Interior Dept. creates task force to study its police departments, with former Park Police chief as
Source: Washington Post
Interior Dept. creates task force to study its police departments, with former Park Police chief as chair
Secretary Deb Haaland responds to report on Lafayette Square episode with move to improve trust, oversight in Interior police forces
By Tom Jackman
July 12, 2021|Updated today at 1:27 p.m. EDT
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is forming a task force to review the practices and policies of all the law enforcement bureaus in her department, after a recent report on the U.S. Park Police’s handling of protesters in Lafayette Square last year found problems with that agency’s communications both internally and with other agencies involved in clearing the square.
Haaland named former Park Police chief Robert D. MacLean, now the director of Interior’s Office of Law Enforcement and Security, to lead the task force. MacLean was head of the Park Police for six years, including in 2017, when two officers fatally shot unarmed motorist Bijan Ghaisar in a residential neighborhood of Fairfax County. For nearly two years, MacLean refused to release the officers’ names or any information about the slaying and would not discuss it publicly. In 2019, he was promoted to his current post overseeing all of Interior’s police forces. In 2020, the officers were indicted on a charge of manslaughter but remain on the force and have pleaded not guilty.
In a memo issued Wednesday, Haaland began by citing the inspector general’s report examining the Park Police’s actions on June 1, 2020, in clearing Lafayette Square minutes before President Donald Trump walked through the park for a photo opportunity in front of St. John’s Church. The report concluded that the Park Police did not launch the operation to assist Trump, but instead to clear space for a fence to be erected around the park because protesters had been throwing projectiles at officers during days of demonstrations. The report found that the Park Police did not use tear gas that day, but D.C. police did. The inspector general is preparing a separate report on whether the Park Police used force appropriately on protesters who were removed from the park.
The report found that the Park Police did not adequately warn protesters before using officers in tactical equipment and on horseback to push protesters away and does not have a detailed dispersal warning policy. It also found that the Park Police were unable to communicate with the Secret Service by radio, and that its radio system did not record Park Police transmissions that day. Then-acting chief Gregory Monahan testified last year before Congress that the radio system, installed in 2018 when MacLean was chief, had not recorded any transmissions during special events since its purchase.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/07/12/interior-dept-police-task-force/