Bart Perrier began his first term as Osage County sheriff in 2025 in shock. An audit found 796 unaccounted-for items and a mismanaged evidence locker.
The missing items included 17 vehicles, 27 guns of varying sizes, 16 Flock cameras, and 20 Tasers. Auditors deemed the evidence locker uncontrolled because there were multiple master keys.
“The first few months, my mouth was wide open every day,” Perrier said.
The audit wasn’t the first to find a large number of missing items at the Osage County Sheriff’s Office. In 2017, 590 items went unaccounted for under Sheriff Ty Koch. His successor, Eddie Virden, didn’t change much when he took over, including the evidence locker protocol.
“I didn't even have a key to the evidence locker,” Virden said.
Since 2021, the Oklahoma State Auditor and Inspector has identified more than 3,000 items unaccounted for in sheriff’s departments statewide. Missing body cameras, Tasers, laptops, printers and radios are common. Dishwashers, cars, refrigerators and meat slicers are some of the stranger lost assets.
In two cases, guns were completely lost with no way to tell how long they’d been missing.
Sheriff turnover audits aren’t like typical government entity audits; they happen only at the request of the sheriff’s office and, according to State Auditor Cindy Byrd, are often requested after a contentious electoral race.
Oftentimes, the items aren’t truly missing, but weren’t inventoried properly.
In 2024 and 2025, the auditor’s office completed turnover audits at the sheriff’s departments in Atoka, Beaver, Kingfisher, Pawnee, Woods, Lincoln and Coal counties.
Atoka County Sheriff Kody Simpson said if an elected official is retiring and someone they trust is taking over, an audit may not be called. Only 47 of the 77 county sheriff’s offices have gone through a turnover audit, according to the auditor’s website.
The Osage audit
On the morning of Dec. 31, 2024, state auditors showed up at the Osage County Sheriff’s Office to check their inventory.
Virden, the former sheriff, said he didn’t know deputies had to be there with all their items for the audit. His team scrambled to get deputies who were on sick leave and vacation to show up.
Some deputies couldn’t come in. Auditors marked their assets as unable to be located despite Virden claiming they were accounted for.
It was Virden’s last day as sheriff. The audit continued without him.
Auditors gave Osage County opportunities in the following weeks to have deputies appear with all their gear so it could be accounted for, emails from the auditor’s office show.
By the time the audit concluded on Jan. 30, 2025, the long list of unaccounted-for items fell to Perrier, the new sheriff.
What was really lost
When auditors mark an item “unable to be located” in a sheriff’s turnover audit, it doesn’t mean it’s completely lost. It could mean somebody stole it and nobody knows where it is. It could mean no one could find it on the day of the audit. It could also mean nobody cared enough to help the auditors find it.
When the auditor’s team arrives, someone other than the sheriff, such as a deputy or secretary, typically leads them through the office. Audits can sometimes take days, depending on the size of the office.
Byrd said her team doesn’t give up when they can’t find something. They send a list of items that could not be found to the sheriff and give them an opportunity to find them. If the sheriff finds them, the auditors go back and verify.
In Kingfisher County, Sheriff Aaron Pitts requested an audit when he was entering office. A riot gun was missing. He later found it and attributed the loss to a misnumbered label. While his audit yielded fewer missing items than Osage County, he said the experience was exhausting.
Officials in Beaver and Osage counties said some guns flagged as unaccounted for still have not been found.
Beaver County Sheriff Scott Mitchell said he accounted for some of the guns and added them to inventory. The ones that could not be found were deemed lost and put into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center Gun File, a database accessible to law enforcement to track stolen, lost or missing weapons and those used in the commission of a felony. Law enforcement can also enter recovered weapons into the database. The data is not public.
Entering a lost weapon into the database is the only step Mitchell has taken to recover the lost guns, but he said that’s really all he can do. The guns haven’t been recovered. He said none of the guns went missing under his watch.
Floating guns
The most common audit finding was guns the sheriff purchased but failed to add to the inventory list.
Outgoing sheriffs sometimes give more specific explanations.
“The shotguns and pistols were taken off the inventory to be surplus but never were,” former Coal County Sheriff Jason Smith said. “I failed to add them back on the list.”
In Atoka County, 13 guns were found but were not on the inventory. Coal County had four guns, Lincoln County had nine, Woods County had two and Pawnee County had eight guns and one 37 mm launcher, which is similar to a flare gun.
Pawnee County Sheriff Shawn Price, Lincoln County Sheriff Kevin Garrett and Coal County Interim Sheriff Bryan Jump did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Simpson, in Atoka County, said his office added the guns to the inventory list and addressed all other issues in the audit. The office implemented an asset management system. Simpson called for the audit himself.
“I knew what was being done in the office and it wasn’t right,” Simpson said. “It had to change.”
By calling for the audit, Simpson said he wanted to prevent being blindsided and ensure he wouldn’t be held responsible for the unaccounted-for items.
Similarly, Woods County Sheriff Randy McCullough said the two shotguns found at the office that were not listed were promptly added to the inventory.
Those floating guns are more than likely the result of clerical errors, McCullough said, such as a six mistaken for a nine in a serial number that gets written incorrectly in the inventory.
The danger is that weapons not on the master inventory could be given to an employee and, if lost, leave no record of the weapon. The only way to track it then would be through county purchasing documents.
Osage now
After almost two years in the position, Perrier, in Osage County, is constructing a new evidence building for enhanced security. He and his employees are still finding items that were unaccounted for.
He said he was especially concerned about the unaccounted-for firearms, calling it unacceptable. He has since found 21 of the firearms in employees' possession. He said poor record-keeping and inventory practices caused the discrepancy. The other six guns have been added to the NCIC gun file and are considered part of an ongoing investigation.
“It’s disheartening how much unaccountability there’s been and how many thousands of dollars of taxpayer money has been lost,” Perrier said.
Auditors' records show the unaccounted-for items are worth about $1.8 million.
“Taxpayers should be concerned,” Byrd said. “Every taxpayer expects a county official to properly steward the resources assigned to them in office.”
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
