The U.S. Secret Service issued a correction to a previous statement on June 13, saying that an agency employee had used pepper spray in response to an “assaultive individual” during efforts to secure Lafayette Park earlier this month.
On the issue of methods used to disperse the crowd, acting Chief Gregory Monahan said that officers employed the use of “smoke canisters, stinger balls, and pepper balls” to respond to protesters who were more combative.
“On June 1, USPP officers and other assisting law enforcement partners operating under the command of the USPP did not use tear gas or Skat Shells to close the area at Lafayette Park,” Monahan said in the statement.
The Trump administration received broad criticism for its handling of protesters near the White House on June 1. The protesters, who were reportedly demonstrating peacefully, were cleared from the area shortly before President Donald Trump and several of his aides made their way across the area to visit the nearby St John’s church.
Some media reported that the protesters were forcefully removed using tear gas and rubber bullets in order to make way for Trump’s visit to the church, but Attorney General William Barr has repeatedly denied that the two events had any correlation.
Barr said that the decision to clear the park was made before he knew that Trump was going to speak there, and that it was “not an operation to respond to that particular crowd.”
“It was an operation to move the perimeter one block,” the attorney general said.
Barr said the decision was made in response to violent riots in Lafayette Square over the previous few days.
“On Sunday [May 31], things reached a crescendo. The officers were pummeled with bricks. Crowbars were used to pry up the pavers at the park, and they were hurled at police. There were fires set, in not only St. John’s Church, but a historic building at Lafayette was burned down,” he said.
He said these incidents prompted the Park Police on May 31 to prepare a plan “to clear H Street and put ... a larger perimeter around the White House so they could build a more permanent fence on Lafayette.” He added that he gave the green light to the plan at 2 p.m. the next day.
“Police have to move protesters, sometimes peaceful demonstrators, for a short distance in order to accomplish public safety. And that’s what was done here,” Barr said.
