New Orleans police are seeing narcotics from their evidence room disappear at alarming rates due to an unusual culprit: rodents.
“The rats are eating our marijuana. They’re all high,” Anne Kirkpatrick, superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, told the New Orleans City Council in a Monday hearing.
Kirkpatrick advocated for the city to relocate the department headquarters, citing the current building’s age and overwhelming rat problem, among other issues.
Kirkpatrick said rats leave droppings on desks, while cockroaches have also taken over the building, which was built in 1968. She also described a plethora of maintenance issues with the headquarters.
“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.”
She added that the poor buildings are a “turnoff” for out-of-state hires, and the rodent problem could even impact criminal investigations.
“It’s not OK, and it’s not OK for people to be treated that way and be called valued,” she said.
The council agreed, greenlighting a move and opening the door for the city’s entire justice apparatus to transition from “old, decrepit” buildings, The Times-Picayune reported.