A Madness Called Meth: Chapter One

THE FAMILY WHO CRANKS TOGETHER

Meth Disintegrates A Family

Kelly McGhee is bustling around his office, setting up the day's
operations. It's 8:20 on a Thursday morning. A half-dozen probation
officers, wearing identical sand-colored military pants and black combat
boots, wander in and out, briefing McGhee on case details as they formulate
a hit list of 10 probationers and decide which ones to go after first.

A compact, blond-haired, blue-eyed 18-year veteran of the Sacramento County
Probation Department, McGhee heads the 6-month-old "response team." It's
the department's version of a police SWAT team, a precision-trained crew of
seven aggressive officers who track down probationers gone AWOL and barge
into homes knowing they quite possibly are bursting into a den of drug
dealers. Three of the seven are sure shots, instructors at the Probation
Department's shooting range.

Kelly Gould wanders in, papers in hand, memorizing a drivers license
photograph. Gould, a 35-year-old native Iowan who took three months off
last winter to train police forces in Kosovo, is the team's only female
member. She laughs at the photo of a 17-year-old meth addict, who has her
hair swept to one side and a decided pout on her lips.

"Cindy Crawford," she nicknames the teen, wanted for violating probation.
"It's funny. We have DMV photos, and they look like this. But when you
finally find them, they're virtually unrecognizable," prematurely aged by
meth use.

By 9:30, Gould is headed for North Sacramento to do a drive-by of her
suspect's last known address. Her teammates are doing the same, checking to
see if their targets are home before they begin busting down doors.

In an apartment complex across town, Terri smokes her first meth, or
"crank," of the day. As she expertly waves a butane lighter beneath the
glass bowl of her pipe, her 10-month-old son plays in a walker on the
living room floor.

Timothy has just learned to crawl and, given the chance, he motors around
the house, exploring. There are photographs of Timothy in every room, a
baby's first-year calendar in the kitchen to mark his milestones and an
assortment of toys stashed in his room and the living room. He is the first
child of Terri and her companion, Paul.

At 9:36, Gould's two-way radio crackles. It's another probation officer
calling the crew to a meeting behind a shuttered credit union. Terri and
Paul are home. It's time to meet. As the fleet of shiny, new cars pulls
into the parking lot, the team is joined by two social workers from Child
Protective Services. If the parents are dealing, the baby probably will be
taken into protective custody and placed in foster care.

By 10:20, the team has been briefed and is in place. The probationer, Paul,
who has prior convictions for meth use and sales, has been overheard
threatening to throw Terri off their second-floor balcony for smoking his
drugs. Paul's probation officer says the addict has tested "dirty" for
crank twice in recent months. He passes around Paul's DMV photo.

"He's tall, blond. Beach-boy-looking guy," says the probation officer.

"He's got all his teeth," observes one team member.

"For now," another cracks.

Terri has her own history with crank. Three times she has been placed on
informal probation. Twice she was caught with meth in her possession, and
once she was found under the influence of the drug. At 22, her teeth are
beginning to blacken, her body beginning to sag. As the probation team
approaches, Terri and Paul are on their balcony chatting with a friend, who
also is on probation. Behind them, Timothy plays in his walker, sucking on
a disposable bottle of formula and gnawing on an animal cracker.

At 10:27 a.m., guns drawn, the probation team closes in.

"Freeze," orders one officer.

Terri bolts into the apartment, but Paul throws his hands in the air. He
knows the game is over.

Inside the two-bedroom apartment, nine probation officers and two social
workers fall into a familiar routine. Two beefy officers begin searching
the adults' bedroom for signs of narcotics as Gould strip searches Terri
and questions her. She admits smoking crank earlier and she's got more dope
on her, but she denies dealing. Paul has some crank on him, a baggie of
chunks the size of puffed rice but with the waxy, yellow appearance of bar
soap.

At first, the only other evidence officers find is Terri's pipe, now cold.
It has been shoved beneath a tan ottoman in the living room, a few feet
from Timothy's walker.

It's 10:45 a.m. The baby stares up at the strangers. He doesn't appear
afraid, just curious. His father sits handcuffed on a recliner a few feet
to Timothy's left. His mother and a family friend face him on the couch.
They, too, are handcuffed and sitting awkwardly.

McGhee, himself the father of two children, 11 and 15, drops to one knee to
soothe the baby. "Hi there," he says, a smile crinkling the corners of his
eyes. "Hi, little guy."

Timothy stares at him expressionless. But Timothy's mother suddenly
realizes what is about to happen. "No!" she wails, her face dissolving into
tears. "Please don't take my baby away."

The officers' faces are like masks. They've heard it so many times. In the
Central Valley, more than 20,000 children are living in foster care: more
than 6,000 in Sacramento County, 733 in Stanislaus County and more than
3,000 in Fresno County. The vast majority of them are from drug homes, and
most have parents who are addicted to meth. CPS workers remove children
like Timothy every day.

Paul leans forward, eyes bleary from drugs. "Hi, baby," he says, smiling.
"Daddy loves you." Timothy's face breaks into a dimpled smile. He kicks his
feet and waves his arms wildly. "Da Da Da," he cries, gleefully.

McGhee turns away.

At 26, Paul has been addicted to crank for years and sent to jail at least
twice. By now, he's used so long he's not quite sure of time anymore. "I
can only stay up maybe two or three days," he says, shaking his head. "You
start hallucinating. You go without eating for long periods of time. Oh my
God, it tears you up. Ages your body. You start picking at things that
aren't there. It's the worst."

Paul and Terri met three years ago when she was living with Paul's dealer.
It had been a bad relationship. She was glad to escape. Paul took her to a
bar a couple of times. They smoked crank together.

"It was convenient," Paul says. Beyond the drugs, though, there's "not
much" of a relationship. They argue constantly. They were clean together
only once, for a short period right before Timothy was born. Paul had been
released from jail; she'd been living with his parents. He got a decent
job; they got an apartment. Then he met a guy at the county's probation
work project who got him high on crank. In less than a month from the time
of his jail release, Paul was spiraling downward.

Terri followed. She had used for years and lost one pregnancy with Paul to
a miscarriage that he suspected was because of crank. Paul was in jail when
she discovered she was pregnant again. He thinks she smoked crank while she
carried Timothy, too, but she denies it.

"He's the cutest baby in the whole world," says Paul, shaking his head
sadly. "I wish I could have been a better father for him. . . . I tried to
do good for my son. I just got caught up in this dope s* again."

He spouts reservations about Terri's mothering skills: "Yeah, she's a good
mom -- when she's not using." Then he reconsiders. "I've never known her to
be clean long enough to know how she would act under normal circumstances."
And when she comes down from a high, he says, she worries him. "I hear the
baby, and I'm up right away. But she isn't. She lets him cry. It bothers me."

It has been about 30 minutes since the team burst in. In the back bedroom,
senior probation officer Michael Brooks is digging through the garbage. He
finds a dozen or more tiny pieces of thin plastic, twisted and torn, but
empty. Nearby is a box of unused sandwich baggies.

Brooks thinks the shreds of baggies, or "bindles," indicate a dealer. But
he can't find the dope or any money. Terri's got a fresh $20 bill in her
wallet; Paul has three crisp twenties in his. But that's all the money in
the apartment. Brooks keeps digging. On the other side of the room, senior
probation officer Steve McKee digs through a pile of Terri's clothing.

Gould returns from her car where she has grabbed a Valtox chemical kit to
test the drugs. Officers want to make sure what they suspect is meth is, in
fact, the drug. She sets the kit up in the bathroom, balancing it on a
strip of counter amid Terri's lotions and makeup.

To her right, the toilet lid is closed. Officers checked the toilet after
they got inside, suspecting that Terri had tried to flush her drugs when
she bolted from the patio. They found nothing. Since then, though, Terri
has used the toilet. A probation officer asks Gould if he can use the
restroom, then laughs and backs out. A baggie of drugs floats on top of the
water in the toilet.

A "twompsack," Paul calls it -- $20 worth of crank, enough to keep the
average meth user buzzing for up to eight hours.

At 11:30 a.m., convinced that Timothy's well-being is endangered, CPS
workers place him in protective custody. As Terri again begins to sob,
tossing her mane of blond hair and gasping for breath, one social worker
steps forward, deftly plucks Timothy from his walker, pivots and walks out.

"My inhaler," Terri gasps. "My asthma. I can't breathe."

McGhee retrieves Terri's inhaler from the back bedroom, where McKee has
turned his attention to the closet and Brooks is digging through a bedside
table. In minutes, McKee hits pay dirt.

In a sandwich-sized, Dodger-blue, zippered makeup bag are two more glass
pipes, a portable scale and more than a half-dozen baggies of meth, all
packaged for sale. McGhee gives the order to call for a major-narcotics
investigator to help catalog the evidence.

The drug detective estimates Paul and Terri's stash to be worth between
$400 and $600 -- roughly 1 to 1.5 ounces of crank.

On the nightstand, Brooks finds a jar of MSM, a veterinary substance used
by horseshoers to increase joint flexibility and by meth dealers to dilute
their product. On a small table nearby sits a crude pipe made from an old
baby food jar and a credit union pen.

"In all likelihood, we interrupted them as they split up" to sell, Brooks
says.

By noon, the telephone is ringing incessantly. The first few times, Brooks
answers, trying to ferret out information on potential customers. But the
calls are so frequent he quits answering. Just after noon, the first of two
major-narcotics investigators arrives. Gould has parked herself at the
kitchen table and is handling a seemingly endless stream of paperwork:
three individual arrest reports for the jail, separate reports for the
Probation Department because each of the three is on probation,
supplemental reports to forward to the Sheriff's Department on the new
meth-dealing case.

McGhee passes out Diet Pepsi and Seven-Up to quiet grumbling stomachs and
cancels a 1:30 p.m. appointment. In the back bedroom, McGhee tries to tune
out Terri's renewed sobbing. This time it is triggered by the sound of a
neighbor baby wailing for attention.

"I have a 2-year-old at home," McKee says. "And the saddest thing for me is
to hear the moms cry. As adults, they make their own choices. But the child
doesn't have a choice. That's what's sad."

The trio on the couch is exhausted and uncomfortable. A probation officer
checks Paul's handcuffs to see if they are too tight. McGhee calls Paul
into the baby's room to see if he wants to chat.

"Oh God," Paul moans. "It's hell. That s* controls your life. Nothing
matters. You'll sell anything for it. I wish I could have gotten help
instead of going to jail."

He shakes his head and leans against his son's Tigger-decorated crib.

An hour later, he is again called into Timothy's room, this time by the
major-narcotics investigator who wants Paul to give up his dealer in
exchange for a lesser charge.

"Terri, I'm taking the heat for all of this," he announces as he returns
from the baby's room and slumps into the recliner. "All the dope, all the
pipes are mine. Everything in the house is mine. I don't want you to go to
jail."

Terri sniffles in appreciation. Her eyes are red and puffy; her blond hair
hangs in strings. But she can hear Gould and others talking in the kitchen,
consulting on the arrest reports. The family friend will face a charge of
associating with known felons. Terri and Paul will face charges of
possession for sale, a felony that could send Terri to prison and mean the
eventual loss of her son.

As she begins to sob anew, Paul pleads with Gould.

"Is there any way you can pin it on me?" he asks. "Because my son needs a
parent."

Chapter 2, http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1502/a02.html