Park Police ill prepared for pro-Palestine protest that turned violent near White House, memos show

An internal, after-action review by the Biden-era National Park Service found that the U.S. Park Service did not properly monitor a pro-Palestine protest surrounding the White House which resulted in assaults against officers and the defacing of statues in Lafayette Park. 

The failure to improve security for the permitted event followed a similar protest in the same park just months before that forced the Biden White House to evacuate staffers who worked in proximity to Pennsylvania Avenue when protesters damaged security fencing and threw objects onto the property. 

The after-action report was uncovered in a batch of documents released by the Interior Department under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Protect the Public’s Trust, an independent government watchdog group. PPT shared those documents with Just the News.   

Violence, security breaches happened before

“It’s mind-boggling, though hardly surprising, that Deb Haaland’s Department of the Interior would not anticipate and adequately prepare for security threats at an anti-Israel rally in Washington, D.C. Even more so in light of the fact similar types of recent demonstrations had frequently devolved into violence and security breaches, including at her agency’s headquarters, no less!” Michael Chamberlain, Director of Protect the Public’s Trust told Just the News. 

Just months after the earlier demonstration that forced the evacuation of White House personnel, the same group that helped organize that protest applied again for a permit. That group, the ANSWER Coalition, has been linked to pro-Palestine and anti-ICE protests across the United States in recent years, Just the News previously reported. 

In the after-action report, the National Park Service reviewers noted the ANSWER Coalition made explicit its intent to “surround the White House.” You can read the after-action report below: 

The after-action review found that U.S. Park Police were stretched thin because officials were also responsible for helping to secure the annual D.C. Pride Parade taking place that same day. 

Yet, given the expressed intent and the security fence breaches around the White House months before, the reviewers found the federal park service failed to assign the appropriate amount of permit monitors, park police were stretched thin by other events, and officials decided not to revoke the protest permit after federal officers were assaulted.

“The unfortunate consequence in this instance was that a federal law enforcement officer and another government official were assaulted,” Chamberlain told Just the News.

“This demonstration was occurring on the same day as the annual DC Pride Parade and events, making deployment of USPP officers challenging to be at all locations,” the review concluded.

No arrests made

The park service also found that the ANSWER Coalition’s own event marshals were too few to properly control the crowds, but that some of them even interfered with Park Police officers in order to “aid disruptive attendees.”  

After the demonstration, a National Park Service spokesperson said that two Park Police officers were injured and demonstrators assaulted one park ranger, in addition to "significant damage” to park resources. Despite the violence, Park Police made no arrests. 

The agency also made no attempt to revoke the permit after the assaults, the after-action report shows, because both the Interior Department’s legal office and police on-site believed “the revocation of the permit after the assaults would have further escalated the situation.”   

The incident ultimately prompted the park service to consider that traditional permitting and crowd control methods were unsuited for more combative, and possibly violent, protest events. 

“These permitted events are getting more disruptive. There is concern that conventional management methods are not addressing, or consistent with, the behavior that is increasingly exhibited during these demonstrations and new strategies likely need to be developed,” the after-action review concluded. 

The Lafayette Park protest was part of a string of demonstrations organized by the ANSWER Coalition and other groups in Washington, D.C. in 2024 that peaked around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress that July. 

One of the largest demonstrations took place on July 24 at Washington, D.C.’s Union Station. The demonstration eventually devolved into a riot during which protesters burned American and Israeli flags, defaced monuments and statutes, confronted law enforcement, and burned an effigy of the Israeli leader.

The ANSWER Coalition is part of a network of leftist protest groups orbiting around The People’s Forum and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Brian Becker, a national organizer for ANSWER, is also reportedly a “founding member” of PSL, Just the News previously reported. 

The People’s Forum is funded by wealthy communist businessman Neville Roy Singham. The New York Times reported that Singham works in Shanghai, that his efforts there are linked to the CCP, and that he has attended at least one CCP workshop on promoting the party globally. 

Most recently, the ANSWER Coalition was linked to rapidly spun up demonstrations protesting President Donald Trump’s operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, Just the News reported.