Posted on 07/02/2008 1:24:59 PM PDT by neverdem
City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. released an audit on Tuesday morning finding that the Police Department’s Manhattan Property Clerk Division had “exhibited disturbingly poor controls over weapons in its custody — with many of them initially missing.” The audit “found a stunning lack of organization, order and control,” Mr. Thompson said at a news conference in Lower Manhattan.
The Property Clerk Division safeguards property, including cash, narcotics, rifles and handguns. The property is categorized as arrest evidence, materials kept for investigative or safekeeping purposes, and the property of deceased individuals.
The department has established five Property Clerk Division offices, one in each borough, to accept and safeguard the property in custody. This audit focused on the Manhattan office and its controls over cash and firearms recovered from the 1999 to 2007 fiscal years. The 33-page audit [pdf] found the handling of cash to be adequate, but identified problems in the handling of firearms:
Officials could not immediately account for or retrieve from storage 94 of the 324 sampled firearms brought in for safekeeping, even after several weeks. The office failed to record pertinent information that would permit easy tracking of the firearms in its custody. For instance, logbooks were incomplete or had inaccurate information. Rifles were stored “in a disheveled manner,” on the floor and in piles; some lacked identifying tags. Firearms were kept by the office longer than required by police regulations, which require that firearms be reclaimed or disposed of after one year. The office couldn’t accurately account for the number of firearms in its custody, since there are no written police procedures governing firearm inventories. The division does not maintain an electronic database of property, relying on manual records. But the Police Department has chosen a contractor to build a Property Evidence Tracking System. “It’s disgraceful...,”
(Excerpt) Read more at cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Remonstrance of the Inhabitants of the Town of Flushing to Governor Stuyvesant, December 27, 1657
I would imagine that quite a few seized firearms that were left in “disheveled piles” with no tags are now residing in some cop’s collection.
Thanks for the link on your thread! Have a Happy Fouth of July!
Here’s a city that wants to disarm each and every citizen, and it can’t even control the guns locked up in its own police department. The irony is almost unbearable.
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“As for firearms, it is important to note that every firearm was also accounted for, albeit the fact that some required a prolonged effort to locate, given the fact that firearms may at times be removed from their original storage position for court appearances, destruction, etc.”
....frameups, murder and as dropguns.
watchin too many cop-shows, are we?
Security surveillance tapes: the new cop-show.
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