The Associated Press says thieves have robbed a police station in Carletonville, west of Johannesburg, South Africa, leaving nothing behind

“It’s a very bizarre situation,” [Democratic Alliance] police spokeswoman Dianne Kohler Barnard told AFP.

“We have a police station being robbed of everything. Stripped. It’s more than robbed. It’s absolutely gutted.”

She said the thieves had stolen toilets, cupboards, windows, doors and even the kitchen sink.

The station was meant to be guarded by private security paid by taxpayers. This is a great example of outsourcing failure. It raises the question of why the police did not guard it themselves.

On the other hand, while this might seem funny, there are worse stories. Sometimes even the police have trouble preventing a station robbery while they are in it. Trenton, NJ gives us an example from earlier this year.

A convicted thief walked past an unmanned security post at city police headquarters and made his way into the detective bureau, where he allegedly stole a cop radio, a computer monitor and a sergeant’s attache case.

[…]

“Security is a major concern here, but we have officers who prop doors open to what are supposed to be secure areas,” an officer said.

Last year in North Bend, OR a man kicked in a door at a police station and stole two tazers, a radio and took the keys to a police cruiser:

Finder, 26, faces just about every charge the police could think up, including burglary, possession of burglary tools, theft, unlawful use of a motor vehicle, unlawful entry into a motor vehicle, criminal mischief, criminal trespass, tampering with physical evidence and reckless driving, after he allegedly committed a brazen raid on the police station in downtown North Bend last Wednesday.

The difference in these three cases is that the latter two in America involved burglars who tried to sell stolen police equipment. The first case is far less likely to be prosecuted successfully as the goods stolen were regular office building furnishings.