Pubdate: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 Source: Fresno Bee, The (CA) Copyright: 2001 The Fresno Bee Contact: http://www.fresnobee.com/man/opinion/letters.html Website: http://www.fresnobee.com/ Forum: http://www.fresnobee.com/man/projects/webforums/opinion.html Author: Russell Clemings Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) TROOPS IN DRUG WAR SEEK HELP Valley Needs More Federal Agents To Battle The Meth Scourge, Official Says. Some of California's most powerful lawmakers heard a plea Tuesday from the Central Valley's outgoing U.S. attorney to begin a stepped-up attack on methamphetamine production by appropriating enough money to hire dozens more agents for the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration. "The one request that I want to make has to do with the lack of federal law enforcement resources, which has turned out to be, I believe, the limiting factor" in controlling meth production in the Valley, said U.S. Attorney Paul Seave. Seave spoke in Fresno at a historic methamphetamine summit attended by California's two U.S. senators, four U.S. representatives, six members of the state Legislature, the state's attorney general and lieutenant governor, and numerous local elected officials. He produced figures showing that California's eastern district, which includes the Central Valley, has 127 FBI agents and 53 DEA agents, fewest by far of the state's four judicial districts, both in actual numbers and in proportion to population. Tuesday's summit at the Downtown Club was organized partly in response to an 18-page investigative report on methamphetamine that ran Oct. 8 in the McClatchy Co.'s California newspapers, including The Bee. Besides examining meth production, The Bee's stories also chronicled the difficulty users face in getting treatment for their addiction if they don't have health insurance. Tuesday, two of the summit's organizers, Rep. Cal Dooley, D-Hanford, and Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, announced they will hold a second summit on that issue. "We've got to undercut the demand for meth," Boxer said. "I'm going to work to make sure that no one is turned away who has made that decision to get treatment." Seave, a Clinton administration appointee who leaves office later this month to become a special assistant to California Attorney General Bill Lockyer managing the state's Crime and Violence Prevention Center, has been chairman of the Central Valley's High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force, a joint effort by state, federal and local law enforcement agencies to reduce meth production in the region. He described the HIDTA program as a success, but said it has been limited by the lack of enough federal agents to assist in investigations. One of his prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorney William L. Shipley Jr., said a single complex case, such as one that involves a wiretap, can tie up the HIDTA team's complement of federal agents for weeks at a time and cause other work to languish. "You can't do a wiretap with three or four agents," Shipley said. "It takes 20 people, and as a result there are six or seven other investigations that grind to a halt." The lawmakers seemed receptive to Seave's request, but warned that getting money for new agents may be more difficult than acquiring money for one-time expenses such as equipment. "Everybody would rather fund one-time-only money," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat. "The problem is, when you hire people it gets expensive" because of the need to pay their salaries for several years, along with pensions and other costs. Other political leaders attending the summit included state Sens. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, and Chuck Poochigian, R-Fresno; state Assembly Members Dean Florez, D-Shafter, Sarah Reyes, D-Fresno, Mike Briggs, R-Clovis, and Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto; Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat; and U.S. Reps. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, and Douglas Ose, R-Sacramento. Summit participants identified a long list of other needs, such as more laws to control the sale and transport of the chemicals used to make meth, including those that come into the country from Canada, which Lockyer said lacks such controls. On law enforcement equipment, Stanislaus County Sheriff Les Weidman, vice chairman of HIDTA, said the task force has identified $10 million in needs ranging from vehicles to night-vision gear. Members of the newly organized Fresno County Drug-Endangered Children task force sought the creation of multi-agency teams that would remove children from meth-contaminated homes, test them and see to their follow-up care. The request included "vans where children can shower, they can be decontaminated, fed and examined," said Katherine Hickman, task force member and Fresno County Superior Court grants administrator. Experts in cleaning up contaminated meth lab sites described the need for more money to do more thorough cleanups, along with clear standards to define how clean a site must be before people can be allowed to return. At present, participants said, a state contractor removes chemical containers and contaminated equipment from lab sites, but hazards often remain behind in the walls, floors, soil and plumbing. "We're talking about carpets that go slush with liquid when you walk across them. We're talking about walls that are dripping," said Robert Lassotovitch of PARC Environmental, a Fresno hazardous waste cleanup company that deals with lab sites. Some of those present also discussed the need for more effective drug education, both for children and for others, such as physicians who need to know how to recognize meth abuse. Dooley and other organizers said they would use comments from the summit as guidance in preparing legislation and appropriation requests for dealing with the meth problem. But it fell to a state official, Attorney General Lockyer, to inject a note of caution: "We know that the wish list is a lot longer than the 'I'm willing to pay for it' list." - --- MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager