Pubdate: Sun, 17 Jul 2005
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Contact:  http://www.boston.com/globe/
Feedback: 
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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)

METH STRAINS POLICE IN MIDWEST

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."
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MAP posted-by: Beth