Rats eat confiscated marijuana from New Orleans police station’s evidence room

Rodents disrupted drug enforcement operations in Louisiana. Photo / 123RF

A pack of rats invaded a New Orleans police station and ate a stash of marijuana in the building’s evidence room.

Anne Kirkpatrick, the police superintendent, told the city council on Monday that an infestation of the rodents had played havoc with the force’s headquarters.

“The rats are eating our marijuana,” she told the council’s criminal justice committee. “They’re all high.”

The story of the skunk-swallowing rodents was Ms Kirkpatrick’s best attempt to persuade the New Orleans authorities to allow police to move into a new high-rise building, after months of maintenance issues at their current premises.

Ms Kirkpatrick said the building on New Orleans’s Broad Street had become infested with cockroaches, rats and other pests, which defecated on officers’ desks and destroyed police property.

“It is not just at police headquarters. It is all the districts. The uncleanliness is off the charts,” she said.

“The janitorial cleaning [team] deserves an award, trying to clean what is uncleanable.”

The 1968 headquarters, which is home to around 400 staff, has suffered from broken elevators and air conditioning, forcing employees to work from home for months at a time.

City council members said they may be required to move New Orleans’s law enforcement authorities into temporary accommodation until a new building can be found.

Oliver Thomas, who chairs the committee, told nola.com that he was “surprised” to hear of rats eating cannabis from the evidence room.

However, the Louisiana rat pack is not the first example of rodents disrupting drug enforcement operations.

In 2022, a court in Uttar Pradesh, India, reported that rats had chewed through more than 200 kilograms of contraband cannabis in three separate police stations.

Sanjay Chaudhary, the judge, noted: “Rats are tiny animals and they have no fear of the police. It’s difficult to protect the drug from them.”

A study by Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis and Indiana University Bloomington on the effect of marijuana on rodents reported in 2019 that they “tended to become less active and their body temperature also was lowered”.

The paper said that mice were found to voluntarily consume cookies laced with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, even after discovering its effects.