FOUR police pistols have mysteriously vanished from a Costa del Sol police station – with the force’s local chief suspecting an inside job.
Francisco Javier Casanova, the police captain in Rincon de la Victoria, made the extraordinary admission during a heated council meeting in the town near Malaga on Thursday.
Casanova said there was ‘almost absolute certainty’ that whoever took the weapons was a member of his own force.
The four handguns were discovered missing during a routine inspection of the station’s arsenal, which contains 73 pistols assigned to local officers.
Inspectors could not immediately locate 12 weapons, although seven were accounted for as belonging to officers who were temporarily off sick.
Of the remaining five guns that should have been locked away at the station, inspectors found only one.
The disappearance has sparked a criminal investigation by Spain’s Guardia Civil, which was alerted to the missing weapons at the end of July.
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Casanova told councillors that investigators believe the pistols could still be hidden somewhere inside the police headquarters.
He said: “Almost certainly, whoever took them belongs to my staff.”
The police chief described the disappearance as ‘extremely serious’ and has even asked for disciplinary proceedings to be opened against himself and a sub-inspector.
Investigators are now examining how the weapons were stored and who had access to them.
The station has also had its locks changed, while safes containing weapons and ammunition have been moved into the police chief’s office as an extra security measure.
Thursday’s emergency council meeting in Rincon came amid escalating political tensions over the incident, with three opposition parties demanding answers after the disappearance became public.
Opposition politicians called on mayor Francisco Salado and security councillor Manuela Garcia to resign over the incident.
Salado and Garcia, however, defended their handling of the affair, adding that the initial secrecy was requested by the Guardia Civil to protect the criminal investigation.
The probe continues as Guardia Civil investigators try to track down the pistols and establish whether anyone inside the force was involved.
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