Text 14153, 168 rader
Skriven 2005-07-16 14:56:04 av Alan Hess
Ärende: meth strains law enforcement
====================================
The War on Drugs is unwinnable, as long as demand exists for mind-altering
substances.  That said, the best way to get some control over the problem is to
arrest and incarcerate dealers, not users who aren't bothering anyone
(obviously, users who commit crimes while intoxicated should be arrested and
incarcerated, just like any other criminal.)
***********


http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/printedition/bal-te.midwestmeth15jul15,1,3080
562.story?coll=bal-pe-asection
Homemade meth strains Midwest law enforcement
Federal money drying up as rural police forces, jails are being overwhelmed


By Stephanie Simon
Los Angeles Times

July 15, 2005

HILLSBORO, Mo. - The detectives were relaxing over fried pork rinds when they
saw a car turn into the driveway of the farmhouse they had just raided.

The car rattled past the Confederate flag, heading for the 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!" cried Detective Darin Kerwin in mock surprise. "I thought you were
trying to clean up."

"Oh, man," the driver said, sweating. "Oh, man."

Rummaging in the back seat, Kerwin pulled out a McDonald's 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 - 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's 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
asked for help from chemistry graduate students. In Franklin County, central
Missouri, nearly every case of child abuse involves meth.

Meth is not just a Midwestern drug. It's 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, Ariz.; Sacramento, Calif.; and Honolulu, where 40
percent of men arrested test positive for meth.

But it's 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 lack the resources and experience to deal with a
drug epidemic.

Officers struggle to subdue addicts so high on meth that even a Taser won't
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.

"It's not effective law enforcement," said Sheriff Mark Kenneson of Greenwood
County, Kan.

His deputies used to handle calls about stray cattle. Now they're being asked
to raid booby-trapped labs. In one such bust in January, Kenneson's predecessor
was fatally shot.

Kenneson has been trying ever since to scrape up the funds for bulletproof
vests with neck guards. He can't - not with calls coming in from every small
town in his county reporting suspected meth labs. "It drains your budget," he
said.

About two-thirds of the U.S. meth supply comes from super-labs run by organized
crime. In the Midwest, most of the meth is homemade, 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 hazmat 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 the 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 meth super-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 southwestern 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."

The strain doesn't end when a meth offender is behind bars.

The drug is such a potent stimulant that users often can't sleep for 10 days
after a binge. Besieged by hallucinations and paranoid to the point of
psychosis, addicts often yell through the night, setting other inmates on edge.
Some go on destructive rampages, smashing their heads through cell windows and
ripping bolts out of walls.

"We have a concrete-and-steel holding cell, and they still manage to tear it
up," Sheriff Wayne Youell said of the Mason County Jail in central Illinois,
where thousands of dollars have been spent on repairs.

Treating a single meth addict in prison costs taxpayers thousands - and there
are more inmates every day. About half of those entering the Nebraska state
prison have a meth-related conviction. Minnesota counts more than 1,000 meth
offenders in state facilities - up from 140 four years ago.

"It's been awful, just awful. Our costs have gone through the roof," said
Kathleen Bachmeier, director of medical services at the North Dakota State
Penitentiary.

Here in the farm country of eastern Missouri, Cmdr. 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, it shut down 313 labs.

"I've never seen anything like this drug," Higginbotham said. "It's nonstop."

He parked his Ford Explorer next to the sagging farmhouse. Last week, his squad
discovered an outdoor meth lab here, just beyond the sign warning: "Trespassers
Will Be Violated and Survivors Will Be Shot." Now squad members had returned to
arrest the 46-year-old addict living on the farm.

They found him with his pit bull mix, Dixie, a fat stack of cash and a few
grams of meth.

He didn't bother trying to flee. "They're going to catch up with me anyhow," he
said bleakly.

With less than $600 worth of supplies (decongestants, lithium batteries,
antifreeze, anhydrous ammonia), addicts can produce enough meth to keep them
and their friends high for days, with a few grams left over to sell.

Meth cooks rarely aim to strike it rich; they simply hope to bring in enough
cash to keep the cycle going. Often, they pay others to go out and buy the
ingredients for them.

Detectives say one arrest can lead to a string of busts as each person in the
supply chain turns in his contact.

"We can't catch 'em all," his deputy commander, Detective Derrick Blankenship,
said. "All we can do is inconvenience them as much as possible."

The Los Angeles Times is a Tribune Publishing newspaper.

Copyright + 2005, The Baltimore Sun

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