Columbus Interim Police Chief speaks on unaccounted for handguns

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – A follow up to the story we brought to you yesterday. Columbus police department still has guns unaccounted for.

Yesterday, sources told WCBI that there were 34 handguns unaccounted for within the department.

Interim chief Dorian Johnson would say it was thirty something guns initially during the inventory check and that some guns

unaccounted for goes back several years.

But he and his team have seen that number go down during investigation.

“As we’ve been checking, the numbers have been going down because we’re finding out that a lot of those guns aren’t so much missing as opposed to being out of the police department and out on the street but some of those guns hadn’t been taken off inventory because we’ve had officers that retired that have bought their guns we’ve had some officers unfortunately that have even passed from the police department where the guns haven’t been recovered from the family and different issues where some guns aren’t accounted for,” said Johnson.

Columbus City Council members, Pierre Beard and Ethel Stewart, say they appreciate the interim chief for coming in and trying to clean up the department in the one month he’s been over the position.