Five cases of 9 millimeter Probation Department ammunition – about 5,000 bullets in all – went unaccounted for last summer at the NYPD’s Rodman’s Neck firing range in the Bronx, the Daily News has learned.
Two probation officers discovered the potential security breach in July, and notified their superiors several times, according to law enforcement sources and a written chronology of the sequence obtained by The News.
But the disclosure was kept quiet and no action was taken until December, when a complaint was made by a third probation staffer to the NYPD. The NYPD then opened an investigation.
Amaris Cockfield, a spokeswoman for Mayor Adams, said the bullets were “not properly inventoried” by probation, not lost or stolen. She declined to disclose further details.
“The Department of Probation thoroughly investigated this matter and determined the ammunition was not missing from the facility but instead was not properly inventoried,” Cockfield said. “The department has since updated its protocol to ensure proper inventory records for all equipment.”
Behind the scenes, according to the sources and the chronology, two department officials came under scrutiny for mishandling the episode. Cockfield confirmed a supervisor was suspended for 30 days and demoted.
“How do you ‘improperly inventory’ 5,000 rounds?”: a law enforcement source skeptical of the City Hall explanation. “Did they disappear into thin air?”
The episode seems to point to a larger issue with tracking ammunition and record-keeping among the range of local law enforcement agencies that use Rodman’s Neck in addition to the Police Department, according to a retired NYPD lieutenant who previously worked at the range.
“A number of agencies use the facility and the ammunition is co-mingled, so it may have been used and not replaced,” he said.
For context, the retired lieutenant said, each cop who uses the range to re-qualify on a given day is given four boxes of bullets — 200 rounds at 50 a box. Thus, 5,000 rounds is enough to cover re-qualification for just 25 officers.
Still, the incident caused a stir within the Probation Department and raised questions about whether it should have been dealt with in a more timely manner.
The Probation Department under current Commissioner Juanita Holmes has made it a priority for officers to carry firearms, which previously was more or less optional. The agency began arming probation officers back in 2003.
Probation officers had long done their firearms training at Rodman’s Neck along with agencies such as parole, correction, the MTA police and of course the NYPD. The ammunition is stored in a shared secure building but the each allotment is the responsibility of the agency that purchased it.
According to the chronology, the two junior probation officers noticed the bullets appeared to be missing in July. They notified their superiors several times. The superiors allegedly didn’t take action for reasons that are unclear.
Finally, in December, a supervising probation officer sent a written complaint to their boss who then forwarded it to the NYPD.
Two lieutenants from the Firearms and Tactics section along with an IAB Sgt. were assigned to investigate, according to law enforcement sources and the chronology. According to Cockfield, at some point, probation also started an internal investigation.
It emerged, according to the chronology, that there was little to no formal record-keeping or tracking system in Probation for the bullets.
The two probation officers who discovered the problem were transferred to other posts without explanation. One of them retired. The other has returned to work but is also thinking of retiring, the sources said.
The outcome of the NYPD review of the incident was not clear.
