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For rats in Texas, 4/20 has come early.
Houston-area rodents have forced police in the area to change the way they operate after developing an addiction to drugs stored in station lockers.
“We got 400,000 pounds of marijuana in storage,” Houston Mayor John Whitmire told NBC. “The rats are the only ones enjoying it.”
The mayor and law enforcement officials have now decided to dispose of the evidence sooner to stop the rodents from getting their fix.
To illustrate the problem, Houston police Chief J. Noe Diaz pointed to one piece of cocaine evidence from 1996 that was still in the lockup. The individual tied to the drugs pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and has since been released, he said.
He added that keeping the decades-old drugs was “not something that we can continue to do as a professional police agency.”
City officials said that 1.2 million pieces of evidence were being kept in a downtown evidence room and at a second warehouse. That evidence includes hundreds of thousands of pounds of confiscated drugs.
The city will destroy any drug evidence collected before 2015 that is no longer needed to adjudicate a case. Under the previous protocol, evidence could only be destroyed if it came into the department’s care prior to 2005.
Peter Stout, the president of the Houston Forensic Science Center, said during a press conference that infestations targeting long-dormant drug stashes are not a Houston-specific issue.
“This is a problem for property rooms everywhere in the country,” he said. “Rodents, bugs, fungus, all kinds of things love drugs.”
The department first became aware of the issue last October. Stout said they tried to hire professional exterminators to deal with the problems, but the rodents’ drug use had made them “tough.”
“They have had professional exterminators involved, but this is difficult getting these rodents out of there,” Stout said. “I mean, think about it, they are drug-addicted rats. They’re tough to deal with.”
The city also created a new position at the police station to help manage evidence. A senior attorney will work alongside the police to identify evidence that can be destroyed immediately after a trial or legal hearing concludes.
Prosecutors informed defense attorneys representing clients with open drug cases about the rat infestation, according to Houston officials.
Only one open case has been affected by the drug-eating rats, according to the city.
