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November 16, 2021

The National Park Service 86-ed an internal report on employee sexual harassment and assault, but got busted

Approximately five years ago, the National Park Service, in the face of a rising tide of complaints of sexual harassment and even several instances of sexual assault of female employees by men, did a survey and study of the issue.

And, then, 86-ed it.

Until somebody leaked that to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which in turn made it available to High Country News, which had done the original reporting on this issue in 2016.

Hcn has now dropped the leak story. My Tweets should say it all. I'll provide some light framing as needed.

I tagged Jeff St. Clair in the first one in hopes that would get it some definite coverage. He, like me, (I think) has a bit of a love-frustration relationship with HCN, but still ... he knows the explosiveness of this, and at Counterpunch has a vehicle for it.

Next?

That "paramilitary" as in "paramilitary culture," is a big thing. NPS has had more and more cops in recent years, because more and more crowding at the top parks leads to more and more issues. Its answer has been more cops first, rather than looking at things like more shuttle buses or other ways of better managing flow and usage. 

Beyond that, from what I've heard, the NPS doesn't always hire the best cops, and in many cases, their mindset is cops first, NPS employees second.

The "paramilitary" seems in part to come from the NPS' earliest history. The idea behind the word "ranger" seems to reflect that.

And, there's one other issue related to this all.

As noted, sexual assault, not just harassment, has been a problem.

In your normal private sector job, after you've been sexually assaulted, IF you're ready to go through with the criminal reporting process, you start by calling your local cops or sheriff. Even if you work for state or federal government, unless a uniformed soldier in the military on base, you call your local cops or sheriff.

Know what? In a National Park Service Unit, especially in a large national park, there IS no "local cop" other than Park Service police. Even if it wasn't a Park Service cop who was the assaulter, nonetheless, you've got a problem.

"Paramilitary culture" is bad enough. This is, if not worse, a whole nother equally bad:

I wonder if that might be exacerbated by federal hiring practices that make too many NPS jobs seasonal, rather than hiring more employees full-time year-round, while at the same time requiring the newer highers to do seasonal rotations. I'm sure that lots of younger NPS employees would accept that additional degree of stability in exchange for doing, say Big Bend for 6 months and North Cascades, or even Rocky, for the other six. You have to buy the cult to improve your chances of seasonal rehirings because of the NPS grapevine.

In any case, to people who know, like me, that the NPS really can't be trusted, the cultishness of it should really be no surprise.

So now we're going to get to the NPS response to HCN, once it found out the report was, essentially, file-13nd. We'll start here.

Problem? Beyond the next Tweet? The date on that survey is June 6, 2019, per the URL for it at the second link in the first paragraph up top. So, NPS is admitting to a nine-month delay right there.

And, that's laughable anyway!

"COVID ate my homework!"

Actually, sloth and indolence meant you needed to eat your homework yourself:

Click that link. You'll see that nothing had changed, and presumably, another 8-9 months after that survey, nothing has still changed.

Sexual harassment, and the sexual assault that sometimes accompanied it and went far beyond it, was not the only problem. Minorities, women, and LGBQ employees also claimed various forms of discrimination. Again, to correct my first tweet, the report had actually been leaked by an NPS employee to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER. It has its own summary of the shinola on the harassment, discrimination and more.

As for HCN? Good to publish it, of course. That still doesn't excuse all the things that have made this a love-frustration relationship, and still isn't enough to tempt me to start a subscription back up. Not yet.

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