Swedish police officers are to receive further training after the revelation that a loaded rifle was sent through the post for forensic analysis.
The officers from Örnsköldsvik, northern Sweden, recently packed up the gun and sent it to the lab the Linköping without removing the live ammunition.
”These things happen now and again, unfortunately,” Tore Olsson of the Swedish National Laboratory of Forensic Science (Statens kriminaltekniska laboratorium – SKL) in Linköping told Dagens Nyheter (DN).
Also speaking to the paper, policeman Dick Danielsson from the station in question admitted it was a terrible mistake. ”It was lucky that nothing happened and we are treating it as a very serious matter that the weapon was sent off without anyone checking if it was loaded,” he said.
The incident has been reported to the Work Environment Authority (Arbetsmiljöverket) and a group has now been set up to issue further weapons training to officers.
Amazingly, this is not the first time something like this has occurred, with another loaded gun posted to the same lab from Halland, western Sweden, earlier in the year.
”Luckily no one on our staff has been injured so far in connection with these loaded weapons, but our personnel are very thorough and don’t take anything for granted before they have been checked,” Olsson told DN.