The U.S. Park Police has lost track of a huge supply of handguns, rifles and shotguns, according to a report released Thursday on the law enforcement agency responsible for safeguarding the National Mall and critical American landmarks.
In the scathing report, the inspector general's office of the Department of Interior faults staff at the agency for having no idea how many weapons they control and says the department has no clear policies or procedures for investigating missing weapons. The office said top managers, including the police chief, have shown 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," deputy inspector general Mary Kendall wrote to Jonathan Jarvis, the director of the National Park Service, in a letter that accompanies the report.
While surveying Park Police field office armories, investigators found more than 1,400 extra and unassigned weapons that were intended to be destroyed. They also found 198 handguns that were transferred from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and stored in an operations facility firearms room without being recorded in an inventory system.
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