The U.S. Park Police turned away its last recruiting class, halved feed rations for mounted patrol horses and forced motorcycle officers to buy their own engine parts in order to escort President Bush, according to the department’s labor chairman.
Jim Austin, head of the Park Police labor organization, said the 215-year-old force is facing a fiscal challenge that endangers its officers. The number of sworn officers has fallen below 600 for the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, and police are paying out of their own pockets to shoe horses, run their motorcycles and feed police dogs.
“The officers have stepped up on their own, but we need some help,” Austin told The Examiner.
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., said the Park Police are “barely surviving,” and called on Congress to increase the funding and step up oversight of the department. She discovered an overworked and understaffed Park Police force this summer while looking into the series of brutal attacks on the National Mall. She blamed the department’s money problems on a lack of congressional oversight, especially when compared to the U.S. Capitol Police, which has grown 50 percent since the terrorist attacks.
Norton said she believes the Capitol police receive more attention from Congress because U.S. lawmakers see those officers every day.
“Congress gives the Park Police no attention,” she said.
The Park Police, the only federal police department with jurisdiction over the entire District, primarily patrols 24,000 acres of federal parklands including the National Mall, Rock Creek Park and the George Washington Parkway. The department was created in 1791 by President George Washington and provides protection primarily in Washington, D.C., New York City and San Francisco.
In a 2000 report to Congress, the National Park Service estimated it needed 806 Park Police officers for the entire country. At the time there were about 638 officers. In 2004, Chief Teresa Chambers was fired after she admitted staff shortages.
