‘They’re all high’: New Orleans police chief says rats eating marijuana in evidence room

NEW ORLEANS — This is quite a rat’s tale.

>> Read more trending news

Law enforcement officials in New Orleans said they are contending with heavy mold and deteriorating conditions in the city’s aging police headquarters. But their biggest concern centers around a group of sneaky rodents that have broken into the department’s evidence room to munch on marijuana, NOLA.com reported.

New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told the City Council’s Criminal Justice Committee that the rats are getting out of hand.

“The rats are eating our marijuana,” Kirkpatrick said. “They’re all high.”

Kirkpatrick added that the intruders have left less savory evidence of their appearance -- rat droppings on desks, WWL-TV reported. Cockroaches have also infiltrated headquarters, although it was unclear whether they had also gotten into the stash of weed.

“It is not just at police headquarters. It is all the districts. The uncleanliness is off the charts,” Kirkpatrick told committee members, according to NOLA.com. “The janitorial cleaning (team) deserves an award trying to clean what is uncleanable.”

Kirkpatrick was asking committee members to relocate police department headquarters to a new location downtown, according to the newspaper. The city council is considering a 10-year lease on two upper floors of 1615 Poydras Towers, NOLA.com reported. The site is across the street from the Superdome, according to WWL.

The committee voted to approve the lease for a new location, according to the television station. According to Gilbert Montano, the city’s chief administrative officer, the rent will cost $670,000 annually.

“I think it’s going to be somewhere between two ($200,000) to $300,000 to actually physically move them and then an additional amount of money to have working desks, chairs, networking, and items that would typically go into a move,” Montaro said, according to WWL.

The agreement now goes to the full council for approval, NOLA.com reported.

Montano called the approval a big step, that could foreshadow plans to vacate other buildings in the justice complex, according to the news outlet.

© 2024 Cox Media Group