Thursday, April 12, 2012

To find the meth labs, just follow Interstate 75 : Knoxville News Sentinel

Here, there, everywhere: To find the meth labs, just follow Interstate 75 : Knoxville News Sentinel:

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Here, there, everywhere: To find the meth labs, just follow Interstate 75

By Matt Lakin
Sunday, September 12, 2010
ATHENS, Tenn. - Welcome to the new buckle of the meth lab belt.
McMinn County sits about halfway between East Tennessee's two largest cities on Interstate 75 and at the top of the state's totals for suspected methamphetamine labs for the past two years. Police have seized more than 245 suspected labs since January 2009 - sometimes as many as three or four in a day.
"I think we get people moving here just to cook dope," said Mike Hall, outgoing director of the 10th Judicial District Drug Task Force. "You could sit in the drugstore parking lot and catch 20-25 people a day easy. We've had to let (suspects) go because we didn't have enough agents to work all the cases."
Pseudoephedrine sales at the Walgreens on U.S. Highway 11 used to average 600 boxes a week - one of the top sales rates in the country, according to the task force. The store tightened sales this month after that statistic earned mention on a National Geographic documentary.
Mark Buckner, a local meth cook, survived burns over more than 60 percent of his body when a lab exploded. He lived to tell his story to the same documentary crew - and to go to jail again last month when police reported finding 20 shake-and-bake labs at his home.
Hardware stores can't keep drain cleaner, a frequent meth-lab component, on the shelves. More people have bought iodine, another ingredient, at the farmers' co-op than the county has farms.
Trash labs tossed out by one-pot cooks make up the bulk of local seizures. Drive down any road, and you might see one. Same goes for Bradley and Monroe counties next door.
Ten East Tennessee counties account for more than a third of the 9,000-plus meth labs seized statewide in the past decade, according to figures from the Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force. Nine of those 10 lie clustered on or just off I-75.
Southeast Tennessee counties take first and second place - McMinn County in the lead with Hamilton County just behind. Anderson County, just north of Knoxville, led the state two years ago but now comes in third. Bradley, Campbell and Monroe counties make an even half-dozen.
Authorities blame East Tennessee's history as ground zero for meth and the easy trafficking network offered by I-75 and other major highways. The 10th District covers three of the top 10 counties - McMinn, Monroe and Bradley - along with neighboring Polk.
"McMinn and Monroe pretty much go hand-in-hand right now," Hall said. "A lot of it has to do with location. People come in from North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, all the way from Kentucky. We had a lull from 2006-2008 while a lot of our cooks were in jail. Now they're out or on probation. They're teaching a lot of people, and we're seeing a lot of old faces.
"It's a problem everywhere, but we're looking for it here. You can't tell me there's no meth problem in Middle or West Tennessee."
A tale of two maps
The numbers suggest he's right. The rest of the state might not score as many busts, but suspected meth labs have shot up in Middle and West Tennessee as well.
Shelby County - home of Memphis, Beale Street, Graceland and the Peabody Hotel - reported more than 60 labs so far this year, mostly shake-and-bake, for the third-highest seizure rate in the state. That's an increase of more than 100 percent from last year.
Madison County, where authorities say a one-pot lab blew up and killed a man outside Jackson last month, reported more than 30 labs this year - up more than 200 percent from last year.
"It's not a rural problem anymore," said Tommy Farmer, director of the state meth task force. "It's not an East Tennessee problem. It's a statewide problem. The new one-pot manufacturing method has played a big role in that."
Farmer keeps two maps on the wall of his office in Chattanooga. One plots the state's more than 9,000 meth lab seizures since the task force's creation, complete with clumps of red dots along the Sequatchie Valley and I-75 all the way to the Kentucky line. The other plots bulk buyers of pseudoephedrine.
That map shows more than 260,000 dots scattered around the state and clustered around every town big enough to hold a drugstore.
"When all this started, everybody kept comparing it to moonshining and calling it a hillbilly drug," Farmer said. "But just because you don't have meth lab seizures in your area doesn't mean you don't have a meth problem. It's not moving west. It was already there. We're just doing a better job of going out and getting them.
"I show this map every time I train officers. I tell them, 'Go find those labs.' "
The West Tennessee spike gives some bitter comfort to cops in the East weary of 20-hour days spent bouncing from one lab to another.
"I hate to say it, but I'm glad to see some of these bigger counties like Shelby have their own problems because it's going to open some eyes," said Conway Mason, drug investigator for the Monroe County Sheriff's Department. "It's sad that it takes that to happen, but this affects everybody. I've arrested members of my own family for meth. It affects you every time you go to the store, every time you pay your taxes, every time you pay your insurance. I don't think there's a person in this county who hasn't been hurt by it somehow."
Dueling drug wars
Like an earthquake fault line, East Tennessee's meth lab belt shifts over time. Anderson and Campbell counties on the northern end have seen lab numbers drop in the past two years, even as cases shot up on the southern end.
"Most of our big cooks are in jail now," Anderson County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Jim Leinart said. "It's gotten harder to find, but it's still out there."
The latest jump in labs came at the same time another drug wave reached its crest. Authorities say prescription painkillers now rival or eclipse meth as the drugs most abused in some communities.
"Meth is a hot-button drug because it's patently illegal," Campbell County Criminal Court Judge Shayne Sexton said. "Prescriptions themselves are legal. That's much more of a challenge to fight."
Police say they have enough challenges already without having to split their attention. Drug users don't have to worry about pigeonholing their addictions.
"A lot of our meth-heads use prescription drugs, too," said Cumberland County Sheriff Butch Burgess, who's battled labs in his county for 12 years. "When you've been up for days, you start hurting from being up that long. So you take OxyContin to come down, relieve the pain and get some sleep. Then you start again."
Officers busting the labs say they base their priorities on the greatest dangers.
"Prescription pills are definitely more addictive physically, but meth is more dangerous to others," said Hall, the 10th District task force director. "Pills won't blow up your house. A meth lab can blow up, it can damage the water supply, a kid can walk up on it. That's why we're out there knocking on doors and writing search warrants. For the last year, we've focused on meth labs.
"Six months ago, our pseudo sales were 600 boxes a week. Now we're down to 450 a week. I think we're changing things. We want people to know if you get caught with a meth lab here, you're going to get the hammer."
Hall, a former pastor, stepped down as task force director this month to return to the ministry. His successor, Steve Lawson, says he'll keep up the fight.
"Any time there's a meth lab, we're going to be there," he said.
Matt Lakin may be reached at 865-342-6306.

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