Pot times July 17, 2005
Meth Strains Police In Midwest
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1126/a04.htmlNewshawk: Humphrey Ploughjogger
Pubdate: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 METH STRAINS POLICE IN MIDWEST
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Contact:
mailto:letter@globe.com>letter@globe.com
Website: <http://www.boston.com/globe/>http://www.boston.com/globe/
Feedback:
<http://extranet.globe.com/LettersEditor/default.asp>http://extranet.globe.com/LettersEditor/default.asp
Address: P.O. Box 2378, Boston, MA 02107-2378
Copyright: 2005 Globe Newspaper Company
Author: Stephanie Simon, Los Angeles Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm
(Methamphetamine)
Authorities See A Drug Epidemic In Rural Counties
HILLSBORO, Mo. -- The detectives were relaxing over fried pork rinds when
they saw a car turn into the driveway of a farmhouse they had just raided.
The car rattled past a Confederate flag, past a skull and crossbones, and headed
for an overgrown yard where several addicts had been cranking out the illegal
drug methamphetamine. The detectives exchanged glances. They ducked
behind a truck.
When the car stopped and the driver got out, they rushed him.
"Randy!" Detective Darin Kerwin exclaimed in mock surprise.
"I thought you were trying to clean up."
"Oh, man," the driver said, sweating. "Oh, man."
Rummaging through the back seat, Kerwin pulled out a bag crammed with
decongestant pills -- a key ingredient for manufacturing meth. "Oh,
man," the driver said again. He banged his head on his car trunk.
"I'm dead." In fact, he would be released within hours, just as he had
been the last time these officers arrested him at a meth lab, and the time
before that. Swamped with meth cases, the crime lab that serves Jefferson
County is six months to a year behind in processing evidence. That is not
unusual. A decade after meth took hold in the heartland, the inexpensive,
highly addictive, home-brewed stimulant is straining rural law enforcement
resources to the breaking point.
The Polk County Jail in central Iowa is so packed with addicts that the sheriff
sends the overflow out of state, at a cost of $5 million a year. Indiana's
state crime lab has such a huge backlog of meth cases that the governor has
appealed for help from chemistry graduate students.
In central Missouri, almost every case of child abuse involves meth.
Social workers in Franklin County keep a log of parents under investigation and
the circumstances involved; this spring, it read: Cocaine. Meth.
Medical and physical neglect. Meth. Sexual abuse. Meth.
Meth. Manufacturing meth. "It becomes the only work you can
do," said Corporal Jason Grellner of the Franklin County Sheriff's
Department.
Meth is not just a Midwestern drug. It is popular among club hoppers in
Miami and gay men in New York City. It poses a challenge for law
enforcement in cities such as Phoenix, Sacramento, and Honolulu, where two of
every five men arrested test positive for meth.
But it is in the Midwest that the drug has most severely tested the justice
system, in part because sheriff's deputies, jail wardens, and crime lab
technicians in rural counties do not have the resources or the experience to
deal with a drug epidemic. Officers struggle to subdue addicts so high on
meth that even a police Taser gun will not stop them. They complain of a
justice system clogged with so many meth cases that it can take a year after an
arrest for prosecutors to file charges.
About two-thirds of the US meth supply comes from big labs run by organized
crime. In the Midwest, most of the meth is made at home, a few ounces at a
time, in makeshift labs heaped with toxic, highly flammable chemicals. To
enter an active lab, a detective must wear a hazardous materials suit, a
respirator, and a $2,500 self-contained breathing apparatus. Once the
investigative work is done, deputies must guard the site until cleanup crews
arrive. That can take up to 36 hours.
In a rural county with just a few deputies on duty each shift, baby-sitting a
lab overnight -- much less for several nights -- can paralyze a department.
Though the White House acknowledges that meth presents "a unique
problem" for law enforcement, President Bush has proposed cutting the two
main grant programs for rural narcotics teams, one by 56 percent and the other
by 62 percent, according to John Horton, associate deputy director of the Office
of National Drug Control Policy.
The administration plans to focus instead on the big meth labs in Mexico and
along the border. With a "belt-tightening budget," that's the
most efficient way to run the war on drugs, Horton said.
Steve Dalton, who heads a drug unit in southwest Missouri, said: "If those
cuts go through, they're going to wipe us out. Meth is a totally different
drug from everything we've seen. It's extremely stressful on law
enforcement." In the farm country of eastern Missouri, Commander Gary
Higginbotham sometimes longs for the days when a roadside patch of marijuana was
considered a major drug threat.
These days, he commands a squad of 12 detectives, including the men who raided
the farmhouse in Hillsboro, about 40 miles south of St. Louis. The
squad often works double or triple shifts. Last year, they shut down 313
labs. "I've never seen anything like this drug," Higginbotham
said. "I don't want to use the word 'overwhelming,' but it's
nonstop."
Higginbotham listened from his Ford Explorer as a woman with pills pulled up
next to an informant at a gas station.
"I got 600 here," she said. "Don't forget about me when you
get done, all right?" "I won't," the man said. He handed
her $85 in exchange for a bag stuffed with cold tablets.
"Be careful," she said. "Be careful yourself," he
responded.
At that, five detectives swarmed in, surrounded the woman, and grabbed the
pills. "Someone isn't going to be making meth today,"
Higginbotham said. "At least not with these pills."
"We can't catch them all," said his deputy commander, Detective
Derrick Blankenship. "All we can do is inconvenience them as much as
possible."
