HISTORIC METH CONFERENCE FOCUSES ON CENTRAL VALLEY'S FIGHT AGAINST DRUGS

FRESNO -- Some of California's most powerful lawmakers heard a plea Tuesday
from the Central Valley's outgoing U.S. attorney to begin a stepped-up
attack on methamphetamine production by appropriating enough money to hire
dozens more agents for the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration.

"The one request that I want to make has to do with the lack of federal law
enforcement resources, which has turned out to be, I believe, the limiting
factor" in controlling meth production in the valley, said U.S. Attorney
Paul Seave.

Seave spoke in Fresno at a historic methamphetamine summit attended by
California's two U.S. senators, four congressmen, six members of the
Legislature, the state's attorney general and lieutenant governor, and
numerous local elected officials.

He produced figures showing that California's Eastern District, which
includes the Central Valley, has 127 FBI agents and 53 DEA agents, fewest
by far of the state's four judicial districts, both in sheer numbers and in
proportion to population.

Tuesday's summit was organized partly in response to an 18-page
investigative report on methamphetamine that ran Oct. 8 in the McClatchy
Co.'s California newspapers, including The Bee.

Besides examining meth production, The Bee's stories also chronicled the
difficulty users face in getting treatment for their addiction if they
don't have health insurance.

Tuesday, two of the summit's organizers, Rep. Cal Dooley, D-Hanford, and
fellow Democrat U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, announced that they will hold a
second summit on that issue.

"We've got to undercut the demand (for meth)," Boxer said. "I'm going to
work to make sure that no one is turned away who has made that decision (to
get treatment)."

Seave, a Clinton administration appointee who leaves office later this
month and will become a special assistant to California Attorney General
Bill Lockyer managing the state's Crime and Violence Prevention Center, has
been chairman of the Central Valley's High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area
task force, a joint effort by state, federal and local law enforcement
agencies to reduce meth production in the region.

He described the valley high-intensity program as a success, but said it
has been limited by the lack of enough federal agents to assist in
investigations.

One of his prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorney William L. Shipley Jr.,
said a single complex case, such as one that involves a wiretap, can tie up
the valley team's complement of federal agents for weeks at a time and
cause other work to languish.

"You can't do a wiretap with three or four agents," Shipley said. "It takes
20 people … and as a result there are six or seven other investigations
that grind to a halt."

The lawmakers seemed receptive to Seave's request, but warned that getting
money for new agents may be more difficult than acquiring money for
one-time expenses such as equipment.

"Everybody would rather fund one-time-only money," said Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, a Democrat. "The problem is, when you hire people it gets
expensive" because of the need to pay their salaries for several years,
along with pensions and other costs.

Other political leaders attending the summit included Assembly members Dave
Cogdill, D-Modesto, Dean Florez, D-Shafter, Sarah Reyes, D-Fresno and Mike
Briggs, R-Clovis; state Sens. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, and Chuck Poochigian,
R-Fresno; Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat; and U.S. Reps. Gary Condit,
D-Ceres, George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, and Douglas Ose, R-Sacramento.

Summit participants identified a long list of other needs, such as more
laws to control the sale and transport of the chemicals used to make meth,
including those that come into the country from Canada, which Lockyer said
lacks such controls.

On law enforcement equipment, Stanislaus County Sheriff Les Weidman, vice
chairman of the valley drug effort, said the task force has identified $10
million in needs ranging from vehicles to night-vision gear.

Members of the newly organized Fresno County Drug-Endangered Children task
force sought the creation of multiagency teams that would remove children
from meth-contaminated homes, test them, and see to their follow-up care.

The request included "vans where children can shower, they can be
decontaminated, fed and examined," said Katherine Hickman, task force
member and Fresno County Superior Court grants administrator.

A similar effort in under way in the Northern San Joaquin Valley.

Experts in cleaning up contaminated meth lab sites described the need for
more money to do more thorough cleanups, along with clear standards to
define how clean a site must be before people can be allowed to return.