To get rid of 'drug-addicted' rats, Houston police clean up evidence room

[LeftInTX]

Although crowded evidence lockers are a problem police departments nationwide struggle with, legal experts warn that the urge to throw out old evidence should be tempered, because one never knows what could be useful for future investigations and as forensic technology advances. But allowing seized narcotics to pile up can also threaten the troves of more valuable evidence by attracting pests, said Peter Stout, who leads the Houston Forensic Science Center.

“They’re edible, they’re tasty, they’re all kinds of things. You can’t store large quantities of drugs without expecting some of these things to happen,” Stout said at the news conference, adding that the Houston police also have hired exterminators. “But this is difficult getting these rodents out of there. … They’re drug-addicted rats. They’re tough to deal with.”

Burning old drugs could incur costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, because it must be done in accordance with environmental guidelines, said Houston’s police chief, J. Noe Diaz. The district attorney’s office said it had completed its first burn of 15,000 pounds of narcotics on Thursday.

“It costs a lot of money to destroy illicit narcotics, and so the DA’s office is going to utilize funds that we control to help the city with this immediate problem,” Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/01/21/get-rid-drug-addicted-rats-houston-police-clean-up-evidence-room/

https://wapo.st/4h4RQ4D