Tuesday, November 03, 2015

It's About The Small Things: An Accurate Inventory Matters

Knowing what you have, and what you've done away with, can prevent embarrassing situations.

Situations like this one:

The Detroit News: Report: Guns, radios missing from police department

Apparently the state of accounting for the inventory in the Michigan town of Memphis police department is a bit of a mess right now, and considering they went through 4 chiefs in 5 years it's likely that the important but not urgent stuff got overlooked without consistent management.

A police-issued shotgun, two handguns, at least three police radios and a long list of evidence are unaccounted for at a small Michigan police department, according to a report from an outside agency.

It's highly likely no crimes of commission occurred, but instead crimes of omission led to the items becoming missing. Most likely the items that are missing were either surplussed out or destroyed and not properly removed from the department's books.

It's always possible that someone took them home with them, but that tends to be pretty rare, and the most likely explanation is that they were not keeping up with the unglamorous but necessary job of keeping their records accurate, or they thought someone else was doing it when they weren't.

So, when's the last time you inventoried your important items?

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