The Houston Police Department says its methods for storing seized drugs have gone up in smoke after it was discovered that rats have been crawling through evidence lockers with a major case of the munchies and gobbling up the marijuana being stored in criminal cases.

In a recent press conference, Houston PD Chief Noe Diaz, along with Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare and Mayor John Whitmire, announced that they will be essentially doing a spring cleaning of the city’s massive evidence storage facility, destroying items that are no longer needed for cases, according to a report from ABC13 in Houston. They say the move is out of necessity – a need to make room for new evidence for active investigations and ease staffing woes. 

In October, they discovered that the rats were helping themselves to drug evidence that was no longer needed.

“We got 400,000 pounds of marijuana in storage, and the rats are the only ones enjoying it,” Mayor Whitmire said.

Rodent invasion has long been an issue in law enforcement storage facilities filled with evidence, some of it tied to cases that are decades old and of no value anymore.

“This is a problem for property rooms everywhere in the country. Rodents, bugs, fungus — all kinds of things love drugs,” Dr. Peter Stout, president of the Houston Forensic Science Center, said to ABC13. “They’ve had professional exterminators involved, but this is difficult getting these rodents out of there.” 

“Think about it — they’re drug-addicted rats. They’re tough to deal with.”

The only evidence that will be tossed are the items that are no longer needed. Officials say they do not want to get rid of anything that could be vital in a future investigation.

“The guarantee is that everything is tracked,” Chief Diaz said. “We have notes that happened from a homicide that happened in 1947.” 

“Everything has a number, everything has been properly addressed.”