METH LAB NEIGHBORS RESENT NEGATIVE REPUTATION BLOCK IS GETTING

On a bright, sunny street in southeast Springfield on Wednesday,
neighbors talked about a methamphetamine bust on their block two weeks
ago. To look at the many re-sided, remodeled, updated houses in the
1200 block of South Crutcher Avenue, it's hard to imagine the label
residents think it's received lately: the "meth lab" block.

None of the neighbors say they smelled anything unusual. The neighbor
charged with having the meth lab, David F. Williams, they say, kept to
himself and seemed like a nice guy. "Like a nice, country guy, who
didn't seem like he even did drugs, just worked in his yard," says
neighbor Lisa Davis.

There are a few rentals on the block that aren't as nice as the other
homes, but overall, the street is lovely - small cottages that people
such as Debera Davis, who has owned hers for six years, improve. She's
built a deck, a wooden privacy fence, remodeled the front room and
planted a hedge around the front.

"I knew it was coming," Davis says of the drug bust. She says she
started calling city police last summer when traffic to and from the
house became intense.

Still, Davis says, she felt safe. She trains German Shepherds and, she
says, she has good neighbors such as Amanda Johnson and her
8-month-old son, Ian, and Jennifer Brown and her 19-month-old son,
Jesse.

Johnson's and Brown's homes are cozy, with all the cute amenities
you'd expect in those built circa 1950, such as arched doorways
leading into small, sunny kitchens with cabinet built-ins.

"We're always watching what happens," Brown says. "We look after each
other. If anyone does something strange, someone will see it and call
someone else."

Brown is surprised that her across-the-street neighbor has been
charged with operating one of the biggest meth labs in Ozarks history.
"We've never had any problem with him, that I know of. He was either
working on his (backyard) privacy fence or not at home."

Wednesday, she worried about Williams' rented home, left abandoned
after the Jan. 7 raid by the Springfield Police Department, Greene
County Sheriff's Department, Highway Patrol and the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration, the windows busted open and left with no
protection. "The thieves could have been having a heyday," Brown says,
peering out her front curtains.

Brown has no sympathy for drug dealers, yet she feels let down by law
enforcement officials because officers wore protective protective
hazmat suits to search the premises and found many gallons of
chemicals that could have exploded. "I think they should have
evacuated us," she says. "If what they say about meth is true, it
looks like we could have all been blown up pretty easily."

Brown has also had a bellyful of people driving up and down her street
staring at the tiny "meth lab house."

"It looked like Kraft had let out the second and third shifts, the way
people came and gawked," Brown said.

Across the street, where Ann Davis lives next door to Williams, she
also resents the negative attention to the neighborhood. She shows me
the professional-looking concrete walkway her son poured with a form
and then laid in her lawn. "You should have seen the flowers my other
daughter had out this summer. It's like it's not a nice neighborhood
anymore. Seems like people have a lot of morbid curiosity about where
things happened."