Photo by Mr. T in DC
The U.S. Park Police, tasked with upholding law and order at federal parks throughout D.C. and across the United States, has lost track of thousands of firearms, according to a damning report from the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General. The report, released last night, finds that Park Police are missing information on more than 1,400 handguns, rifles, and machine guns, including some models that date back to World War I.
“We found that staff at all levels—from firearms program managers to their employees—had no clear idea of how many weapons they maintained due to incomplete and poorly managed inventory controls,” the report reads. The Interior Department launched the investigation following an anonymous tip about Park Police officers taking weapons for their personal use.
The report states that while none of the missing firearms appear to have made it into criminal hands, it also concludes that the Park Police, which is overseen by the National Park Service, is currently ill-equipped to manage its arsenal. Inspectors who carried out the investigation found 1,400 more weapons than the Park Police—an agency with 640 officers spread across the nation—has files on.
Among the additional weapons are 477 military-style automatic and semiautomatic rifles, as well as several guns that “fulfilled no operational need.” In that latter category are firearms that have not been state-of-the-art in many decades. The report says that inspectors found the Park Police is holding onto 20 M1 Garand rifles and four Thompson submachine guns. The M1 Garand was the standard-issue U.S. Army rifle between World War II and the earliest phases of the American presence in Vietnam, while tommy guns are perhaps best known today as staples of Prohibition-era gangster movies.
Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers was notified in July 2011 by the department’s firearms custodian that he was unable to account for numerous weapons, the report states. But Chambers told investigators that she did not recall the memorandum warning her of the unaccounted cache.
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The report is quite damning for Chambers and her top brass. In a letter to Chambers and National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis, the report’s author says the Park Police suffer from major structural flaws.
“This report further underscores the decade-long theme of inaction and indifference of
USPP leadership and management at all levels,” Mary I. Kendall, the Interior Department’s deputy inspector general, writes. “Basic tenets of property management and supervisory oversight are missing in their simplest forms. Commanders, up to and including the Chief of Police, have a lackadaisical attitude toward firearms management. Historical evidence indicates that this indifference is a product of years of inattention to administrative detail and management principles.”
In compiling the report, investigators dropped in on Park Police weapons storage facilities in D.C., New York, San Francisco, and Brunswick, Ga. At the facility in Anacostia, inspectors turned up 198 handguns that Park Police received from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in January, but did not enter into inventory records.
The inventory records themselves were often a mess. Instead of using official forms, Park Police were found to have used informal spreadsheets and lists, with serial numbers sometimes listed incorrectly.
“I have no tolerance for this management failure,” Jarvis told The Washington Post in a statement. ““The safety and security of our visitors and employees remain our highest priority.”
The report makes several recommendations, perhaps most urgently a thorough review of the Park Police’s weapons inventory using the proper documentation. It also recommends that Chambers, the police chief, personally oversee all weapons acquisitions.
