Seattle cops somhow lose 23 guns — and have no idea where they went: report

The Seattle Police Department has somehow lost nearly two dozen guns in the last eight years — and nobody knows where they went.

The disturbing revelation — which is now being investigated by the Office of the Washington State Auditor — came after the Seattle cops conducted an internal audit of the missing weapons in August, according to NPR affiliate KUOW.

“We’re going to do our best to ensure that we do better,” Patrick Michaud, a department spokesperson, told the outlet. “Until we find them, we’re going to keep looking for them.”

Many of the 23 vanished firearms — some of which have been missing since 2017 — belong to training units, the department’s firing range or individual officers, the report said. The mystery highlights the department’s persistent struggle to keep its weaponry safe and secure.

Included in the list of long-gone guns are pieces of Glock pistols; a modified training shotgun that doesn’t fire bullets; a woodstock shotgun; and a rifle-and-pistol combo taken from the locker of an officer who was on military leave.

Police have entered their serial numbers in the National Crime Information Center — meaning the Seattle PD will be notified if they pop up somewhere else, outlet said.

It’s not the first time the department has had trouble with missing guns — in October 2019, a teenager waltzed out the door of a training building with an officer’s handgun.

The 18-year-old thief had just attended a youth education program run by the cops, the outlet said. He later chucked the piece off a bridge, but cops recovered it three days later.

A former police chief requested an internal review afterward, which found several vulnerabilities and inadequacies in the department’s method of storing weaponry at training facilities.

In one instance, the officers stored guns in a metal cabinet that had been designed to store office supplies, the outlet said.

The 2021 report also said the training storage system didn’t meet the requirements placed on civilian gun owners — much less the police.

A year after the stolen gun incident, police brass still hadn’t properly secured the weapons — even though the department had bought 20 padlocks to do so, the report said.

Since the 2019 incident, the Seattle cops have since changed their audit schedule and are researching other ways to track guns.

“Could be a QR code, could be a sticker of some sort, could be something else entirely,” Michaud said.

The department has also cut down the number of access points at the training facility, and given officers their own lockers for storing guns.