“A few hours before hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, a group of about 150 people breached a barrier around the base of the Washington Monument. Vastly outnumbered by the agitated throng, a clutch of US Park Police officers on the scene retreated into the visitor center at the towering obelisk’s base, locking the door behind them as the loud mob furiously beat on the plate glass windows.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a government watchdog group, has chronicled the issues plaguing the Park Police and its parent agencies for years. In a 2017 report, PEER described how although the Park Service saw its budget grow, none of that increase trickled down to the Park Police. “In short, the Park Police is fighting for a piece of a limited pie,” the report stated.”
