Controller’s investigation: the office cannot account for more than 200 guns

City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart’s office reported that the Sheriff’s Office could not account for at least 101 service firearms — nine long guns, 26 handguns, and 66 other guns — plus 109 guns surrendered in protection-from-abuse cases between 1997 and 2015. The probe, begun in November 2019 after a confidential complaint, described poor recordkeeping, a lack of policies for managing guns, and haphazard storage in boxes, barrels, cabinets, and piles on the floor.

Much of the dysfunction was attributed to prior administrations; former Sheriff Jewell Williams’s office had given the probe “considerable pushback.” Bilal responded that she had implemented new internal audit procedures and weapon-tracking software. In 2023, the controller’s follow-up review still considered 76 service firearms and 109 of the surrendered weapons unaccounted for.