US park police lose thousands of guns

These are the ppl we're supposed to trust with gun control?

Park Police lost track of thousands of weapons, inspector general’s report says


The U.S. Park Police has lost track of thousands of handguns, rifles and machine guns in what a government watchdog agency concluded is the latest example of mismanagement on a police force trusted to protect millions of visitors to the city’s iconic monuments.

There is no indication that police guns got into the hands of criminals, but the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that the Park Police might not know if they had. In a scathing report, the authors said there is “credible evidence of conditions that would allow for theft and misuse of firearms, and the ability to conceal the fact if weapons were missing.”

The probe was launched in part because of an anonymous tip that Park Police officers were improperly taking weapons home. Investigators discovered two instances in which that had occurred, but they found many other troubling examples of mismanagement, according to the report.

Investigators found 1,400 guns that were supposed to have been destroyed or melted down. An additional 198 handguns donated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are sitting in a building in Anacostia but don’t show up in official records.

In another instance, the agency in October 2011 sent a list of 18 pistols, shotguns and rifles it described as lost or stolen to a national database. But it never launched an internal investigation. The guns, it turned out, had been destroyed or given to other agencies — or they were still in Park Police possession, according to the report. One Remington shotgun remains missing.

Investigators took an unusually harsh tone in part because they said similar problems found in 2008 and 2009 were never fixed — a symptom of “the decade-long theme of inaction and indifference” of top Park Police managers. The Washington Post obtained an advance copy of the report.

It’s unclear how long the agency has not been keeping track of its weapons, but one example in the report documents how a former police chief’s gun was missing for a decade and no one knew.

Problems uncovered by the inspector general include two officers who took guns home without permission, including a semiautomatic rifle present during the presidential inauguration in January. The report also found that a former chief kept his department-issued sidearm for 10 years after retirement without anyone noticing.

Investigators concluded that the Park Police not only can’t keep track of the guns it has but it hasn’t disposed of guns more suited for collectors than lawmen. The agency still has 20 M1 Garand rifles, the standard field gun in World War II, and four Prohibition-era tommy guns. The inspector general noted that these weapons are of “limited” use.

Park Police guns turned up in odd places. In 2011, former police chief Robert Langston, who retired in 2001, showed up at a firearms qualification course for former law enforcement officers, according to the report. Running the course was a former Park Police officer who had been a member of the department’s special weapons and tactics team. He also was an inspector general in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The official noticed that Langston’s handgun belonged to the Park Police, the report said. He seized the weapon and returned it to the agency. Current Park Police officials could not explain how the former chief kept his gun, which was “unaccounted for on inventories that followed his retirement,” according to the report.

Langston did not return a phone call seeking comment.

I wouldn't doubt for one second that some of these guns found their way into the homes of park police officials.  This happens in many sectors of our society.  I know for a fact that in other areas of business, people take stuff home that doesn't belong to them. 

Guns are expensive, so more than likely park police officials did take many of these guns home rather than destroy them.  This doesn't make it ok though to do this.  But it doesn't surprise me at all.

There is no such thing as the US Park Police. There is the USDI National Park LEOs (who are not usually referred to as park police). If they cant manage a simple fact like the name of the organization they're investigating, then I'm skeptical of the rest of the content.

Umm...are you sure?  I'm confused.  Not trying to be argumentative, but there's this
website on the USPP.

 

Bryant wrote:There is no such thing as the US Park Police.  There is the USDI National Park LEOs (who are not usually referred to as park police).  If they cant manage a simple fact like the name of the organization they're investigating, then I'm skeptical of the rest of the content.

Actually, they are the US's oldest uniformed police agency.

http://www.nps.gov/uspp/

You are thinking of "park rangers". These guys police landmarks inside cities and such.

Oh, I am indeed incorrect! My sincere apologies!

No problem.  Initially I was thinking park rangers too.