Miami police brass knew at least four years ago that a storage unit warehousing evidence from hundreds of homicide and unclassified death cases was deteriorating and allowed the problem to fester until it became an emergency.
The Miami Herald reports investigators are going through the contents of 564 potentially affected cases have yet to determine the full consequences of the department's inaction.
This comes one month after Miami's police chief publicly admitted that rodents and the elements had spoiled some of the items stored in the rotting container - and asserted he acted as soon as he learned of the problem.
Miami police declined to release its list of the evidence in the storage unit, nor would it provide a list of the cases involved to the paper.
