Plastic Police Guns

In August 2018, military/police auditors in Capiata, Paraguay, discovered that 42 assault rifles had gone missing from the police armoury .....

FN FAL Rifles Are Popular On Black Market

...... and that they had been replaced with wooden and plastic toy replicas.

An audit then found that in all another 90 small arms (police officers hand guns) were also missing. The original guns had been declared 'obsolete' and placed into secure storage in the city of Capiata. Obviously someone hadn't agreed with the idea that they were obsolete, and had decided that they still worked fine.

The missing FN FAL rifles can fetch up to $10,000 (£7,785) on the black markets and a number have turned up in the hands of Brazilian gangs. The police officer in charge of the armoury was replaced, but no reported arrests have been made to date.

Actually its surprising how dishonest or incompetent the police can be ... especially where guns are concerned:

Richard Rockey, 59, appeared in court in May 2023, charged with the theft of an air rifle and an air pistol. The retired police officer was accused of stealing the two weapons from Avon and Somerset Police in England. He faces a four or five-day trial which is due to start on May 20, 2024.

In South Africa two senior police officers, Christiaan Prinsloo and David Naidoo, stole guns from their own police station armoury in the Western Cape in 2007, establishing a lucrative business in the trade of illegal guns, with their main customers being gangs on the Cape Flats. - Between 2007 and June 2016, the firearms were found to have been used in the commission of at least 2,784 crimes in the Western Cape alone – of which 1,066 were murders and 1,403 attempted murders.

In Puerto Rico - Former police officer William Cintrón-Rivera, a.k.a. “El Kid/Kid” was sentenced to eight years in prison for the theft of 54 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition from the Puerto Rico Police Bureau (PRPB), Guayama headquarters on July 17, 2019.

Around 2002, a British Army weapon went missing. In 2006 it was used to shoot a police officer. While in Northern Ireland, the Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI) admitted in a freedom of information request in 2015, that a total of 145 firearms were lost, with 14 of those being PSNI issue weapons. The figures show that 131 disappeared from the old Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), before the formation of the PSNI in 2001. 79 rounds of ammunition have also vanished, the vast majority of which are 9mm.

Amongst the missing weapons were:

• A Heckler and Koch MP5 machine gun.
• A M1 Carbine rifle.
• A Sterling machine gun.
• 16 Webley revolvers.
• Two Smith and Wesson pistols.
• 74 Walther 9mm pistols.
• 41 Ruger .357 magnum revolvers.
• A Heckler and Koch G33 rifle, and
• Eight Glock 9mm pistols.

Columbus, Ohio - in November 2023: An assault rifle, a handgun, 500 rounds of ammunition and two bulletproof vests were taken from the boot (trunk) of an unmarked police vehicle parked at an officer’s house. Columbus Police Department policy allows officers to take their vehicles home.

August 2023 - Syracuse, N.Y. -- The Syracuse Police Department is conducting an internal investigation after two officers had three guns - including a service weapon - stolen from their Camillus home. The department released the names of two officers- Nica Pascarella and Emily Pascarella. Both the officers are married and were on vacation around the 14th July, and had someone watching their home when the weapons were stolen.

“We are conducting an internal investigation to determine if any rules, regulations or policies were violated in relation to the incident,” said Capt. James Milana, a Syracuse police.

In Kenya, guns are regularly stolen from police stations: November 2022 - Police in Kipasi police post in Mbita, Homa Bay, launched a search to recover four firearms stolen from the police post. All the G-3 rifles were recovered and only the AK-47 assault rifle was still missing. While in April 2019, thieves took advantage of Champions League football on TV, to steal guns from an unmanned police station in Kenya. The officers allegedly shut down their post in the western county of Nandi, to go and watch Barcelona beat Manchester United .... or that's what they told fellow officers.

75 Weapons Stolen Lesotho

In November 2021 Lesotho - 75 guns that were stolen from the Mafeteng Police Station armoury with inside help from corrupt police officers and were sold to local Famo gangs (followers of a unique, accordion-based, musical tradition known as Famo), who are largely responsible for the killing sprees in Lesotho and at several illegal mining sites in neighbouring South Africa.

In Uganda January 2021, six police officers were arrested in Kampala, after guns were stolen from the Central police station. The six were supposed to be guarding the armoury when the thefts occurred - two AK47's and 60 bullets went missing. While in 2013 a prison armoury was 'raided' and stole two sub-machine guns and 54 bullets - two prison warders were arrested.

In Israel April 2017: Approximately 30 guns were stolen from an armoury on a Israeli Defence Force military base in southern Israel, prompting a search for the weapons and the thieves.

In Papua New Guinea - according to a report - Thousands of small arms and tons of ammunition were imported for police use, with a large proportion of these having gone missing. Between January 1989 and September 1995, the police acknowledged the disappearance of about 85 high-powered military firearms. In December 2000, almost 100 police firearms were reported missing, including ten machine guns, 32 M16 automatic assault rifles, 25 SIG Sauer pistols, and five semi-automatic shotguns, along with thousands of rounds of ammunition. An audit the following year estimated that as many as 600 firearms were missing from police armouries.  

And you have to wonder if they aren't sometimes part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

Update 01/05/2024

Colombia South America: During recent inspections of just two military bases, in Colombia - Tolemaida and La Guajira - on 12 February and 1 April it was found that millions of rounds of bullets plus other military ordnance were missing. 

At Tolemaida base, there was a shortfall of more than 808,000 bullets and nearly 10,000 hand grenades fewer than the inventory listed on official records. While at La Guajira, the reported discrepancies included nearly 4.2 million bullets and more than 9,300 grenades. Additionally this base had also 'lost' two Spike missiles, 37 Nimrod missiles and 550 rocket-propelled grenades.

Further inspections of military bases across the country are being planned, where even more weaponry is expected to be found as 'missing'. Much of Colombia's military weaponry is funded by the US via military aid. Colombian President Gustavo Petro said that internal corruption is solely to blame.

"The only way to explain this type of lacking [inventory] is that there has existed, for a long time, networks of people in the armed forces and civilians dedicated to mass commercialisation of arms, using legal arms from the Colombian state."

Military personnel had sold the weapons to arms traders, and which were then sold on and fuelled conflicts abroad, such as in Haiti, and also were used against Colombia's own military by its many para-militaries. Investigations are now underway and  some officials have already been moved from their posts. 

More than 450,000 people have been killed in Colombia's many decades of conflict involving government forces, left-wing guerrilla groups and right-wing paramilitary forces.