“Drug-addicted rats” are eating narcotics seized and stored by Houston police, prompting a change in how long the department is required to store the evidence, officials said.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare and Houston Police Chief J. Noe Diaz on Friday announced new steps to dispose of drugs and other evidence kept at police headquarters downtown, some of which has been sitting there for decades, attracting rodents, even though cases they are linked to have long been adjudicated.
About 1.2 million pieces of evidence are kept in the evidence room downtown and at a second location, a property warehouse, including hundreds of thousands of pounds of drugs, officials said.
“We got 400,000, pounds of marijuana in storage,” Whitmire said. “The rats are the only ones enjoying it.”
Teare said Friday that drug evidence collected before 2015 that is no longer needed for cases will be destroyed. An old rule did not allow for drug destruction unless the case predated 2005.
His office will use its funds to dispose the drugs, Teare said.
A new position has been created in his office, filled by a senior attorney, who will work with law enforcement to help destroy evidence held at the two locations upon the immediate completion of a case, Teare and Houston police spokesperson Jodi Silva said.
Prosecutors sent notifications this week to defense attorneys representing 3,600 open cases involving drug evidence, explaining that rats have been eating drugs held in the downtown evidence room, Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, said Wednesday.
He said that of the open cases, only one case has evidence deemed compromised by rodents.
Asked if the rodent problem in the downtown evidence room could compromise convictions, Lemaitre declined to answer, explaining he’s not an attorney.
Peter Stout, president and CEO of Houston Forensic Science Center, said at the media briefing that evidence held in storage rooms attract rodents and critters of all types. It is an issue seen nationwide, Stout said.
“This is a problem for property rooms everywhere in the country, rodents, bugs, fungus, all kinds of things, love drugs,” he said. “This is difficult getting these rodents out of there. I mean, think about it. They’re drug-addicted rats. They’re tough to deal with.”
To illustrate the problem, Diaz, the police chief, on Friday showed reporters cocaine seized in 1996.
He said of the suspect, “He pleaded to 20 years. He’s already out.”
Diaz said evidence seized that “has no more value within our legal system” must be destroyed. He also showcased marijuana from 1993 and said, “It just attracts rodents.”
“It’s not something that we can continue to do as a professional police agency,” he said.