SMALL TALK HELPS TROOPERS MAKE DRUG ARRESTS

Many Of The Largest Busts By The Iowa State Patrol Have Been Along The
Interstates.

It sounds like small talk.

A state trooper pulls over a car for speeding and asks where the driver is
headed. While the trooper checks the driver's license, registration and
insurance, he asks where the driver is from, how long the driver has been gone.

People smuggling illegal drugs across Iowa obviously won't blurt out and
tell troopers about their illegal cargo. But the chitchat during a traffic
stop produces subtle clues that authorities in Iowa increasingly are using
to identify and arrest drug smugglers.

"The folks who are up to no good aren't going to get groceries or pick up
their children at a sporting event," said Sgt. Robert Hansen, a spokesman
for the Iowa State Patrol.

Two Arizona men carrying 14 pounds of cocaine - worth $1 million - told
troopers a tale about driving to Chicago to buy a rowboat.

Three Californians stopped for speeding claimed to be bound for the Mall of
America - even though none had money to spend. They did have 8 pounds of
methamphetamine.

Narcotic arrests such as these made by the Iowa State Patrol have increased
more than tenfold in the past decade, from 258 in 1990 to 3,048 in 2000.
Many of the largest busts have been along Iowa's interstates, which provide
easy transportation routes for California methamphetamine going east,
Mexican marijuana being moved north or Iowa-manufactured drugs
crisscrossing the state.

Hansen credits the patrol's growing arrest list to improved training in how
to recognize signs of smuggling and the addition of seven dogs trained to
sniff out illegal drugs. Ten troopers across the state now are assigned
drug interdiction duty, he said, meaning they usually are not given routine
assignments and instead concentrate on narcotic traffic on high-volume
roadways.

The trooper assigned to drug-detection duty at the patrol's post in Council
Bluffs is Todd Bentley. His territory includes stretches of Interstates 29
and 80.

"There's no one specific thing you look for - it's usually an accumulation
of things," Bentley said.

Recently, Bentley stopped a new Volkswagen Beetle for speeding. He intended
to issue a warning.

The 54-year-old woman driving the car was on her way from the Los Angeles
area to Chicago. But the car's owner wasn't aboard, the passenger wasn't
related and the reasons for the trip weren't adding up. Bentley asked to
search the car.

"They gave me consent," he said. "They let us search because they thought
we couldn't find it."

But when the passenger side air-bag appeared to be tampered with, Bentley
took apart the dash. He saw a towel where the airbag should be.

Underneath: 15 pounds of methamphetamine.

Bentley has heard of drugs shrink-wrapped and stuffed in the gas tank,
dissolved in liquid and hidden in all kinds of hollowed-out compartments of
a car body.

"There's no end to what they would try to do to hide it," he said.

The patrol is not alone. Iowa police departments and sheriff's deputies
have been trained in similar techniques.

Law enforcement cannot stop vehicles on hunches - a suspicious-looking
person behind the wheel or Arizona plates on a beaten-up van. But they can
stop drivers for traffic violations or equipment problems, then start to
ask questions.

"You have to have an officer who has the people skills, the gift of gab,"
said Franklin County Sheriff Larry Richtsmeier.

A deputy might ask drivers whether they're carrying any alcohol in the car,
illegal drugs or firearms. The driver almost always insists there's nothing
aboard, Richtsmeier said, and the deputy asks: "If there's nothing illegal,
you won't mind me taking a quick peek."

A few years back, deputies in Franklin County stopped a rental car from
Arizona on a traffic stop. The driver, not wanting to arouse suspicion or
perhaps employing reverse psychology, agreed to let a deputy search the
only luggage brought on a cross-country trip - a duffle bag in the trunk
stuffed with 100 pounds of marijuana.

That type of drug bust has been more common in recent years in Franklin
County, a mostly rural north-central Iowa county that's home to 27 miles of
Interstate Highway 35.

In the past two years, the county has had at least four major drug busts
along the interstate. They included 132 pounds of marijuana in one pickup
truck and $1 million worth of cocaine in another.

The sheriff estimates more than 75 percent to 80 percent of the
department's drug arrests are related to interstate traffic. Of the 14
prisoners the county had in custody last week, three were jailed on drug
charges resulting from an interstate traffic stop.

"The vast majority of the drugs go right on by," Richtsmeier said. "You get
the ones who make mistakes."

The best statistics for interstate narcotics arrests come from the Iowa
State Patrol. Records show a steady increase in arrests, with the only
decline coming between 1998 and 1999.

The patrol began keeping tabs in 1995 on estimated street value of the
drugs confiscated. Last year, the patrol estimated it recovered $6.75
million worth of drugs.

Whether the growing number of arrests indicates more drug traffic or better
enforcement is difficult to determine, according to state and federal
officials.

Bruce Upchurch, Iowa's drug policy coordinator, said the flow of
methamphetamine into the state appears to be declining.

"We see a general trend of less imported meth and more laboratories,
although 80 to 85 percent of the meth is still brought in from the
outside," Upchurch said. "We feel like it's plateaued."

He said smugglers might have once seen Iowa's interstates as an easier,
less patrolled route for drugs. "I think that's changing," Upchurch said.