Atlanta Public Schools didn’t have its own police department, but it did have more than a dozen Glock handguns. What it didn’t have was a way of keeping track of the weapons, a standard best practice for most government agencies owning firearms.
In fact, the school district may never know how many guns it purchased or where those guns are today, Superintendent Meria Carstarphen admitted Wednesday in response to questions.
“This is the stuff that keeps me up at night,” she said.
Carstarphen held a press conference Wednesday in response to reports of a district investigation into the suspected theft of 30 handguns from the Atlanta school district.
That investigation was prompted by a June 14 call into a district ethics hotline. The caller claimed that 30 guns were stolen from the trunk of district security director Marquenta Sands Hall’s district-provided car.
There’s no evidence that claim is true, Carstarphen said, or that any firearms the district knows of are missing or stolen.
On July 1, a new district-run police force will replace the Atlanta Police Department officers who previously patrolled local schools. Carstarphen has said the in-house police force will give her more control over how officers are selected and trained and help create an environment of “love and respect” in Atlanta schools. The new force will be sworn in Thursday.
Ninety handguns purchased for the district’s new police officers are accounted for, Carstarphen said. So are 18 handguns previously purchased. Those 18 guns were mainly used by police officers hired by the district as part-time employees, district spokeswoman Kimberly Willis Green said.
The district provided purchasing records for 106 of those 108 guns. Two of the guns were provided by the Atlanta Police Department, Carstarphen said. Most of the 108 guns are in a safe. Four have been assigned to Hall or school resource officers. One was stolen in 2006 but has been recovered by the Atlanta Police Department.
As security director, Hall was responsible for the district’s arsenal, district spokeswoman Kimberly Willis Green said. Hall was recently hired for a similar position in the district’s new police department. Green said Hall would not answer questions from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But Hall told district investigators that until the purchase of guns for the new police officers, the district owned only 18 guns, Carstarphen said.
“As it stands right now, we don’t have anything currently surfacing that says that there are any other guns in inventory at this time,” Carstarphen said. Still, it’s a “fair assumption” that the district doesn’t know if any other guns were purchased and, if so, where they are, she said.
It’s not common for school districts without in-house police departments to own guns, said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, which is providing training for Atlanta Public Schools’ new officers. But it’s not unheard of.
Still, “Anyone who’s responsible for weapons should certainly have policies and procedures for maintaining inventory,” he said.
Other officials with several other local school districts’ police departments told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution they keep inventories of their weapons and store them in weapons vaults or similar areas.
The Atlanta school district has struggled to create effective administrative systems for tracking purchasing and other important areas. That makes it difficult to track down past weapon purchases, Carstarphen said. But she said the district would continue to investigate and has asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for help.
“This district under my administration stands ready to hold everyone accountable for anything that might have been inappropriate regarding any firearms or weapons in the past,” she said. “We want to be certain that there’s no way possible that these claims could possibly be true.”
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