Rats Munch on Mushrooms at Houston Police HQ, Nearly Compromise Case

A purported rat colony in a downtown Houston police property room ate some mushrooms intended as evidence against two defendants, prosecutors on Monday said, warning at least 3,600 additional cases may be at risk of contamination.

Prosecutors told a host of criminal defense lawyers that the thousands of pending criminal cases have evidence in the vermin-infested room at the Houston Police Department 28-story high rise. The warning came in a Monday notice required under the Michael Morton Act, days after city and county leaders addressed the growing issue of rats in a property room teeming with evidence in old and new cases.

The rats managed to eat their way into a drug cache at 1200 Travis linked to two arrests, but those prosecutions are expected to continue, said Joshua Reiss, general counsel for the Harris County District Attorney's Office.

"The mushrooms are still there," Reiss said. "It got into the packaging and ate some of the organic material."

The impacted case stems from an October 2023 search of a Houston home where police officers seized nearly two pounds of mushrooms and other drugs, according to court documents. Reiss didn't know how much the pests ate, but the package will be weighed at some point to determine the difference, he said.

An attorney, Timothy Donahue, for one of the men declined to discuss the allegations at length.

"It's very important for me to defendant my client's rights, but I intend to investigate how the rodents ate some of the evidence in this case," Donahue said.

Reiss said the district attorney's office was made aware of the rat issue days before a news conference — held Friday at a different property room about a mile away — where Mayor John Whitmire lamented the growing number of rats in the property room that could be enjoying copious amounts of bagged marijuana. Police Chief Noe Diaz, however, revealed his department knew about the infestation as far back as October and have made attempts to control the rat population, which officials said has been isolated to the floor containing narcotics evidence.

Doug Griffith, Houston Police Officers Union president, complained as early as 2023 about the trove of evidence filling the 25th floor property room, where he said the rats live. He distributed photos of trash bags stuffed with drugs and other seized items filling shelves and being stacked on the floor.

He thinks the drugs should be stored elsewhere.

"We're bulging at the seams now," Griffith said.

In a statement, District Attorney Sean Teare said they have since changed their policy to allow Houston police to dispose of narcotics older than a decade — rather than the previous mandate of 20 years — in hopes it would make space.

Teare also intends to review how court records address destruction of evidence in closed cases and task a prosecutor with helping police destroy aging property.

Peter Stout, head of the Houston Forensics Science Center, cautioned that drug evidence falling prey to infestations ranging from rats, bugs and fungus is a nation-wide issue.

___

Visit the Houston Chronicle at www.chron.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.