That was a terrible show.
The US Park Police were “stranded” and “understaffed” when they were “attacked by a mob of several thousand” pro-Hamas protesters in Washington DC on Wednesday, some of whom hurled feces at officers, according to the head of the police union.
Kenneth Spencer, president of the Fraternal Order of Park Police, told The Washington Post in an interview the day after the riot that just 29 officers confronted the terrorist-sympathizing mob outside Union Station, a few blocks from the Capitol.
“We were basically isolated,” said Spencer, a 15-year veteran who said Congress and the Interior Department have made “empty promises” for years to increase the agency’s tiny budget without delivering, even though the department and Congress deal primarily with the nation’s rural national parks, not civil unrest in big cities.
“Especially in the Washington, D.C. area, there’s a shortage everywhere, just like we are,” he explained. “We have a big mission. We are the agency that protects people’s First Amendment rights when they come to Washington, D.C..”
But even though his unit falls under the jurisdiction of non-law enforcement agencies like the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service, his men “protect major soft targets, terrorist targets in Washington, D.C., New York and San Francisco.”
“If you think back to 2020, we were the institution that was in front of the White House and 52 officers were injured in that riot,” Spencer said, reflecting on the protests that followed the death of George Floyd.
“We held the line, but we were woefully understaffed at the time,” he added, noting that budget cuts had occurred in the intervening years. “Now there are fewer officers… We’ve just been ignored.”
Rioters scrawled graffiti on the monument, including “Here comes Hamas,” and tore down the American flag, burned it and tried to replace it with a Palestinian flag in protest at a parliamentary speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In his speech, the Israeli leader derided protesters at Ivy League universities and other anti-Israel demonstrators as playing into the hands of Iranian terrorist proxy groups, some of whom he said are directly funded to do so.
“The fact that you are praised, promoted and funded by the tyrants in Tehran who hang gays from cranes and kill women for not covering their hair means that you have officially become Iran’s useful fools,” Netanyahu said.
Other DC rioters Being roughly treated Outnumbered Park Police officers opened fire on the officers, Spencer said, and other officers began throwing objects that smelled “very strongly of feces” but did not hit anyone.
A department spokesman confirmed that only 10 arrests were made, two of which occurred at Columbus Circle in front of the station, away from the scene of the crash, and that the other nine were in D.C. police custody.
House National Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) I sent a letter In anticipation of Thursday morning’s protests, he alerted Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to “immediately respond to USPP’s requests and provide additional personnel and support.”
“I don’t think you can really classify it as a peaceful protest, but I would say if the Park Police only had 29 officers to deal with the crowd, they did a great job of keeping the situation under control,” Westerman told The Post.
A National Park Service spokesman said “no resource requests had been made or denied” before the demonstration.
Westerman added that the House Oversight Committee is considering an investigation into potential ties between the riots and foreign terrorist organizations, and he blamed Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, for enabling years of destructive demonstrations.
“It’s way too late for them to come out publicly and condemn it,” he said.
In a statement Thursday morning, Governor Harris condemned the Union Station riots, calling them “the despicable actions and dangerous, hateful rhetoric of unpatriotic protesters.”
Republican committee chairs, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), and others traveled to Union Station after dark to return the American flag to the polling place, where it was replaced the next morning.
“They burned some of our national symbols and property, they burned our flag, they burned all the things that we’re supposed to do and protect, and we couldn’t effectively do that,” Spencer lamented.
“It’s not the fault of the guys on the ground, it’s not their fault,” he said. “I don’t think Congress, the DOI, [National] The National Park Service, even the White House. Nothing is being done.”
“If this were to happen again in 2020 in front of the White House, in front of the Capitol, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, anywhere in downtown Washington, D.C., we would not have accomplished our mission,” Spencer warned. “It’s not sustainable.”
The Metropolitan Police have charged five suspects – Chloe Moussa, 22, Lance Rami Farouk Rokas, Paige Tolin, 24, Anam Hussain, 23, and Aiya Bettinger, 20 – with crowding, obstruction and causing inconvenience for disrupting the flow of traffic near Parliament House.
All except Tollin and Hussein were from states outside the Washington metropolitan area, including Florida, North Carolina and Hawaii.
Two others were arrested and charged with crossing a police line, and two others, one of whom was a 15-year-old from Ohio, were charged with assaulting a police officer at Columbus Circle.
U.S. Capitol Police also worked with the Park Police but did not make any arrests at Union Station.
Six people who disrupted Netanyahu’s speech were arrested by parliament police: Michael Levy (41), Karmit Parti Katzir (45), Gil Dickman (32), Reat Reuven (37), Alon Gat (37) and Shahar Mor (52).
