12.30.20

Chair Grijalva Requests Body-Worn Camera Footage of National Park Service Agent Tasering U.S. Marine Veteran at Petroglyph National Monument

Washington, D.C. – In a new letter to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, available at http://bit.ly/2WTA50Q, Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) requests footage from body-worn cameras used by National Park Service (NPS) officers involved in the Dec. 27 Tasering of Darrell House, a Marine Corps veteran and enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and Oneida Nation, at Petroglyph National Monument.

Grijalva requests four pieces of information on the recent incident:

  1. All footage recorded by any NPS officer’s body worn camera on Dec. 27 at Petroglyph National Monument;
  2. A full explanation for any lack of footage and any gaps in footage recorded by NPS officers’ body worn camera on that date;
  3. A fully unredacted version of NPS Reference Manual 9; and
  4. Any reports related to the December 27, 2020 incident.

Grijalva also requests up-to-date information on the employment and duty station statuses of the officers involved in the incidents involving Darrell House, Charles “Gage” Lorentz, and Bijan Ghaisar. An NPS officer pulled Lorentz over near Carlsbad Caverns National Park in March and fatally shot him after a mysterious 26-second gap in his body-worn camera footage, and U.S. Park Police fatally shot Ghaisar – an unarmed 25-year-old – on the George Washington Parkway outside Washington, D.C., in an incident the FBI is now investigating.

Grijalva notes in the letter that the U.S. Park Police also played a key role in the unprovoked June 1 attack on unarmed civil rights protesters in Lafayette Square, directly before President Trump’s now infamous photo op with a bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House. The Natural Resources Committee investigation of the circumstances surrounding that incident, and the responsible parties involved, is ongoing.

Grijalva writes that the Petroglyph National Monument use of force is disturbing” and “not an isolated incident.” The Committee will continue its oversight of Interior Department agency use-of-force policies in the coming Congress.

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