According to officials, the length of time Houston police are obligated to keep the evidence has changed because “drug-addicted rats” are consuming drugs that the department has confiscated and stored.
Houston Police Chief J. Noe Diaz, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare, and Houston Mayor John Whitmire announced new measures on Friday to get rid of drugs and other evidence that has been stored at police headquarters downtown. Some of this evidence has been there for decades, drawing rodents, despite the fact that the cases it is connected to have long since been decided.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds of drugs are among the approximately 1.2 million pieces of evidence stored in the downtown evidence room and at a second facility, a property warehouse, according to officials.
Whitmire stated, “We have 400,000 pounds of marijuana in storage.” Only the rats are having fun with it.
Drug evidence gathered prior to 2015 that is no longer required for cases will be destroyed, Teare announced on Friday. Drug destruction was prohibited by an outdated rule unless the case was before 2005.
According to Teare, his office will dispose of the narcotics using its budget.
A senior lawyer has been assigned to a new role in his office, assisting law enforcement in destroying evidence stored at the two sites as soon as a case is concluded, according to Teare and Houston police spokesperson Jodi Silva.
Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, stated Wednesday that prosecutors notified defense lawyers in 3,600 open drug evidence cases this week that rodents had been consuming pharmaceuticals stored in the downtown evidence room.
Only one of the open cases, he claimed, contains proof that rodents have tampered with.
Lemaitre refused to respond when asked if the rodent issue in the downtown evidence room could jeopardize convictions.
The Houston Forensic Science Center’s president and CEO, Peter Stout, stated during the media conference that rodents and other animals of all kinds are drawn to evidence kept in storage rooms. “It is a nationwide issue,” Stout stated.
Property rooms around the nation are affected by rats, bugs, fungi, and other issues, including love drugs, he claimed. Getting these rodents out of there is a challenge. I mean, consider it. They are rats with drug addictions. They are difficult to manage.
Police Chief Diaz showed reporters cocaine confiscated in 1996 on Friday to highlight the issue.
Regarding the suspect, he stated, He begged for twenty years. He’s already gone.
According to Diaz, any confiscated evidence that is no longer useful to our legal system needs to be destroyed. Additionally, he displayed marijuana from 1993 and remarked, “It just draws rodents.”
“It s not something that we can continue to do as a professional police agency,” he stated.