US Park Police said using "tear gas" in a statement was a "mistake." It just used the term again.
The new statement denying use of tear gas in a protest near the White House comes after immense criticism, including from Congress.
www.vox.com
A US Park Police spokesperson said in an interview it was a "mistake" to insist in a statement on Tuesday that it didn't use tear gas the day before in Lafayette Square to disperse a crowd ahead of President Trump's photo op, explicitly noting that pepper balls shot by officials irritate the eyes and cause tears.
"The point is we admitted to using what we used," Sgt. Eduardo Delgado said. "I think the term 'tear gas' doesn't even matter anymore. It was a mistake on our part for using 'tear gas' because we just assumed people would think CS or CN," two common forms of tear gas.
Delgado's call to me Friday was an attempt to clear up a statement the Park Police released Tuesday, the day after reporters on the scene outside the White House said officers used tear gas on peaceful protesters. The statement from acting Chief Gregory Monahan said that no tear gas was used by any federal force present, but that the Park Police itself "employed smoke canisters and pepper balls."
"I'm not going to say that pepper balls don't irritate you," Delgado said, noting they contain capsicum, an irritant derived from pepper plants. "I'm not saying it's not a tear gas, but I'm just saying we use a pepper ball that shoots a powder."
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On Friday, Delgado maintained their original statement was accurate as it relates to the Park Police: "no tear gas was used by USPP officers." US Park Police used only those non-lethal weapons as law enforcement forcibly pushed peaceful protesters away from the White House. In fact, he said — as he has before — that his agency doesn't carry tear gases known as CN, even though canisters of all of them were found on the scene. As for CS, the agency doesn't carry the specific type found on the Square, but it does carry CS in general.
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"It was kind of a fault on our part just not saying in the first place 'we did not use CN or CS, we used smoke and pepper balls,' and that would've made it a moot point," Delgado said. Some people claim we purposefully tried to mislead by "saying we didn't use tear gas, we used pepper balls. ... That was not our intention."
The goal was to be "transparent" about what the Park Police used, he continued. "Everybody went on a tangent saying 'Well, isn't a pepper ball tear gas?' And it's like, 'I don't know.' I'm just telling you what we used and what we didn't use."
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Altogether, Delgado — on behalf of the US Park Police — conceded the agency displayed an error in judgment with its emphatic Monday statement that led the Trump campaign to demand retractions from reporters, including me.
WaPo headline on Wednesday:
