major way. Sending cop killers to the execution chamber would be a major step in the right direction.