Philly sheriff responds to city controller report of 76 missing guns

The Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office is still missing 76 service weapons, investigators with the City Controller’s Office revealed Wednesday. 

The Controller’s office initially released a report in November 2020 on the Sheriff’s Office's gun inventory and found that 101 service firearms and 109 Protection From Abuse (PFA) weapons were missing.

According to the City Controller’s Office, the Sheriff’s Office stated during the 2024 budget hearing with City Council that all but 20 of their original 101 missing service weapons had been found. The Controller’s Office said they weren’t provided the necessary documentation to support those claims when they did a follow-up investigation, however. 

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The missing weapons include 71 handguns, four semi-automatic handguns and one shotgun, according to the Controller’s Office. 

The Controller’s Office said another review in August 2021 accounted for 16 of the original missing guns. The Sheriff’s Office provided sufficient proof for nine weapons as part of their most recent review, leaving 76 still missing, according to the Controller’s Office. 

“There needs to be sufficient identifying information to confirm the disposition of these guns,” Acting City Controller Charles Edacheril said. “This requires documentation to confirm weapons were properly disposed of, such as burned, or located and reported to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC).”

NCIC is a computerized system that helps law enforcement and criminal justice agencies capture fugitives, locate missing persons, and find and return property that was stolen or in the protection of law enforcement officers. 

The Controller's Office said the Sheriff's Office also didn't mention the status of the 109 missing PFA weapons at their budget hearing or in their press releases.

“While the Sheriff’s Office indicated that many of the missing guns were properly disposed of after the initial investigations over the last three years, the Controller’s Office found insufficient documentation to confirm the previous statements,” a Controller's Office spokesperson wrote. 

According to the Controller’s Office, the Sheriff’s Office reported that some of the guns found were given to retired officers and former employees with the department, including former Sheriff John Green who was sentenced to five years in prison on bribery charges in 2019. The Controller’s Office said that Green should turn over the gun or guns assumed to be in his possession and that the guns should be placed in NCIC as “missing” if he’s unable to confirm possession or disposal.  

“All unaccounted-for guns should be placed in NCIC as missing,” Edacheril said.

Philadelphia Sheriff's Office responds

Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal and Philadelphia Undersheriff Tariq El-Shabazz both responded to the controller's office report during a Thursday afternoon press conference.

At one point during the press conference, Bilal showed reporters photos of what the sheriff's office armory looked like when Bilal became the new sheriff in 2020. The photos showed boxes in disarray and disorganized inside of a room.

"That's where past administrations kept records in firearms," she said. "On the floor. In the corner."

Bilal also placed blame on prior city controllers.

"If the controller would have done their job ten years ago and audited that office, maybe it wouldn't have been in that condition when I took office," she said. "Maybe if they had audited it five years ago."

Bilal and El-Shabazz said the controller's report was flawed and negated the context that the past three sheriff's office administrations didn't properly label, tag or update their weapons records.

"We can't verify what came in this office in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019," El-Shabazz said. "But we can damn sure verify by everything what came in this office in 2020 to this date."

Bilal said her office tracked down what they could when she took over in 2020 and even presented their findings to the city controller's office in June.

"We concluded that 58 firearms was found," she said. "Twenty are still considered missing. We presumed 18 had been traded or burned. Three firearms were duplicates of the city's controller list."

Bilal said her office never heard back from the controller's office until this week and implied that the timing was politically motivated.

"This is September," Bilal said. "The election is in November."