When former Police Commissioner George A. Farrelly -- Gov. Alexander A. Farrelly's nephew -- needed to borrow some extra guns for his private security firm, he knew where he could get them: the V.I. Police Department.

Lt. Howard Daniels, the police training officer, went to the department's St. Croix armory in May 1991 and got four .38-caliber six-shot revolvers for Farrelly's company to use. Daniels was in charge of the armory, but he was not authorized to let anyone outside the department take guns, says Police Commissioner Anthon Christian.

Top police brass say they knew nothing about the loan until one of the guns turned up five months later -- in the hands of a man with a criminal record.

The man, Ezekiel Harris, 25, was picked up by police Oct. 10, 1991, on gun possession charges. Police arrested Harris after an officer looked inside a parked Mitsubishi Mirage in the Mon Bijou area and spotted the gun on the front seat. Harris, who was standing nearby, saw the officer and started to walk away. The officer caught him and, police say, he then admitted he was the driver.

Firearms specialist Sgt. Gregory Bennerson ran a trace on the weapon. The trace showed it to be one of the four lent to Farrelly.

Bennerson says his superiors showed little interest in the case when he reported where the gun came from.

"We were all irritable as hell," Bennerson recalls. "Nobody seemed to care and the explanation we were given for the guns being loaned didn't make sense."

Police believed Harris, who had a previous arrest on larceny charges, stole the gun two days earlier from a vehicle driven by a female security guard who worked for GAF, Farrelly's firm. The vehicle was parked near the Hess container port.

Harris pleaded guilty June 22, 1993, to gun possession charges. He was never charged with the theft of the gun. A police probe revealed that a GAF official gave the gun to the guard, whose name has been withheld by police, to use on the job --even though she was not licensed to carry a gun.

Illegal possession of a firearm carries a minimum six-month sentence.

The police never took any action against the guard or her boss. A gun possession charge against Harris was dropped.

And it was only last year, after an Interior Department Inspector General's audit of the Police Department began, that Police Commissioner Anthon Christian reprimanded Daniels for taking the guns out of the police armory and giving them to someone outside the department.

The audit report recommended that the case be turned over to the Attorney General's Office to determine whether criminal charges should be filed against Daniels, the security guard and Farrelly and his GAF managers.

But Joann Francis, spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office, says the Police Department never told her office about the case.

The incident is not an isolated example of how the V.I. Police Department fails to keep track of weapons it is supposed to have under its control.

Since 1991, four guns issued to St. Thomas police officers have been used in crimes, according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent Jim McCall, who traced the weapons for the police.

Of the four guns, only one had been reported missing by the officer who was supposed to have it.

McCall says one of the guns was used in a murder in 1991 or 1992. He doesn't recall the name of the murdered person.

Police officials say they have no records showing that a gun issued to an officer was used in a homicide.

"I can't recall any incidents in which a stolen police gun was used in a homicide," says former St. Thomas Police Chief Raymond L. Hyndman. "That's something we would take very seriously."

But the incident was mentioned in the Inspector General's report -- a report the police have had for a year.

Inspector General's investigators found the department was either negligent or careless in record-keeping regarding guns.

The report said that between 1991 and 1992 nine guns were reported stolen or lost by officers. One weapon later turned up in police storage.

The report added that replacement guns were issued "without documentation disclosing the circumstances under which the originally issued weapons had been lost or stolen."