Unfortunately, that is all too true. I always thought there were a lot of flunkos too — sort of like the TSA mall cops, but with more power.... They couldn’t make it as real cops, so went to the national parks. I can’t tell you how many times I was hassled — I who was another park ranger! I’d run into park visitors who were doing nothing wrong whatsoever, and hear their stories also... Sickening.
After hearing someone I’d been friends with for 20+ years justify the Tazing of an innocent dog walker, I couldn’t be friends with her anymore. Sad. The policemen I meet in our neighborhood are nicer, more intelligent, and more reasonable than my ex-friends in the NPS.
The people in Interp are a joke too. They actually make stuff up to tell the public.
The vast majority of the general public are city types, that never really get out into nature. They look forward to a park visit just to get away and see what nature is all about.
These people are prime useful idiots to be brainwashed.
Being a woodsman/hillbilly living in nature and in the woods all the time it was easy to catch the NPS Interp’s at their lies, when confronted they’d just laugh and tell me to mind my own business.