BUSTS TAKE SHIRTS OFF KIDS' BACKS

Filth overruns a child's bedroom at a Tulsa home where a meth lab was
found. Parents who use and produce methamphetamine are getting hit
with added criminal charges for putting their children in harm's way.

Tulsa police found methamphetamine -- not dinner -- cooking in the
kitchen of a home last week. While the mother and father went to
jail, their five children were stripped of their contaminated
clothing at a local hospital and taken to a youth shelter.

That's standard procedure when police bust labs in homes where
children are living, said Detective Danielle Bishop of the Police
Department's Child Crisis Unit.

With the growing number of meth labs in Tulsa homes, however, the
scenario is happening so often that there is a shortage of clean
clothing for the children to wear in the aftermath.

"The last couple of times we've had four and five kids at a time, and
we've run out of the supply," Bishop said.

The most recent Tulsa bust involving children was Thursday in the
2700 block of North Norwood Avenue. There, police found five children
- -- ages 1, 3, 8, 10 and 12 -- living in what Bishop called "utter
filth."

The parents, Norma and Clyde Moore, and a friend, Joseph Hall, were
arrested on complaints of manufacturing methamphetamine and injury to
minor children. They remained in the Tulsa Jail on Tuesday.

The children were taken to Hillcrest Medical Center for medical
testing and observation. Police had to scrounge to find clothing that
would fit them all before they were taken to a shelter, Bishop said.

The Children's Justice Center, 2829 S. Sheridan Road, is most in need
of clothing sizes 2 to 10, she said.

"Pajamas would also be great because we get most of the kids at
night," she said.

Each year, hundreds of children in Oklahoma are forced to sleep and
eat in the same house or hotel room that harbors an illegal meth lab.
Last year 150 labs were uncovered within the Tulsa city limits. In
1999, there were 132.

So far this year in Tulsa, 59 meth labs have been busted, involving a
total of 20 children. Detectives typically encounter children in 35
percent of meth lab raids, Bishop said.

Outside the city limits, the most recent bust happened Monday night
when Tulsa County sheriff's deputies checked on the well-being of
children in the 600 block of South 65th West Avenue and found a large
meth lab in the house. Deputies arrested Kenneth Johnson and took his
two children, ages 9 and 15, to their grandmother, pending action by
the Department of Human Services.

Assistant District Attorney Steve Sewell said the child-risk element
became clear to him when he learned of a makeshift meth lab where the
father had taken precautions for himself by wearing a protective
suit, yet hadn't protected his children, who were in the house.

"Clearly these children were exposed to harm," Sewell said.

And so, for added punishment, prosecutors have recently begun tacking
on an extra criminal charge to any meth producers who have children
present where the lab is found, he said.

"They usually plead ignorant to the dangers of the cooking process,"
Bishop said of parents who are caught cooking the drug.

And the children typically don't see anything wrong with it.

"To them, it is a normal way of life," Bishop said. "They don't
understand that it's dangerous."

Bishop helped push the protocol through, and so far about 10 cases
with these added charges have been filed.

"Our main goal is to make it tougher," she said. "We know how
volatile the chemicals are. We want to send a message to the
community."

Oklahoma ranks second in meth production, below only California.
However, the child-exposure problem is more serious in Oklahoma,
where people assemble labs out of funnels and jars in their kitchens
and bathrooms, authorities say.

Most of California's methamphetamine manufacturing takes place in warehouses.

In the cases she's seen in Tulsa, "the homes themselves are filthy,"
Bishop said. "There's no food, no place to sleep."

What's worse than the danger of toxic fumes in meth houses, she said,
are the parents who don't care.

She remembered one 4-year-old girl who couldn't talk -- not because
she had been exposed to meth but because her parents had not bothered
to talk to her. They were too fixed on getting their next batch of
the drug.

"She wasn't used to contact with people," Bishop said. "That's our
other concern."

To donate clothing to the Children's Justice Center, call 831-4599 or
drop items off at the center, 2829 S. Sheridan Road.