Exclusive: Stun gun missing for seven months before police force noticed

West Yorkshire Police realised the weapon was lost when it carried out an audit of equipment at its public order training ground in Leeds. But an official report reveals officers were unable to say exactly when it went missing, only that it vanished sometime between July 2010 and February 2011.

The document, obtained by the Yorkshire Post under the Freedom of Information Act, makes seven recommendations for how the region’s largest police force could improve the way it keeps its training weapons.

The peer review report was written by South Yorkshire Police’s head of operational support services, Chief Superintendent Keith Lumley, whose responsibilities include firearms training.

Chief Supt Lumley was asked to look into the case by Britain’s most powerful police body, the Association of Chief Police Officers.

West Yorkshire Police has failed to trace the weapon, despite appealing for help from the public in April, but the force said the stun gun’s battery would have probably run out by then.

It is illegal for a member of the public to hold a Taser.

Chief Supt Lumley criticised West Yorkshire’s storage of training Tasers, which were held separately from Tasers used in operations and more conventional firearms.

But he praised senior officers for their handling of the problem after the Taser was reported missing.

“The management, storage and audit of Taser within the public order training unit... were neither effective nor efficient and undoubtedly led to the loss of the Taser device that precipitated this peer review. Senior management within West Yorkshire Police, however, immediately put in place measures to address this problem as soon as the loss of the device was made known to them.

“The lack of robust audit process caused the loss to go unnoticed for a considerable amount of time and a maximum period far in excess of that which would occur under the firearms management processes.”

Chief Supt Lumley said: “The loss of the Taser unit that led to this peer review appears to be an isolated occurrence due to lack of application of basic good practice in one section of West Yorkshire Police.

“Senior managers took immediate action to address the security and audit lapses within the public order training unit.”

West Yorkshire Police’s lead officer for Taser use, Assistant Chief Constable Mark Milsom, said: “We immediately acted to prevent it happening again and asked South Yorkshire Police to independently look at our management arrangements to see if they could identify any further lessons. We welcome their report.”