This is troubling…

U.S. Park Police Lost Track of 1,400 Guns, According to Internal Investigation

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.