US Park Police Lost Thousands Of Weapons, Says New Report
A new US Park Police report released by the Inspector General from the Department of the Interior provides an alarming finding: Thousands of firearms have gone missing or are not documented.
The new report is especially damning of the police force, reports the Washington Post. It says the law enforcement agency responsible for protecting the millions of visitors that come to the many US national parks every year has thousands of guns that are unaccounted for.
This includes handguns, rifles, and even machine guns.
The Inspector General’s report attributes this alarming find to dangerous negligence and what they found to be “credible evidence of conditions that would allow for theft and misuse of firearms.”
The report suggested some of the missing weapons may have been willful, or at least such facts may have been willfully covered up, adding that the Park Police had “the ability to conceal the fact if weapons were missing.”
Included in the report are accounts of record gaps, such as an instance in 2011 when the agency reported 18 weapons missing or stolen. No investigation was conducted, and later it was found the weapons were actually given to other agencies or still owned by Park Police.
Findings by the Inspector General also revealed that Park Police records failed to keep documentation on nearly 200 handguns given them by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
Even one former police chief whose gun was missing for nearly ten years had not been reported.
The worst incident of negligence involved an incredible 1,400 weapons that were supposed to be melted down or otherwise destroyed. They never were and no one knows where for certain where they are or if they have been destroyed.
Investigators slammed the US Park Police and their current chief, Teresa Chambers, over what they referred to as a “lackadaisical attitude towards firearms management.”
The new watchdog report from the Department of the Interior shows has revealed that gross negligence in the US Park Police management system. It has allowed thousands of firearms to elude accountability, however a spokesperson for the National Park Service has stated that recommendations included in the report will be implemented “without delay.”
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