Detainee spent hours in police station with loaded gun, found inside Leeuwarden jail

A detainee entered Leeuwarden prison last month with a loaded gun in his possession. It is almost inevitable that the man was not properly searched after his arrest and the several hours he spent at a police station in Noord-Holland, De Telegraaf reports.

The man entered the Leeuwarden prison through the visitation department, where detainees are searched for hidden items on their bodies or in their clothing. Prison staff quickly found the loaded pistol. They immediately confiscated it and alerted the police.

The police and the Custodial Institutions Agency (DJI) launched an investigation into how this could have happened. The detainee should have been searched upon his arrest and before being transported by the DJI’s transport service DV&O.

The incident left prison employees quite shaken, prison director Gino Tibboel told the Telegraaf. They didn’t feel threatened but were surprised to be suddenly confronted with a loaded gun.

There is little chance that the man could have succeeded in smuggling the gun into his cell, according to Tibboel. There are metal detectors at the gates, and the search in the visitation department is quite thorough, as the weapon's discovery showed.

“But he was in the van of the DV&O with a gun during transport, and he also carried it with him at the station before that. You don't even want to think about what could have happened. We were shocked.”