No one can find the paperwork for those certifications the Sheriff's Department said Robert Bates earned by completing hundreds of hours of training. It seems to have mysteriously disappeared right at the point where he mistook his gun for a Taser and shot a man.

This Eric Harris saga just keeps getting worse and worse. According to Tulsa World, sheriff's deputies falsified training records in order to allow Bates access to ride along with them. Some refused, and found themselves transferred.

Supervisors at the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office were ordered to falsify a reserve deputy’s training records, giving him credit for field training he never took and firearms certifications he should not have received, sources told the Tulsa World. At least three of reserve deputy Robert Bates’ supervisors were transferred after refusing to sign off on his state-required training, multiple sources speaking on condition of anonymity told the World. [...] Additionally, Sheriff Stanley Glanz told a Tulsa radio station this week that Bates had been certified to use three weapons, including a revolver he fired at Harris. However, Glanz said the Sheriff’s Office has not been able to find the paperwork on those certifications.

It gets a little bit worse even than that. Evidently the deputy who did sign off on Bates' training and certification has a new job now.

The sheriff’s deputy that certified Bates has moved on to work for the Secret Service, Glanz said during the radio interview.

Awesome.

The reporters on this story dug into the records to find those certifications, and came up short, corroborating the accounts of witnesses mentioned above.