The Office of Inspector General (OIG) has completed an investigation into actions taken by the U.S. Park Police (USPP) in response to a missing-person incident. The National Park Service (NPS) requested this investigation after its executives learned that a USPP shift commander made inappropriate comments about the woman who went missing. The NPS executives believed that the shift commander's remarks raised concerns about the sufficiency of USPP's response during the search.
On May 3, 2013, 83-year-old Victoria M. Kong went missing from Ronald Reagan National Airport. She was last seen walking toward Gravelly Point Park, over which USPP has patrol responsibility. USPP assisted the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority (MWAA) Police Department in the 3-day search for Ms. Kong, but she was found dead in a wooded area of Gravelly Point on May 6, 2013.
Our investigation revealed that the shift commander, in a recorded telephone conversation with a USPP communications sergeant, described Ms. Kong as a “9,000-year-old Alzheimer's woman” and said that she probably “went into the fucking river.” This shift commander admitted to OIG investigators that his comments were “crass” and explained that when he made them he was frustrated due to staffing shortages on his shift.
Despite the shift commander's remarks, we found that USPP's search assistance to MWAA complied with USPP's policies and procedures. As we conducted our investigation, however, we noted two issues. First, information about the case was not always effectively communicated within USPP, leaving some officers uninformed about USPP's activities during the search. And second, USPP's policy governing its response to missing-person incidents does not clearly define its role when assisting another law enforcement agency in a search.
NPS responded to our report of investigation, informing us that administrative action had been taken against the shift commander and that new policies had been implemented to address the issues raised in our report.