The Dallas Marshal’s Office has some problems: missing firearms, broken safety lockers and a lack of documentation. That's according to a recent audit.
Members of the city’s Government Performance and Financial Management Committee expressed concern over the findings during Monday’s meeting.
Across the two Marshal’s Office divisions at least five firearms are “potentially” missing. The missing weapons are “not currently used for active duty and no longer comply with” the department’s general orders, according to the audit report.
“[I’m] just very concerned,” District 1 Council Member Chad West, who chairs the committee, said during the meeting. “In my military background, if we had missing weapons, you’re looking at a dishonorable discharge.”
Four of the weapons went missing sometime between 2019 and 2023. City officials think another firearm could have gone missing — but aren’t sure.
“The Marshal’s Office said this missing firearm may not exist because of an error in the June 2024 inventory count,” the audit report found. “This could not be verified by comparing to prior records because there were no prior safe inventory records for a 10-year period dating back to 2013.
And the report also found that while there are some procedures in place to take inventory of the department’s weapons — they weren’t consistently carried out.
“I think there’s a couple of issues that were concerning to me,” David Puges, the assistant director of the Marshal’s Office, said during the meeting. “It was just the lack of documentation…going backwards, ten to 20 years backwards.”
Pughes said all the records were on paper — and the department changed over time.
“There was just a lot of movement, I think, that took place that probably also resulted in some of the lack of records,” Pughes said. “The auditors did the best that they could with our lack of documentation.”
Pughes said the issues in the department — unused weapons and partially disassembled firearms that were “just thrown into a box” — made it more difficult for auditors to figure out what was really going on.
Along with the lack of documentation and missing weapons — some of the lock boxes officers use to store their firearms when entering the jail were broken.
As of August 2024, 25% of those lockers were broken, according to the audit.
The audit found that each locker had two keys, in case one was lost.
But “if both primary and backup keys were lost, then management will break open the lockers to retrieve the gun inside, making the locker unusable.”
“I saw the pictures of [these gun lockers] and they are pretty concerning,” West said. “Do we ever have a situation where all the gun lockers are filled? Or is that not really a problem?”
Pughes said with the number of gun lockers they currently have, there has not been an issue with running out of space for officers to safely store their weapons. But he added later in the meeting that some of the lockers could have been broken for years.
District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn said the lockers are in “terrible shape.”
“…And there is no way that every single Marshal that uses it doesn’t know that its in bad shape,” Mendelsohn said and wondering if there is a process for employees to report these types of issues.
“There's a lot of things in our city that are broken that needs to be fixed and maybe the employees know and either they don’t want to tell their supervisor or their supervisor says ‘I don’t have the budget for it’ and it stays there,” Mendelsohn said.
“But if we knew about it, I think a gun locker, we’re going to get that fixed,” she added.
“Right now, I would argue that because we do have enough gun lockers…we’ve got other issues that are in that building that are very concerning for all the employees that work there,” Pughes said. “And you have to prioritize in an older facility like that was really a warehouse designed to not be a detention center and manufactured into a detention center.
The Marshal’s Office agreed to implement the auditor’s findings. That includes improving record keeping, identifying the local of missing firearms and reporting them lost and to automate the inventory process.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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