U.S. Park Police are reviewing their communication policies for “relevancy” after a government watchdog’s report highlighted the agency’s inability to find a missing woman near Reagan National Airport.
Park Police officers searching for Victoria Kong, 83, of Washington, D.C. had no idea what she looked like, while others who should have been looking for her weren’t even told about the investigation when their shift began, according to the Department of the Interior Inspector General.
“Several updated policies have been issued regarding standards of conduct, missing persons, and the dissemination of information,” Park Police spokeswoman Lelani Woods said following release of the Oct. 23 IG report.
The shift commander on duty the night Kong wandered away from Reagan Airport last May described her only as a “9,000-year-old Alzheimer’s woman” to field officers, according to the report.
He failed to relay news of the search to the next shift, as many Park Police officers generally assume such info “just floats around” and doesn’t require formal dissemination.
The IG report also said Park Police attempted to pawn their search duties off on the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority. Park Police officers accused the authority of similarly trying to “kick it over” to them.
The airport authority manages Reagan National, which is located just across the Potomac River from the District of Columbia in Alexandria, Va.
Despite such bureaucratic dysfunction, a volunteer search party discovered Kong’s body three days after she disappeared. Her body was found 30 feet from the Gravelly Point Park Trail where Park Police had been ordered to search and less than a mile from where she was last seen alive.
“It is troubling for the Kong family to receive this report, which includes a number of details that open wounds not yet healed,” the family said in a statement provided by their lawyer, Billy Martin.
“Valuable time was lost, as law enforcement officials bickered over which agency would conduct the search for Mrs. Kong. Meanwhile, she was forced to spend the night, exposed to bitter cold, only a few yards from the airport on U.S. Park property,” the family said.
Woods contended that the IG report confirmed that Park Police officers “correctly followed policy and procedures as the assisting agency” in the search for Kong and criticized only the “insensitive remarks about the missing person.”
But the problems that preceded Kong’s death have persisted within the agency for years, according to multiple IG reports released prior to the current controversy.
An “alarmingly negative” survey by IG auditors of Park Police officers in 2007, for example, revealed only 5 percent of officers had confidence in their command staff and only 2.2 percent had confidence in the Chief of Police.
The auditors reported the agency suffered from “low morale” and “poor communication” between command staff and field officers.
The agency’s efforts to protect national monuments like the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial were severely hampered by its inadequate staff, the report found.
But understaffing had little to do with its poorly-managed budget, the IG said. Officers claimed the problem arose from a lack of “urgency” among Park Police leaders about filling vacant positions.
Many of the officers interviewed by the auditors said national monuments were not as safe as they should be because weak security policies left holes in the protection of monuments.
Among examples cited those interviewed were a gate to the Washington Monument stairs that was left open and unattended and an unattended suitcase that was ignored after it had been placed against the monument’s wall.
Protection of the monuments is “just a show put on for people in the Department of Interior headquarters building,” one officer told IG auditors. Another called the monument’s security “smoke and mirrors.”
Other IG reports dating back more than a decade questioned the agency’s staffing and budgeting practices.
IG auditors criticized budgeting “malfeasance,” which resulted in budget deficits in 2005 and 2006 and forced the National Park Service to step in and cover millions of Park Police costs.
A 2008 IG report attributed the “budget breakdown” to an insufficient financial office, which lacked a qualified individual to oversee the agency’s books.
Poor resource management extended to the agency’s vehicle fleet as well. Officers were forced to drive unsafe cars that were so old that some reported feeling “embarrassed to represent USPP in such vehicles in front of the public and other law enforcement entities.”
Park Police came under fire once again in 2013 when an IG investigation found “fundamental errors” and a “disconcerting attitude” in the agency’s management of firearms.
Hundreds of Park Police weapons could not be accounted for when auditors surveyed the agency’s firearms policy. Investigators found more than 1,400 extra guns in the Park Police armories, including hundreds of military-style automatic weapons.
The 2013 report came two years after IG auditors called the agency’s firearms inventory a “critical failure.”
Despite the latest report finding fault with the Park Police’s operations, the Kong family expressed appreciation for Park Police Chief Robert MacLean, who they said met with them to discuss issues in the IG investigation.
“We know that the inexcusable actions outlined in the report do not reflect the behavior of all or most law enforcement officers,” the family said. “It is our hope that this report will help dispel mischaracterizations of Mrs. Kong and serve as a vehicle for bringing about change in the way missing persons reports are handled by law enforcement.”
