Let ME exploit cop slay – Dietl
Bids to march with kin, rips Bill invite
THE FAMILY of slain Police Officer Miosotis Familia has been thrust into the middle of a political squabble over whom they will march with in the Dominican Day Parade on Sunday.
Bo Dietl, a former detective and independent mayoral candidate, says he was planning to march with the Familia family, including her three children – but fumed that Mayor de Blasio has asked the children to march with him.
“How dare he use the Familia family like that? I am once a cop, always a cop. I am part of the family,” Dietl told the Daily News. “I’m really angry that he is politicizing asking these kids to march with him.”
A de Blasio spokesman said the invitation was about honoring the family, not politics.
“As we typically do, the Police Department and City Hall invited the fallen officer’s family to march alongside officers and the mayor,” spokesman Eric Phillips said. “Family members will obviously march with whomever they want during the parade. This isn’t about Bo Dietl or Bill de Blasio. It’s about honoring the officer and her family and we refuse to focus on anything other than that.”
Familia, 48, was executed by a cop-hating gunman with a history of mental health issues in the Bronx last month while sitting in a NYPD mobile command vehicle.
Despite running his own campaign, Dietl insisted it would be less political for the family to march with him, because he is marching not as a candidate but under the banner of his security company.
“I’m marching with the family and those kids because I’m an police officer and he’s not,” Dietl said.
But members of the Familia family told The News they weren’t sure who’d they march with — if they march at all.
“I don’t know. These are not good circumstances,” Familia’s mother, Adriana Valoy, said in Spanish, touching her hand to her chest and looking down. “I don’t feel good marching with anyone right now.”
Adriana Sanchez, Valoy’s daughter and Familia’s sister, said she did not think her mother would march in the uptown parade, because it is a celebration and she is “in mourning.”
Familia’s children plan to march with de Blasio, according to Sanchez, who told The News that Familia’s oldest child told her: “This is about my mother, not about me marching with somebody who wants to run for mayor.”
As for Sanchez, she had wanted to march with Dietl — and noted instances of officers turning their backs on de Blasio, and his short trip to Germany the day after Familia’s death.
But now, she isn’t sure what she’ll do.
“I don’t know what to do because they’re telling me if I want to be in the group with the family, that I’m supposed to be with the family,” she said.
Dietl took Sanchez, Valoy and other family members to Rao’s, the exclusive Italian joint where Dietl has a regular reservation, last month.
Dietl said he handed Valoy an envelope containing $5,000 cash for the children — and had invited them, too, but said they didn’t attend after “someone got wind” of the dinner plans.