Interior, Park Service Failure to Protect U.S. Heritage from Protestors Sparks Watchdog Complaint

Agency’s refusal to enforce rules encourages more violence and destruction

Today, Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) announced it has filed a complaint asking the Department of the Interior (DOI) Inspector General to investigate three separate incidents in which DOI and the National Park Service (NPS) failed to protect federal government property and personnel, along with bystanders, from violent demonstrators. The failure is particularly acute for the NPS, which is responsible for permitting all demonstrations in the National Capital Area, and whose central mission is to preserve the natural and cultural resources it manages.

In October 2021, as part of a larger series of climate protests across D.C., a coalition of activist groups invaded the Main Interior Building intending to occupy it. Communications acquired by PPT between the Department and protest groups show that DOI knew at least six days in advance that the protestors planned disruptive “civil disobedience.” Yet the Department still assigned too few U.S. Park Service Police (USPP) and resources to the building to resist the protestors’ violent push inside.

The invading protestors attacked police, sending one officer to the hospital. Disturbingly, Secretary Haaland’s daughter, Somah Haaland, is employed by the Pueblo Action Alliance, one of the groups that helped plan the weeklong series of protests that culminated in the violent demonstration at DOI HQ.

On the weekend of June 8, 2024, thousands of demonstrators descended on D.C., surrounding the White House and its parks, to protest President Biden’s support for Israel. Some protestors attacked USPP officers and vandalized beloved statues of Comte de Rochambeau, Marquis de Lafayette, and President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square.

Again, USPP was under-equipped and under-manned and officers were themselves assaulted. Many of the protestors’ actions took place on federal property under DOI jurisdiction, yet no arrests were reported.

The inaction prompted a public letter from Wyoming Senator John Barrasso of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, in which he wondered “whether political sympathy with the agitators influenced [the] department’s response.”

On July 14, the ANSWER Coalition—which helped organize the June 2024 protests described above—brought D.C. another violent protest, in which a thousands-strong mob of pro-Palestinian protestors attacked USPP officers and vandalized monuments and property in Columbus Plaza outside Union Station.

From the start DOI appears to have been derelict in handling the July 24^th protest. First, despite the prior month’s violence, NPS and DOI appear to have ignored explicit requests by USPP’s leadership for additional officers and resources. Just 29 officers were assigned to maintain law and order at a protest expected to draw more than 5,000 attendees who’d already proved themselves violent.

ANSWER failed to provide all the information required in the permit application, yet the Department granted it a permit anyway. In the event, ANSWER violated virtually every condition of its permit. In Columbus Plaza, rioters tore down the American flag flying in the plaza and burned it, illegally starting a fire and destroying government property. They defaced the plaza’s Columbus statue and the Freedom bell with violent, anti-American graffiti. When a local man passing through the plaza tried to save the burning flag, screaming protestors chased him.

Not only do DOI and NPS have a clear responsibility to protect property of the United States in their care, permitting protestors to commit vandalism and violence encourages more of such behavior. A full investigation of why this has been allowed to occur without consequence is certainly in order.

“John Adams’s vision for the United States was for ‘a government of laws, not of men,’” PPT Director Michael Chamberlain said. “Allowing certain protestors to continually, and without consequence, commit violence to people and the property NPS and DOI are charged with protecting, violates not only Adams’s vision and the law, but simply encourages more violence and destruction in the future. Whether the refusal of Secretary Haaland’s Interior to stand up to those who commit these acts is due to a lack of competence or to ideological sympathy with the protestors does not change the fact that the American public should be able to expect more from the leadership at DOI.”

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