METH TRAINING SHOWS OFFICERS TELL-TALE SIGNS, WARNS OF RISKS

Sheriff's deputy Matt Schuster was making a routine traffic stop in Lester
Prairie, Minn., when he noticed a white, pasty substance on the back-seat
floor. Two weeks earlier, the gunk wouldn't have hit his radar, but that
day he knew it could be the toxic leftovers from making methamphetamine.

Schuster, who is now a Dakota County deputy, received his quickie education
on meth from a CD-ROM included in a training program that in 2 1/2 years
has reached more than 5,000 people who may come across the drug as they work.

The pasty substance prompted Schuster to watch for several problems: Meth
users can be paranoid and violent. The chemicals used to make the drug can
burn your skin, eyes and lungs and knock you unconscious.

While the arrest didn't lead to the drug maker, it appears the training is
leading to more lab busts.

Nearly 170 meth labs have been busted so far this year, 30 more than in all
of 2000.

Officials expect more than 300 labs to be taken down, at least in part due
to the CD and other training by the five people who developed the program.

Unlike most other drugs, the making of meth involves fires and fumes, along
with toxic and explosive chemicals which are often dumped into the ground
or water systems. While fewer people are being hurt when they investigate
or clean up the labs, the cleanup costs continue to grow. The average cost
in Minnesota is $2,100, but a recent cleanup of a lab in an Elk River motel
ran more than $150,000.

"In five years, meth labs are going to be as common as seeing somebody
smoking a joint," said Paul Stevens, a special agent for the state Bureau
of Criminal Apprehension who helped develop the program. "People are going
to want to feed the beast."

Stevens and the four other people who developed the training program will
receive an outstanding service award next month from the International
Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association. The others are Deputy State Fire
Marshal Kristi Rollwagen and agents John Cotner, Michael Leonard and
Richard Ripley, who work in Minnesota for the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA).

Skip Van Patten, head of the DEA region that includes Minnesota, said he
has no doubt the growing number of people the program has trained
contributed to the increase in lab seizures. The year before training
started, the state closed 47 labs.

A Need To Know

In 1999, Stevens, who has been a drug investigator for 20 years, was seeing
labs pop up across the state, but nobody was trained to handle the labs and
people were getting injured. He and several of the other program developers
took a meth-lab training session from California drug agents, but it didn't
address the problems facing Minnesota.

They created their own four-hour program, which has been presented more
than 200 times in the past 2 1/2 years. Stevens said they've also sent out
3,000 CDs with the goal of reaching 120,000 people who might run into meth
or a user in their jobs.

The training explains what meth does to users, what the drug looks like and
the potential dangers at each production stage. At least 20 public safety
personnel each year were being injured by chemical exposure or fumes, but
the numbers are shrinking, Stevens said. The state doesn't track injuries
caused by meth labs.

"We've had officers pick up labs, put them in their squad cars and bring
them to an evidence room," Stevens said, noting that the labs can
contaminate everything they touch.

A video showing a meth maker who sets his house on fire and how he reacts
to authorities is also part of the training. Many who use the drug, which
is easily made, are paranoid and may attack the first person to the scene,
Stevens said.

Every law enforcement agency and fire department in Minnesota has received
the CD. The Chicago office of the DEA, a police agency in Australia and the
fire chief of Detroit have asked for it. Rollwagen presented the program to
a national conference on hazardous-materials response this year and it will
be offered by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system.

At first, the training was directed at law enforcement officers and
firefighters, but it's now given to emergency room doctors and nurses, home
nurses, probation officers and pollution control and highway workers.
Stevens said they also train park employees because meth makers will often
cook in a park for a week or two and then dump the chemicals into the ground.

Risks Remain

But even with training, investigating a meth lab remains dangerous.

Wright County Sheriff's Sgt. Todd Hoffman already had some training in 1999
when he was nearly knocked out by the fumes of anhydrous ammonia, one of
the chemicals used to make meth, which he found in a thermos thrown outside
a suspected lab in a fishhouse. In May, he said, a Litchfield man who
investigators suspected of making meth attempted to shoot Hoffman when he
went to the man's house.

Hoffman, who leads Wright County's drug task force and speaks to civic
groups, said the general public also needs education on the dangers.

Some of those dangers include the environmental hazards. The buckets of
residue are usually dumped down the toilet or right out the front door,
Stevens said. The chemicals can flow into a neighbor's yard, creeks and
lakes. And the waste doesn't break down in the soil, he said.

Deputy Matt Schuster said the 30 minutes he took out of his shift to view
the training CD is a step to stem a problem that most drug officials say
hasn't reached its peak in Minnesota.

"You can sit and tell me day in and day out what the meth equipment and
byproducts look like," Schuster said. "But you can't put a value of
pictures you see during training."