MORE METH LABS, MORE AWARENESS

Wichita police Capt. Mike Bruce laughs when he talks about starter
fluid.

He'll think back to a bitter cold day in southern Illinois and chuckle
when he talks about the time he dumped so much of the stuff into his
finicky 1973 Chevy Vega that it nearly blew up in the face of a buddy
who tried to start it.

A younger detective and lieutenant listening to his story laugh, too --
thinking of their captain and his old car, and the simple innocence of
too much starter fluid.

Now, his officers talk about starter fluid all the time, but it's not
for cars -- it's a key element in meth making.

When 58 methamphetamine labs were found in Sedgwick County in 2000,
including 25 within the Wichita city limits, law officers realized what
they were up against. Widely perceived as a rural problem, meth shows up
enough times in Wichita to indicate its presence everywhere, officers
say.

One police detective, who asked not to be identified because he does
undercover work, doesn't see any end in sight to the meth problem.

"We aren't ever going to win the war against drugs," he said. "Every
time you get one, another comes in and takes the place."

Thoughts about the meth problem in the world of law enforcement run from
every end of emotion -- from passion to indifference, frustration to
humor.

To keep his sanity, the undercover detective makes jokes. He kids about
using canaries to test the air quality inside a fuming, chemically
lethal meth lab -- instead of the electric device he keeps with him now,
24-hours a day, 7- days a week.

Capt. Bruce said he stood behind a couple of kids in a drug store the
other day and watched them buy too many packages of cold medicine -- a
key element in meth production. He couldn't get their tag numbers in
time, he said, but he remembered them when they were arrested later
anyway, he said.

"The doggone stuff isn't going away," said Larry Welch, director of the
Kansas Bureau of Investigations. "Our pace this year is already set for
another record year."

In all of Kansas, 702 of the labs were discovered in 2000. So far this
year there have been 124 labs discovered in Kansas. From Jan. 1998 to
Feb. 10, 2001, 801 people were arrested for manufacturing meth. The meth
war also is a battle of teachers, of sorts.

The KBI estimates that each meth cook teaches between eight and 10
others the trade.

Law officers are scrambling to teach their own how to spot meth, and
most importantly, how to be safe around the dangerous chemicals used to
make it.

Rod Page, a KBI special agent, said the only number he's seen decline
since the full-scale meth war began about five years ago is the number
of officers injured when they busted the labs.

Even just two years ago, a Wichita patrol officer responding to a
smoldering Dumpster in the back of a convenience store might have taken
a whiff of the smoke, and found his lungs incapacitated in moments. Now,
officers treat a smoldering trash bin with extreme caution -- it might
be a harmless fire, or it might be a crudely fashioned gassing device,
filled with the chemical leftovers of a meth batch.

Meth cooks fill a 3-liter plastic soda bottle with a dangerous blend of
chemicals and shake it until meth crystals fall from the liquid mixture
like bits of snow. When all the meth is removed from the chemical
mixture, they discard the bottle, which still spews noxious and volatile
gasses from the leftover chemical soup.

Police were responding unprepared to too many of these chemical time
bombs, and decided it was time to arm themselves with stronger and safer
equipment.

Last fall, Wichita Police formed a 10-man meth lab team.

All 10 -- three supervisors and seven detectives -- were certified in a
40-hour meth lab training school.

They are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

They were all issued enormous, black zippered duffel bags, filled with
plastic suits, two pairs of boots, several chemical guide books and
masks.

The bags store measuring devices that detect dangerous fumes and
chemicals. They have gloves that fit over other gloves. They have thick,
sturdy boots, and throwaway booties to fit over those boots. They have
black Kevlar vests and black T-shirts.

They have ventilator masks, and extra air filters to change out of those
masks.

Sometimes, the team members strap a 50-pound oxygen tank on their backs
to breathe inside the most dangerous meth labs.

The elaborate "moon suits" will probably be worn dozens more times in
Wichita before the end of the year.

Welch of the KBI longs for the day when "methamphetamine" is no longer
in the vocabulary of his agents, he said. But since that day may never
come, he said, he is working hard to accomplish what he can, quickly.
He's forming a larger army of agents and chemists, and pleading with the
state legislature for the money.

On March 15, the House Appropriations Committee endorsed a proposal to
add nearly $667,000 to the budget of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation
for the state's 2002 fiscal year, which begins July 1. The money would
allow the agency to hire 13 new employees to help fight meth
trafficking.

Welch said he needs more agents -- the ones he has now are burning out
on long hours devoted solely to the meth problem, and asking for
reassignments.

While Welch scrambles to get ahead of the meth epidemic and stamp it
out, most officers keep their morale up by dealing with the problem one
step at a time.

"Our main priority isn't to pop so many labs per day," said Wichita
Police Lt. Allen Prince, a supervisor on the team. "It still continues
to be safety and education."