By C1 Staff
BATON ROUGE, La. — A new audit has revealed that the known number of missing vests and weapons from the Louisiana Department of Corrections could be a lot greater.
WGNO reports that the report released Monday states that the probation and parole division has the largest amount of unlocated weapons and bulletproof vests at 12 and 16 respectively. They were unaccounted for from October 2010 to September 2013.
Eleven of the 12 missing weapons were stolen, according to the communications director for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections; some from officers’ vehicles and one was destroyed during a fire at an agent’s house.
The agency noted the total number of sensitive items it owned were 5,261, with 51 of those items missing. Originally it was thought that only 39 were missing.
The audit also found that when an item hadn’t been located for three consecutive years, it was removed from the department’s property record, which means that the number of items missing might have disappeared over a longer period.