Attacks on US Park Police Hit All-time High

Facing growing homeland security demands, increasingly violent situations and chronic understaffing, National Park Service (NPS) rangers and U.S. Park Police officers were attacked in record numbers during 2004. According to a Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEERS) press release, NPS law enforcement officers were victims of assaults 111 times in 2004, nearly a third of which resulted in injury. This figure tops the 2003 total of 106 assaults and the 2002 total of 98.

According to PEERS, law enforcement work in the National Park Service is the most dangerous of all federal services. NPS officers are 12 times more likely to be killed or injured as a result of an assault than FBI agents.

"If anything, these assaults against park rangers are undercounted. If there is not a death or injury, pressures within a national park can cause the incident to be reported as being much more minor than it is in reality and it is not unheard of for an assault to go unreported altogether," said Randall Kendrick, Executive Director for the U.S. Park Rangers Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police. Read the entire press release here...

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