OFFICERS SADDLE UP IN HUNT FOR METH LABS

Drug Cooks Hide In Rural Areas, Steal From Farmers

MONROE CITY, Ind. - Under a clear sky, Steve Luce navigated his sport
utility vehicle past cornfields, a horse trailer in tow.

The Knox County sheriff, a former heavyweight wrestler with a Wild
West streak, was about to saddle up to charge into a modern-day rural
problem: methamphetamine.

With meth's use soaring across the Midwest and South, especially in
rural areas, law officers like Luce are searching for innovative ways
to stop meth production and distribution with few resources.

"Rural agencies don't have that much manpower," said Ted Kamatchus,
sheriff of Marshall County, Iowa, and an officer in the National
Sheriffs' Association.

Some communities have distributed locks to farmers to place on their
tanks of anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer that is an ingredient in some
forms of meth. Kamatchus' county has trained its road crews to
identify a meth lab and how to respond.

Luce, 40, dons a cowboy hat and hops on a horse.

Three or four times a month since March, he and his deputies have gone
by horseback through forests and farms, looking for meth cooks and
their toxic labs.

"The top two things people don't want are methamphetamine and drug
dealers," Luce said. "It's my job to let them know we don't want them
here."

Methamphetamine is a highly addictive stimulant that can be inhaled,
smoked or injected. Most of its ingredients are easily found at a
supermarket, except for the anhydrous ammonia commonly found on farms.

Lab discoveries jump

An abundance of the fertilizer and rural areas to hide make places
like Knox County popular with meth producers. Nine labs were found in
Knox County in 1999, compared with 71 last year.

Luce said it's not uncommon for 70percent of the inmates in his jail
to be behind bars because of meth-related crimes.

"They get hooked on this stuff," he said. "It's evil."

For farmers, meth also is a menace. Producers go on their property to
steal the fertilizer. They hide labs in the middle of cornfields,
unbeknownst to a farmer until the labs are run over by farm machinery.

Yet some farmers are afraid to call police, said Chad Brown, a
salesman at Grower Co-Op in Vincennes.

"They're afraid they're going to come back," Brown said. Farmers also
fear meth producers may damage farm equipment in revenge for calls
made to police.

In 2000, a farmer in Flat Rock, Ill., was shot in the eye after
chasing two men attempting to steal anhydrous ammonia from his
property. He survived but was blinded.

Luce said the horseback patrols are helping to win farmers' trust. He
invited farmers to a hog roast before the patrols started and
persuaded many to let him go on their land. Others agreed to lend
seven horses to the program.

Since the patrols started in the spring, he and his deputies have
found 18 labs - 17 of them inactive.

"The horse definitely has an advantage. They can go where
four-wheelers can't," Luce said.

On a recent day, Luce and his men saddled four horses and headed to
Long Pond, an area of tree-filled hillsides on abandoned strip-mine
land.

Luce and his men had not received a tip about a lab in the area but
wanted to check it out just in case.

"You just don't know unless someone gives you a tip," said Chief
Deputy Bob Hart. "You just got to go out and look."

As they navigated hilly, steep paths, Luce and his deputies looked for
signs of meth, such as the smell of ether or ammonia. They stopped
when they saw fabric hanging from a tree, knowing it could be a marker
left by a meth cook.

Though they didn't find any meth this day, the effort is what counts,
said Stacye Johnson, the agriculture extension agent in Knox County.

"Any little bit can help - especially if they're getting results and
finding meth labs, because we don't want them just lying around,"
Johnson said.

Horses prove practical

First Sgt. Dave Phelps, team leader of the clandestine lab team for
the Indiana State Police, said the horse patrols are a practical
solution to the meth problem.

"So many are hidden out in the woods and fields in desolate areas,"
Phelps said. "If any agency really wants to aggressively look for
them, you've got to look outside the box."

Kamatchus, the Iowa sheriff, said a key to solving the meth problem is
enlisting residents' help.

"It's paramount to have involvement of citizens in the community," he
said.

Luce agrees, and he hopes the inroads he has made with farmers
continue to yield results among his county's 40,000 residents.

"It's about building a bond and trust," Luce said. "It's trying to get
the community in a whole new way of thinking."