Huffman, Ansari Demand Answers on Trump’s Dangerous U.S. Park Police Policies

Washington, D.C. – Today, Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee Ranking Member Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and U.S. Park Police (USPP) Chief Scott Brecht demanding a full briefing on sweeping new USPP policies that put lives at risk and turn the nation’s oldest federal law enforcement agency into a tool for Donald Trump’s political agenda.

The lawmakers highlight that in the past three weeks alone, “the USPP initiated at least eleven high-speed pursuits for nonviolent offenses, seven of which ended in crashes.” They condemn Interior’s decision to expand USPP pursuit authority despite federal findings that such pursuits are among “the most dangerous of all ordinary police activities.” They add, “Shockingly, Secretary Burgum described these pursuits as ‘so much fun,’ trivializing the very crashes that put innocent lives in immediate risk.”

The lawmakers also highlight risks to the U.S. Park Police helicopter, Eagle One, “the only aircraft in the District of Columbia capable of conducting life-saving field-to-hospital medevac transports.” Under the new policy, Eagle One has been “tasked more frequently with pursuit monitoring, reducing its availability for critical medevac operations.” They warn that diverting the region’s sole medevac helicopter away from emergency response “compromises its lifesaving function” and endangers public safety,

The lawmakers warn that new Trump directives order USPP officers to dismantle homeless encampments, destroy personal belongings, and arrest individuals with no chance to safeguard property. “Those most at risk of being swept up under President Trump’s crackdown are about 200 homeless veterans in D.C., whose service to our country is now repaid with the threat of arrest and the destruction of their last possessions,” the letter states.

Recalling the violent USPP-led assault on peaceful demonstrators at Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020, the letter calls that day “forever etched into American history as emblematic of what happens when federal law enforcement is weaponized for politics instead of public safety.” The lawmakers say the Trump administration is repeating those mistakes by reinstating officers involved in the 2017 killing of Bijan Ghaisar and discarding federal policing safeguards.

The letter concludes: “It is evident that the DOI has refused to learn from the organizational meltdown from Lafayette Square, refused to learn from the killing of Bijan Ghaisar, and now, by reinstating the officers involved in the 2017 killing and expanding high-speed pursuit authority, again refuses to learn. This continued disregard for oversight and accountability endangers the public and invites foreseeable and preventable tragedy.”

Read the full letter here.

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