Covering the drug war in small-town America
By Kristi Bailey Posted Jul 1 2002
Many American journalists are reading or writing stories about the war on terrorism, and their minds are set on the distant land of Afghanistan. But there is a different kind of war being fought much closer to home — maybe even next door.
The war on methamphetamine is not a new battle; it’s an ever-increasing one, especially here in America’s heartland.
Methamphetamine, or meth, is a drug that stimulates the central nervous system. It has effects similar to but longer lasting then cocaine. Since meth’s high lasts longer than cocaine’s and costs the same to produce, “the poor man’s cocaine” has become a well-known name for meth.
When I began reporting at the St. Joseph News-Press right after college, I was assigned to the police beat. Even though I’d lived here four years during college, I had no idea of how extensive crime was in this town of about 75,000. Call me naïve, but I think I’d never even heard of nor seen meth before college.
My college roommate, who was from Independence, Mo., a Kansas City suburb, was the first to tell me about the drug. She jokingly said her hometown was the “meth lab capital of the world.” She wasn’t far off. In the early 1990s, meth was introduced to Independence, and it didn’t take long to take off — in just seven years, Independence had earned the title of meth-lab capital of the nation per capita in 1997 according to the Independence Police Department, which had 109 related busts that year.
The problem has spread to St. Joseph and other smaller northwest Missouri towns, and it makes my job more stressful and frustrating.
A Buchanan County Drug Strike Force official told me that meth lab investigations dominate their time and that meth is getting to be too big of a problem for them to handle.
With the dominance of meth labs in the community, a journalist would think that finding out about raids would be fairly easy. It’s not.
The Strike Force radio frequency is scrambled, so police scanners, which are prevalent in homes throughout the area, can’t pick up their conversations. Officials say the element of surprise is crucial when raiding a lab, and too many friends and families of criminals have scanners. The police scanner isn’t totally useless, though.
A few months ago, I learned about a meth-related arrest that occurred when city officers were dispatched to set up a perimeter around an accident in which anhydrous ammonia, a meth ingredient, had been spilled.
When I arrived at the scene, just steps away from the county courthouse, I learned that Strike Force officers had been watching meth manufacturers, or “cooks,” load containers of the ammonia into a truck. When the truck left, officers in unmarked vehicles got in front of and behind the truck, boxing it in. The cooks, in an effort to escape, rammed a Strike Force vehicle. Meanwhile, pressure was building up in a picnic cooler that was storing some of the ammonia, and it began leaking onto the city street after the wreck. Simply inhaling anhydrous ammonia can cause severe burning, neural damage and eventually kill a person. Police warned me to keep away from those fumes. It proved to me that covering meth-lab raids could be a dangerous assignment.
If the police scanner does not supply the drug-bust information, I have to rely on paperwork like arrest and court records, press releases or word of mouth from officers. Relationships built with patrol officers and other members of the law enforcement community often reap tips for drug stories.
Tips from community members bring about most meth-related arrests. In St. Joseph, 85 to 90 percent of meth investigations start from watchful store clerks who call police when shoppers buy large amounts of meth-related items.
Actually, almost everything used in meth labs can be found at the neighborhood grocery store. Lithium batteries, drain cleaners, salts and cold pills are all meth ingredients. In fact, even the most difficult-to-find ingredient of meth, the anhydrous ammonia, isn’t that hard to obtain in the Midwest. Farmers use the ammonia as a fertilizer when planting crops. This makes farm-supply stores, grain elevators and the family farm a feeding ground for cooks.
Since meth ingredients are quite easy to find, making the meth is easy. A batch can be made almost anywhere — even in a motor vehicle. Real labs, I learned, aren’t like the ones seen on Dateline.
On an assignment at Strike Force headquarters, I had the opportunity to get an up- close-and-personal look, and smell, at the inside of a meth lab. The overwhelming reek of ammonia made me take a step back from the department’s evidence trailer. After adjusting to the aroma, I took a look at some of the remnants of a lab. Instead of beakers and Bunsen burners, salty soda bottles and lighter fluid cans filled the trailer.
Once last year, a colleague reported on a motor home that exploded because the driver was cooking meth inside. The reporter got to the scene after the fire was put out, but the fact remains that covering meth labs is a dangerous proposition.
When officers dismantle meth labs in enclosed areas, the ingredients are immediately taken outside, and the house is vented because explosions are always a possibility. The chemicals used in meth labs are highly volatile, and the chances for explosions or fires are always present. Other types of drug raids aren’t as dangerous, and reporters don’t have to worry about these dangerous possibilities.
Taking meth is relatively easy. It can be smoked, snorted, injected or swallowed. Covering the raids on meth labs isn’t that simple.