Police Find Marijuana Growing in ‘Pot Nursery’ Under Toilet Bowl at a Business

Police in the Netherlands have posted a video showing the entrance to a cannabis grow room they discovered beneath a toilet bowl in a Rotterdam bathroom.

The footage was posted on Oct. 17, and the bust took place last year.

In the footage, police highlighted the inventiveness of some drug traffickers.

“That criminals are sometimes pretty inventive is clear from the video below. Last year, after a long search, we found a hemp farm at the premises of a business at the Sluisjesdijk,” wrote the Team Parate Eenheid Politie Rotterdam, a unit of the Dutch police, on Twitter. After removing the toilet and part of the floor, investigators discovered a ladder leading to a cannabis nursery.

The tweet ends with a joke that this particular toilet “turned out to be very well clogged.”

Sluisjesdijk, the location identified in the tweet, is a street in Rotterdam’s Waalhaven District, an area that includes the port and various industrial sites.

Mounting Drug Smuggling Worries in Rotterdam

Waalhaven has been the site of numerous drug busts, and officials have warned of increased smuggling in Rotterdam.

According to the NL Times, on June 28, 2017, investigators found 107 kilograms (235 pounds) of cocaine packed in shrink-wrapped bundles at a Waalhaven business. The drug bundles had been hidden in a false ceiling in a container.

Detectives found more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of cocaine in a Waalhaven business in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on June 28, 2017. Dutch Public Prosecutor/OM

Officials from the Dutch Public Prosecutor’s Office told NL Times journalists on June 30 that the hiding place had been built into a specially modified container used to transport bananas to the port of Rotterdam.

Also in Rotterdam, in a joint operation between Belgian and Dutch police, six suspects were arrested on Feb. 23, 2017, in connection with the discovery of 1,100 kilograms (1.43 tons) of heroin in a container from Iran, according to NL Times, citing a police statement.

For the Belgian authorities this was a record drug bust, the paper reported, with an estimated street value of around 34 million euros ($39.14 million).

The Rotterdam mayor, police, and the public prosecutor have all expressed concern about the increasing amount of cocaine being trafficked through Rotterdam.

“There is so much money involved in the smuggling of cocaine that the crime that goes along with it is huge,” public prosecutor spokeswoman Jeichien de Graaff said to the Telegraaf, NL Times reported. “We see it here in the region but also in other cities.”

Seaport Police Chief Jan Janse told the Telegraaf that about one in seven Rotterdam port employees have been approached by a criminal at least once in an attempt to coerce them to collaborate.

“To understand the magnitude of this problem we conducted a survey of over 200 truck drivers and terminal workers,” Janse said to the newspaper. “The results confirmed our suspicion that a lot of workers are approached by criminals.”

A port inspector was arrested on suspicion of being complicit in the discovery of some 200 kilos (440 pounds) of cocaine on a Colombian coal carrier in the port of Rotterdam, in March 2017. Public Prosecutor/OM

In one case, a Rotterdam cargo inspector was arrested in March 2017, on suspicion of involvement in trafficking nearly 200 kilograms of cocaine, NL Times reported, citing a statement by the public prosecutor.

The report connected the 42-year-old Rotterdam man with an attempt to smuggle cocaine in the shaft of an anchor chain of a Colombian coal carrier.

Jansen told reporters that mounting concerns over intensified drug trafficking in Rotterdam has led to higher priority of the problem at a national level.

“All information about corruption is going to a central point for further analysis and action,” he said, according to the NL Times.