OFFICERS LEARN ALL ABOUT METH

Thirty law enforcement officers from several Kansas counties attend a
five-day KBI seminar in Pittsburg to learn how to deal with the dangers
of methamphetamine labs.

PITTSBURG, Kan. --There was never a more relaxed group of lawmen headed
to the second story of a burning meth lab to recover a body.

In the morning sunshine, they milled around and kidded one another like
a group of junior high boys.

They made jokes as they duct-taped one another's blue latex gloves to
the shirt sleeves of the baggy white plastic suits they had zipped over
their entire bodies for protection.

All 15 of them, on their fourth day of a five-day meth lab training
session, relieved to finally be outside the classroom, found it hard to
be too serious.

After all, the body was a cardboard box.

The 15 men who groped around the walls of the "smoke house" Thursday
morning were half of a group of 30 sheriff's deputies and police
officers from several counties who traveled to Pittsburg for a weeklong
training and certification course sponsored by the Kansas Bureau of
Investigation.

Although there was joking and laughter, no one forgot for a moment that
busting a meth lab is one of the most dangerous tasks any law officer
will ever face.

The "meth lab" they discovered on the second floor was a table of items
they might find in a real lab, but some of the key ingredients meth
cooks use -- lithium batteries, cold-medicine pills and starting fluid
- -- weren't even removed from the packages.

And standing behind the table of props in the smoke was an instructor, a
special agent with the KBI, wearing his regular clothes and no mask, as
comfortable as a man might be at a job fair or trade show.

The smoke the agent blasted into the room periodically was the same
harmless stuff used at rock 'n' roll concerts and wrestling matches.

But if one of the suited men forgot to say "we've got a nazi lab here,"
to his teammates behind him, the agent behind the table quickly reacted.
The "nazi lab" method uses potentially lethal anhydrous ammonia to make
meth.

"What is it?" he yelled loud enough for them to hear through the masks
and breathing sounds of their tanks. "Identify!"

When one group chose a different route down the stairs from the way they
had come up, groping along the walls and fumbling a bit in the smoke,
another agent nearby barked.

"Why are you going a different way than you came in?" he said. "Now
you've got to watch for booby traps!"

Booby traps, explained special agent Gary Smith, could be intentionally
set inside a meth lab to noisily alert the cookers to law enforcement.
Or unintentional booby traps might be chemicals in opened containers
that eat through plastic suits eight minutes after contact.

"We want to make sure they communicate with each other when they get up
here," Smith said. "We want them to take their time. Some people are
really uncomfortable when they are wearing the suits, and their
immediate reaction is to get in and get out as quickly as possible."

Today, when they return home to their towns of fewer than 1,000 or more
than 100,000, they will be among the first called to any meth lab found
in their area from now on.

Nathan Mellen, a blond, fair-skinned man, will be the lone meth expert
in his town when he returns.

He paused when asked what his rank was at the Caney Police Department.

"We're small enough that we don't really have ranks," he said. "You can
just call me a patrolman, I guess."

Others were from Butler, Linn, Crawford, Cherokee and Sedgwick counties.

After the men had peeled off their gloves and thin white suits, they
were dismissed for the rest of the morning.

"OK, you guys," hollered KBI senior special agent Currie Meyers. "Go
back, work on your research papers, then we'll all come back and cook
some dope!"

While these men had been maneuvering through the smoke house, their
other 15 classmates had been making meth in another part of town.

So a couple of hours later, the groups switched, and the same 15 men
from the smoke house were ready to suit up again -- this time to cook
their own batch of meth in the dirtied containers left behind by their
classmates.

The temperature, considerably warmer since morning, was a big factor
because this time, the suits were thicker plastic, to be worn for four
hours in the hot sun while a batch of meth bubbled on a picnic table set
back in an area of blacktop pavement. They are cooking it the same way
the criminals do, so they know exactly what they are dealing with when
they get to the lab sites.

Doug Younger, a KBI special agent based in Wichita, spoke loudly to the
group with authority and experience in his voice.

Most of the men looked hot and uncomfortable as they disappeared under
layers of duct tape and plastic face masks, cheeks reddening with heat
and hair lines dripping with perspiration.

But if any of the men were thinking that shorts rather than long pants
were the way to go, Younger reminded them of the consequences when bare
flesh touches melting plastic.

"You don't ever want to wear shorts under these suits," he said. "If
something does flash off, it's basically going to shrink-wrap you."

Tim Eldredge, a Butler County Sheriff's deputy nearly suited up, said
what was on his mind.

"Now I know how a chicken breast feels in aluminum foil," he said.

Suddenly, many men wished they had shaved, when their skin pulled under
duct tape wrapped around their face masks and hoods.

For the next few hours, they mostly stood and watched around a picnic
table as their peers took turns mixing pills and chemicals together.
Younger, holding his crumpled white sheets of instructions and recipes,
told them what to do, and asked them questions as the meth batch changed
forms through the stages.

By the end of the day, the 30 men had maneuvered through a mock meth lab
and concocted the real thing.

Today, they'll return home, ready to bust labs throughout their parts of
Kansas. They should have plenty to do. The number of labs busted in the
state this year is expected to exceed last year's tally of 702.