Officials say "drug-addicted rats" are eating narcotics seized and stored by Houston police, prompting the department to change the period under which evidence is stored.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire, Harris County District Attorney Sean Till and Houston Police Chief J. Noy ​​Diaz announced new measures Friday to deal with drugs and drugs stored at the police headquarters downtown. Other evidence, some of which had been there for decades, attracted rodents. Although the cases related to them have already been decided.

Officials said the evidence room downtown and a property warehouse at a second location hold about 1.2 million pieces of evidence, including hundreds of thousands of pounds of drugs.

"We have 400,000 pounds of marijuana in storage," Whitmire said. "The rats are the only ones enjoying it."

Thiel said Friday that drug evidence collected before 2015 that is no longer needed in cases will be destroyed. The old rules did not allow the destruction of drugs unless the case occurred before 2005.

Thiel said his office will use its funds to dispose of the drugs.

Teal and Houston police spokesman Jody Silva said his office has created a new position for a senior attorney who will work with law enforcement to help with the destruction of cases at two locations once they are immediately completed. Evidence held.

Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for the district attorney's office, said Wednesday that prosecutors this week sent notices to defense attorneys representing 3,600 open cases involving drug evidence, explaining that rats have been eating evidence downtown Drugs stored in the room.

He said evidence in only one of the pending cases was believed to have been destroyed by rodents.

Asked whether the rodent problem in the downtown evidence room would have affected the conviction, Lemaitre declined to answer, explaining that he was not a lawyer.

Peter Stout, president and CEO of the Houston Forensic Science Center, said at a media briefing that evidence preserved in the storage room attracts a variety of rodents and small animals. Stout said this is a nationwide problem.

"It's a problem on properties all over the country, with rodents, bugs, fungus, all kinds of stuff, like drugs," he said. "It's hard to get these rodents out of there. I mean, think about it. They're drug-addicted rats. They're hard to deal with."

To illustrate the problem, Police Chief Diaz showed reporters Friday a cocaine seizure from 1996.

"He pleaded guilty and served 20 years. He's out," he said of the suspect.

Diaz said the seized evidence "no longer has value in our legal system" and must be destroyed. He also showed off marijuana from 1993 and said: "It just attracts rodents."

"This is not something we as a professional police agency can continue to do," he said.