Four police officers in the town of Pilar, 60km outside the capital city of Buenos Aires in Argentina have been fired for alleging that 540kg of marijuana which went missing from a Police warehouse was eaten by rats.
The drugs were discovered missing during a routine inspection of a Police warehouse for impounded drugs
The marijuana which had been there for two years was discovered to not weigh as many kilograms as it initially had upon being registered there.
Only 5,460kg remained Of the 6,000kg that had been registered
Javier Specia, the former Police commissioner of the city was implicated as a suspect due to leaving 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 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.”