Ahead of tomorrow’s Independence Day holiday in the United States, the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has set up a ‘task force’ to coordinate law enforcement in protecting historic monuments, memorials, statues, and federal sites.
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Chad F Wolf said of the DHS Protecting American Communities Task Force (PACT): “DHS is answering the President’s call to use our law enforcement personnel across the country to protect our historic landmarks. We won’t stand idly by while violent anarchists and rioters seek not only to vandalize and destroy the symbols of our nation, but to disrupt law and order and sow chaos in our communities.”
On June 26, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order to ensure that monuments and statues will be protected. The Order, “Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Activity,” directs DHS, within its statutory authority, to provide personnel to assist with the protection of federal monuments, memorials, statues, or property. The order gives the Portland examples of bringing down statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson; and in San Francisco, Ulysses S Grant.
As background; just as in the UK anti-racism protesters have made statuary a focus of their campaign, such as defacing the Winston Churchill statue in Parliament Square in central London, so have Black Lives Matters protesters targeted American equivalents; such as the statue of antebellum President Andrew Jackson in Washington DC, in parkland near the White House on June 22. Protesters daubed slogans and sought to pull down the statue with ropes; but were driven back by police. Mr Trump tweeted it was ‘disgraceful vandalism’ of a ‘magnificent statue’.
Four men were charged with ‘destruction of federal property’.
As a result of Mr Trump’s order, DHS created the PACT, which the department says will assess potential civil unrest or destruction and allocate resources to protect people and property. This may involve what the DHS calls ‘potential surge activity’ at critical locations. DHS’s Office of Operations Coordination will also partner closely with the Departments of Justice and Interior to set up information and intelligence sharing.
Wolf said: “As we approach the July 4th holiday, I have directed the deployment and pre-positioning of Rapid Deployment Teams (RDT) across the country to respond to potential threats to facilities and property. While the Department respects every American’s right to protest peacefully, violence and civil unrest will not be tolerated.”
