from the Washington Post
By Lisa Rein, Published: May 2
The Mall, Washington’s oft-trampled symbol of democracy and its most-visited national park, heads into the summer tourist season with no Fourth of July concert, fewer Park Police officers and a whole lot of uncollected trash – all results of the spending cuts coursing through parks, museums and other cultural destinations that people come to see in the capital city.
One of the ironies of the sequester is that while the National Park Service did not have to furlough employees, the separately run U.S. Park Police did. Rank-and-file officers started taking unpaid days off this week. That means that of the 350 patrol officers, SWAT team members and detectives assigned to Washington area parks, a significant number will be missing from each shift.