Police officers sacked for claiming rats ate 360kg of seized marijuana

Mice wouldn’t mistake Indian hemp for food, experts counter

Four police officers have been sacked for claiming that 360kg of marijuana which disappeared from a Police warehouse was eaten by rats.

The disappearance of the drugs was discovered during an inspection of a Police warehouse for impounded drugs in the town of Pilar, 60km outside the capital city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The cannabis had been in storage for two years, before it was discovered to be less than the number of kilograms initially registered there.


Of the 6,000kg that had been registered, only 5,460kg of marijuana were found.

The city’s former Police commissioner, Javier Specia, was the first suspect because he had left the inventory for the impounded marijuana unsigned when he left his post in April 2017.

His replacement, Commissioner Emilio Portero, noticed the shortfall and notified the Force’s internal affairs division, who inspected the warehouse.

Called before Judge Adrián González Charvay, Specia and three of his subordinates all offered the same explanation: the missing narcotics had had been “eaten by mice,” they said.

But forensic experts told the court they doubted even a large number of rodents could have eaten so much marijuana.

“Buenos Aires University experts have explained that mice wouldn’t mistake the drug for food, and that if a large group of mice had eaten it, a lot of dead rats would have been found in the warehouse,” said a spokesperson for the judge.

The four Police officers have been called to testify before the judge on 4 May. The judge will seek to determine if the missing marijuana was the result of “expedience or negligence.”

(Guardian)