Valdez’s gun not only one missing
Inquiry in Dallas found problems with property room
AUSTIN — On top of a filing cabinet in room 100, next to a box of miscellaneous guns.
That’s where the Beretta 9 mm pistol issued to former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez sat during her unsuccessful campaign for governor, as the reportedly missing firearm fueled the only attack ad against her in the race.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott slammed Valdez in a billboard and an online ad with the punchline: “And she can’t even keep track of her gun.”
But a recently concluded internal investigation by the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department obtained by Hearst Newspapers reveals that the former sheriff’s gun wasn’t the only one lost in the department’s property room.
A flash drive with a password known to only one employee was the key to the department’s system for tracking the weapons assigned to more than 340 deputies.
“If anything did happen to the property room clerk, the department would lose its entire county weapons inventory, as the spreadsheet is password protected, with no one else having the password,” the internal investigation found.
What’s more, the hunt for Valdez’s gun turned up several misplaced county firearms, including a Desert Eagle pistol and a Colt .45 that were missing from the inventory list. Others were recorded incorrectly, with the database showing them checked out when they were really on the shelf, according to the investigation records.
Usually, law enforcement agencies keep tight control over their weapons inventory to ensure guns aren’t lost or stolen, said Philip Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
“You don’t want those guns floating into the wrong hands,” said Stinson, who tracks police-involved crimes across the nation. In the past, officers have been arrested for selling their service weapons or taking them home to keep, Stinson said.
No guns are currently reported missing from Dallas County Sheriff’s office, spokesman Raul Reyna said.
The internal investigation ended with a mea culpa from the Sheriff ’s Office and a reprimand and reassignment for a deputy overseeing the property room.
Reyna said property room procedures are now being updated under a new section chief.
Valdez, who was Dallas County sheriff for 12 years, declined to comment on the internal investigation findings. She has said she “followed protocol” to return the service weapon.
The investigation found Valdez did turn in the Beretta after resigning last December to run for governor.
Two employees in the property room signed paperwork at that time that showed they had taken custody of the weapon. But neither remembered doing so when questions arose last spring about the gun’s whereabouts, records show.
When a search of the property room didn’t turn up the weapon, the Sheriff’s Office reported the gun missing or stolen in July.
A search in mid-August turned up the Beretta. But the clerk who found it didn’t know the serial number, so the weapon wasn’t identified at the time, records show.
In another search of the property room the next week, officials found the pistol on top of a file cabinet in an “unlabeled storage box.” With it was a card dated Jan. 1 that said the weapon was “returned to the property room from Lupe Valdez-Sheriff,” records show.