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."
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager