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Thursday, April 15, 2010
Law - "With Cars as Meth Labs, Evidence Litters Roads"
A long story today in the New York Times, by Susan Saulny. The dateline, unfortunately: ELKHART, Ind. The story begins:
ELKHART, Ind. — The toxic garbage, often in clumps, blends in easily with the more mundane litter along rural roads and highways here: used plastic water bottles, old tubing, dirty gloves, empty packs of medicine. But it is a nuisance with truly explosive potential, and evidence of something more than simply a disregard for keeping the streets clean.“The way to get rid of your meth lab these days is to put it in a plastic bag, then throw it out the car window,” said William V. Wargo, the chief investigator for the prosecuting attorney’s office in Elkhart County.
In the last few weeks, as the snow that had obscured the sides of roads, fields and parks has melted, law enforcement officials here have found at least a dozen so-called trash labs, the latest public safety hazard to emerge from the ever-shifting methods of producing methamphetamine.
Each trash lab becomes a crime scene and is proof, officials said, that a new and ever more popular way of making meth does not demand a lot of space or a lot of pseudoephedrine, an essential ingredient. The new method is a quick, mobile, one-pot recipe that requires only a few pills, a two-liter bottle and some common household chemicals.
Law enforcement officials in several states say that addicts and dealers have become expert at making methamphetamine on the move, often in their cars, and they discard their garbage and chemical byproducts as they go, in an effort to destroy evidence and evade the police.
Just as some states had reported progress in stamping out home-based meth labs, this transportable process has presented a new challenge: 65 percent of meth lab seizures in Tennessee, for instance, are now the one-pot, or “shake-and-bake,” variety. The number of meth labs seized in Oklahoma last year increased to 743 from 148 just four years ago, largely because of the prevalence of moving labs. In Indiana, the state police reported that meth lab seizures rose nearly 27 percent from 2008 to 2009.
Mr. Wargo attributed at least half of the new meth activity in Elkhart County to the easier one-pot arrangements. He began seeing the switch in 2008.
“We are so under water on this thing,” he said.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 15, 2010 10:03 AM
Posted to Indiana Law