MORE OFFICERS GET TRAINING FOR METH LAB SEARCHES

As crime scenes go, the methamphetamine lab is the last place a drug agent
should be entering in a rush.

It bubbles over with hazardous materials and life-threatening fumes. Just
deciding which products can safely be put into evidence and those that
somehow must be disposed of requires moving gingerly through rooms of
beakers and vats.

It also takes highly specialized certification for agents, officers and
deputies.

''First of all, they can't even enter a lab without having the
certification,'' said Harry Sommers, the Drug Enforcement Administration's
top man in Tennessee.

Rather than send narcotics officers out of state for specialized federal
training, the DEA and the local U.S. attorney's office are bringing
certification class straight to what Sommers calls ''ground zero'' of
Tennessee's burgeoning methamphetamine production.

Although the labs operate throughout the middle part of the state, they are
especially common near the Cumberland Plateau, where clandestine chemists
mix a recipe of foul-smelling chemicals and over-the-counter medications
into a highly addictive, illegal drug.

The DEA catalogued 239 such labs in the state in 2000, ''and that's a
pretty high number,'' Sommers said. In 2003, the number had swollen to 1,146.

While local authorities have noted a few cases of meth labs operating out
of Nashville-area motel rooms, as happened this past week, most of the labs
are still operating in Tennessee's more rural corners.

To investigate these labs, agents and officers need to be able to tell the
difference between what's flammable, what's explosive and what's toxic.

They must wear Tyvek protection suits and self-contained breathing
apparatuses, Sommers said. They must know how to test the air quality. And
they must know to collect evidence sufficient to make a case against a
defendant without endangering others.

Unlike a cocaine case, in which a prosecutor can take a brick of white
powder into a courtroom to show a jury, a meth trial resembles a college
chemistry class, as agents show pictures of beakers and as experts testify
about the concentrations of chemicals recovered from grimy brown bottles.

Often, the evidence from the scene, such as red phosphorous, is deemed too
dangerous to be tested, much less brought to court, and law enforcement
agents need to be qualified enough to describe what they smelled and what
they saw.

According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul O'Brien, the federal prosecutor's
office put up $125,000 to train 50 local law-enforcement officers over the
past week on how to process these illegal operations.

Now that these newly certified officers have received their federally
funded training, they will be far more useful in cracking down on meth.

For starters, they will be able, at least, to go inside the labs.

Rob Johnson covers federal courts for The Tennessean. He can be reached at
664-2162 or rhjohnson@ tennessean.com.