From December 2001 to November 2002, Doug Garman of the Topeka Police Department lived the life of someone else.As the central component in an 11-month undercover operation in Kansas’ capital, Garman received a new identity, several thousand dollars in operating money and an inside look into the world of methamphetamine.
What he found gave law enforcement officials in Topeka a good idea of how meth was becoming an epidemic in the state and what people were involved with it.
"Meth is unique in the aspect that it covers all ages, all races, all genders," Garman said. "… A meth user is extremely unpredictable. Their moods go from a calm state to jumping all over. They hallucinate a lot."
The inside look gave law enforcement officials in Topeka information regarding red phosphorus and anhydrous ammonia techniques used in meth production and how importation has risen to become an essential part of the trade.
Mexican Ice
"We found two examples of how importation occurs," Garman said. "There may be a structured group that will be responsible for importing meth into the country, then to larger cities like Kansas City and to smaller ones like Topeka.
"Then you have smaller, more family-oriented groups that have direct connections to a country importing drugs."
No matter how meth was getting in, the results were all the same — devastating.
Mexican ice, which has taken hold in Topeka and is rising in popularity in Talladega County, became popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, about the same time law enforcement began seeing a dramatic increase in meth use.
Imported ice rose in popularity — that is until local cooks found out how to make it themselves.
"We had a lot of Mexican ice, and then they started cooking it on their own," said Topeka Police Narcotics officer Phil Higdon. "… It used to be you’d have a couple cooks in one community; now everybody knows how to cook."
With production up, demand for the limited number of officers certified to process labs rose.
Certified officers in high demand
About 21 officers in the Topeka Police and Shawnee County Sheriff’s departments began to see first-hand how meth was affecting their community, their jobs and the safety of neighborhoods across their city.
"The health risks (of processing labs) are actually unknown at this time," Garman said. "… As far as the stress involved with law enforcement and meth, dealing with the same repeat offenders over and over, it’s 24/7. If you have 62 labs in a year, you’re virtually working more than one a week. … You work your shift, you go home, then you come back that night (when someone reports finding a lab)."
Everyone was feeling the heat.
"The labs came and we were going out, running around all the time," said Akim Reynolds of the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Department. "… They were calling us all the time. We never got any sleep."
In the early years of meth in Shawnee County, there were only a handful of officers and deputies certified to process labs, but as the drug progressed it became necessary to send more to training.
Officers went to Oklahoma, spoke with law enforcement in California, trained with the Drug Enforcement Agency, read book after book and watched numerous videos.
"We were told by people from California, ‘Hang on guys, it’s coming,’" Reynolds said. "… You can never be too prepared."
As officers began to learn more than just chemical names, they could spot labs easier and managed to reduce cleanup time, but there was one drawback.
"As we learned, they learned," Reynolds said. "And as they cooked, the boundaries got wider and wider."
But rather than continue cleaning up makeshift laboratories and making arrests, the police department joined with the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Department and the Kansas State Extension Agency as part of Cristi Cain’s Kansas Methamphetamine Prevention Project.
Fighting back
Police formed a team, Street Smarts, in an effort to educate residents, utility workers and others about the risks of meth labs, how to detect one and why they should be reported.
The lines of communication that opened between a number of local and state agencies became a unified effort to fight meth before the drug crippled communities.
Dean Davis of the Kansas State Research and Extension Agency worked with farmers to find a way to decrease thefts of anhydrous ammonia, one of the chemicals used to make meth. He supplied them with a number of state-funded tank locks and they finally found one that worked.
"We spent a lot of time on education just to let folks know what the issues were," said county Extension director Laurie Chandler. "… We looked into tamper tags that wrapped around valves. … That didn’t deter theft, and with some research from South Dakota, we found affordable and easy-to-install locks that wouldn’t inhibit farmers’ time in the fields."
"It’s not going to be 100 percent proof, but it’s going well," Davis said. "… Down the road, we’re convinced this will (reduce theft)."
And although thefts equal money lost, it’s nothing compared to knowing your product is being used to produce illegal drugs, said Chris Houck of the Shawnee Terminal Elevator Agri Center, which supplies more than $1 million in anhydrous ammonia to farmers in Shawnee County.
"In terms of money, it’s not that much," Houck said. "They steal about a half gallon to a gallon at a time, which equates to nothing, pretty much pennies on the dollar. But it’s not just that they’re trespassing; they’re using it to make drugs, and there’s just no point to that."
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment also got in the game by involving local retailers with Meth Watch.
The program, funded in part through state and federal grants, got retailers from Wal-Mart to Dollar General involved in tracking thefts of pseudoephedrine hydrochloride, ephedrine and other products used in production.
Thanks to a new pseudoephedrine law passed by the Kansas Legislature, getting state funding was the easy part.
"The initial reaction was they knew it was a problem, but they didn’t really know what to do with it," said Leo Henning of KDHE. "After they saw there were some things we could do, different retailers implemented the program in different ways."
The department provided employee training videos to educate workers on what to look for, stickers to post on doors and shelves displaying ephedrine-containing products and literature to post in break rooms.
"Us working with law enforcement, working with (the Methamphetamine Prevention Project), and knowing what each of us does and how they do it is very important," said Meth Watch coordinator T.J. Ciaffone. "… We’ve seen a lot of differences in counties that get involved with prevention efforts and Meth Watch is one of those."
Results
With cooperation from law enforcement, Davis distributed hundreds of locks to farmers and received progress reports from those experiencing regular thefts.
Sally Zellers of Street Smarts got neighborhoods and school systems involved.
Retailers began looking for suspicious customers thanks to Meth Watch.
And the Methamphetamine Prevention Project brought them and a number of other organizations together.
It helped law enforcement, nonprofits and the extension agency learn from each other about what neighborhoods were victim to high meth activity, how education can help and what social groups the drug was penetrating.
Lab seizures have decreased in recent years, but law enforcement officials say those statistics can be deceiving.
"Just because the numbers might be going down, that doesn’t mean you can eliminate the work," Higdon said. "I’d still love to see a task force devoted to meth."
"Meth is probably the most insidious drug," Reynolds said. "… Nothing surprises me anymore. You see parents that are so strung out, they don’t even know their kids are there."
