TROOPS IN DRUG WAR SEEK HELP

Valley Needs More Federal Agents To Battle The Meth Scourge, Official Says.

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 U.S. representatives, six members of
the state 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 actual numbers and in proportion to population.

Tuesday's summit at the Downtown Club 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
Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, announced 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 to 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 HIDTA 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 HIDTA 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 state Sens. Jim
Costa, D-Fresno, and Chuck Poochigian, R-Fresno; state Assembly Members
Dean Florez, D-Shafter, Sarah Reyes, D-Fresno, Mike Briggs, R-Clovis, and
Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto; Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat; and U.S.
Reps. 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 HIDTA, 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 multi-agency 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.

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.

At present, participants said, a state contractor removes chemical
containers and contaminated equipment from lab sites, but hazards often
remain behind in the walls, floors, soil and plumbing.

"We're talking about carpets that go slush with liquid when you walk across
them. We're talking about walls that are dripping," said Robert
Lassotovitch of PARC Environmental, a Fresno hazardous waste cleanup
company that deals with lab sites.

Some of those present also discussed the need for more effective drug
education, both for children and for others, such as physicians who need to
know how to recognize meth abuse.

Dooley and other organizers said they would use comments from the summit as
guidance in preparing legislation and appropriation requests for dealing
with the meth problem. But it fell to a state official, Attorney General
Lockyer, to inject a note of caution:

"We know that the wish list is a lot longer than the 'I'm willing to pay
for it' list."