As the last remnants of Occupy DC were finally removed from McPherson Square on Tuesday, a National Park Service, or NPS, spokeswoman said the agency was in the process of “assessing everything that happened and seeing what we did right and what we did wrong and how we can do better.”

The Park Service’s public admission that it made mistakes in its handling of Occupy DC and is undergoing a needed self-evaluation is encouraging, but it does not erase the fact that it blundered badly in dealing with the anti-Wall Street protest.