A Secret Service officer in the Uniformed Division had his gun stolen from his personal car after parking it outside his girlfriend’s condo Friday night in Adams Morgan, the latest incident involving a lost or stolen weapon from the troubled agency.
The Secret Service and D.C. Metropolitan Police are now trying to find the thief in an attempt to track down the weapon and prevent it from being used in future crimes, a common problem when agents or officers misplace a gun or have it stolen either from their vehicles or homes.
The agency and police have requested footage from the condo’s cameras that show the perpetrator committing the crime, according to an email sent from Charles Thomas, the general manager of the Saxony Cooperative Apartments, which was obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Thomas told the Examiner that he sent a “privileged email” to other owners and tenants at the cooperative providing information about the stolen Secret Service gun, but declined to comment further on the email’s contents.
The Secret Service issued a statement Monday night saying it takes the incident seriously and will deal with it internally and appropriately.
“The Secret Service is aware of this incident,” the agency said. “The Secret Service takes the care and custody of our equipment, especially firearms, very seriously. This matter will be dealt with internally and in an appropriate manner.”
The agency did not respond to follow-up questions about the policies it requires agents and officers to use to secure their guns.
Secret Service agents and officers, like other law enforcement officers, go through regular firearm training, including how to secure their weapon during off-hours. That training is required for them to keep using their guns on the job.
But problems with stolen or misplaced guns are all too common within the agency, several sources said. Some of these sources say the Secret Service has a lackadaisical attitude toward firearms management and the problem is continuing to persist despite Director Joseph Clancy’s efforts to clean up the agency.
In recent years, a gun was stolen out of a car outside headquarters, another was accidentally left at a shopping mall in a Washington suburb, another was misplaced in the women’s bathroom at headquarters, and still another, which was loaded, was left in the bathroom of a plane carrying Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and reporters traveling with him during the 2012 campaign.
A reporter spotted the gun left in the bathroom of the Romney campaign plane, and then told campaign officials about it.
In addition, in 2013 a senior Secret Service agent was cut from Obama’s protective security detail after he tried to enter a women’s hotel room at the Hay Adams after accidentally leaving behind a bullet from his service weapon. The incident led internal agency investigators to inspect his government-issued Blackberry, which contained sexually charged messages to a female agent.
In some instances, the stolen guns have become sore points among agency employees who report that senior Secret Service officials have played favorites in disciplining some agents while letting others slide.
At its own inspector general’s recommendation, the agency in late 2013 established a table of penalties, which is a guide stating infractions and their corresponding level of punishment, to ensure more uniformity in its disciplinary procedures. This was imposed after the Columbia prostitute scandal broke.
In one incident, widely known within the agency, a top Secret Service agent who three sources say served as a regular on President Obama’s protective detail and drove the presidential limousine known as “The Beast” in the 2009 inauguration parade, had his gun stolen out of his work bag he left in the back seat of his car at night.
Two of those sources said the stolen gun was involved in a shooting incident the same night involving the thieves. The agent who had the gun stolen, however, was friends with the right agency officials and was never disciplined for the incident, two sources with first-hand knowledge of the case said.
Instead of being punished, he was promoted through the ranks even though at the time of the theft he was working for the division charged with ensuring that the agency complies with its policies and federal regulations.
A review of an internal Secret Service document chronicling agent and officer infractions over a five-year period, also obtained by the Examiner, shows at least 22 incidents of agents and officers failing to secure their firearms or having them stolen from their cars or residences from the fall of 2009 to the fall of 2014.
There were 20 other instances of either more generally “failing to secure Secret Service equipment,” report equipment losses or “negligent discharge of a firearm,” according to the report.
The disciplinary action taken during that time frame ranged wildly, from a mere letter of reprimand for failing to attach a child-safety lock to the weapon and having it stolen from a residence in December 2009, to a 10-day suspension for “failure to secure Secret Service-issued weapon/failure to report.”
The report lacks critical details, such as whether the disciplinary action taken was for a repeat offender. The punishment also appears to increase in severity from 2009, when letters of reprimand were common for failing to secure weapons or losing them and having them stolen, to more recently, starting in 2013, when disciplinary actions tended to include at least a one-day suspension.
The Secret Service is hardly alone in preventing firearm theft and other losses. Over the years, several other federal law enforcement agencies also have had trouble ensuring that their employees were safeguarding their firearms.
In 2010, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security found that different DHS agencies, including the Secret Service, reported 289 guns lost between fiscal years 2006 and 2008 out of the 188,548 firearms in its overall inventory.
Along with the Secret Service, DHS is the umbrella organization for the Customs and Border Protection, Federal Emergency Management Administration, Transportation Security Administration Air Marshals program, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard.
The CBP and ICE reported the majority of the losses — 243 of the 289 lost firearms, or 84 percent. The remaining 46 lost firearms, or 16 percent, were reported by the Coast Guard, the TSA and the Secret Service.
The inspector general found that DHS management of safeguards and controls over their firearms were not sufficient because the agency didn’t have specific firearms policies and procedures in place. Instead, the report found, DHS relied on the different agencies under its oversight to lay out their own policies for safeguarding weapons.
“Although some component policies and procedures were sufficient, personnel did not always follow them,” the report concluded.
“The lost firearms created unnecessary risk to the public and law enforcement personnel; in some cases state and local law enforcement officials recovered lost DHS firearms from felons and gang members,” the report stated.
Similarly, in 2008 the Justice Department inspector general found that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives, lost 76 weapons and hundreds of laptops over the course of five years because of carelessness and sloppy record-keeping.
