As New Orleans police seize marijuana, they can't stop some inside the department headquarters from consuming the confiscated stash. It's not officers they're having trouble with, but rather rats that have infested the building for years.
"The rats are eating our marijuana," Anne Kirkpatrick, the police chief in the southern U.S. city, said. They're all high." According to local media, Kirkpatrick made her comments earlier this week while speaking at a city council meeting.
Rats and cockroaches have apparently long infested the police department headquarters, originally built in 1968. "It is not just at police headquarters. It is all the districts. The uncleanliness is off the charts," Kirkpatrick said, according to the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate newspaper. "The janitorial cleaning (team) deserves an award for trying to clean what is uncleanable."
The city is home to nearly 400,000 people and is known for its late-night partying. Its distinct history as a former Spanish and French colony influences the local culture and food scene to this day. Police there have been pushing for a new headquarters for years.
"It's horrible," one officer told the newspaper. "I don't think it ever recovered from Katrina, to be honest," the officer said, referencing the catastrophic hurricane that inundated the city in 2005.
