U.S. AGENTS TRAIN OFFICERS TO HANDLE DRUG LABS SAFELY

Meth Trafficking Serious Problem In Alberta

EDMONTON - Before the white-clad men and women enter the room, their
heavily filtered breaths can be heard.

Then, the beeping starts -- alarms sound if a member of the team stops
moving for too long.

Six people in white coveralls, with duct tape wrapped around their
ankles and wrists, and goggles covering their eyes, enter the room.
They carry oxygen tanks on their backs and use sensors to determine
whether there is anything combustible in the air. Anything that could
kill them.

A container of cat litter sits on a table, a propane tank on the
floor. A hot plate is plugged into the far wall, a bottle of alcohol
is turned on its side nearby. The scene is set for a meth lab, or any
drug-making operation.

On Saturday, police and firefighters received lessons on how to handle
such a lab safely, whether it's in an industrial warehouse or a cooler
in the trunk of a car. The fake lab was a room in the RCMP's Alberta
headquarters building in Edmonton.

The hazards of entering a homegrown chemical drug lab are as mundane
as tripping and falling, or as pulse-racing as setting off a bomb,
said John Cotner, an agent with the American Drug Enforcement
Administration.

Cotner and a team of safety experts were in Edmonton last week to
train 30 of Alberta's front-line emergency response workers. This
included RCMP officers, municipal police officers from Edmonton,
Calgary, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat, and Edmonton firefighters who
work with hazardous material.

"For police officers this is a whole new world," he said. "The tiny,
tiny amounts of some of these chemicals can build up in the body and
manifest in cancers."

The U.S. team has visited Edmonton three times in the last two
years.

The group receiving training Saturday was a new crop of officers and
firefighters which started its specialized instruction last Tuesday.

"One of the issues with clandestine labs is as the enforcement becomes
more focused, people take them further and further underground," said
RCMP spokesman Cpl. Wayne Oakes.

The labs can pop up anywhere, including rural homes, he said. "It's
important for all police officers to know what they're getting into
and react properly."

Brian Riddel, who co-ordinates training for the Edmonton fire
department's hazardous materials team, applauded the multi-agency
approach of the training sessions.

It's his job to make these areas safe, but now he sees the care police
officers need to take to maintain evidence, he said.

"I can think of half-a-dozen fairly large incidents that we've been
into in the last few years," Riddel said.

The Alberta RCMP's website dedicated to its methamphetamine strategy
shows a marked rise in meth-related cases over the last 10 years.

The RCMP investigated 151 cases of meth trafficking in 2002 in
northern Alberta, compared to just 11 cases five years earlier. More
recent figures have not been released.

The province made fighting the drug a priority when it launched a task
force on crystal meth this year, which resulted in 83 recommendations,
including 300 new treatment beds across the province.