STATE UNVEILS NEW WEAPON IN METH WARS

Website Will Track Sales Of Ingredients

A new Web-based tool in the fight against methamphetamine will allow
retailers to put in data about pseudoephedrine purchases and will give
people an opportunity to file anonymous tips about suspected
methamphetamine activity in their communities.

The tool, which was unveiled Tuesday by the Indiana State Police, is
called the Indiana Methamphetamine Investigation System. It will give
any state law enforcement agency the ability to assess, process,
record and analyze the submitted information to support its
investigation and prosecution of methamphetamine offenders throughout
the state, police said.

Pseudoephedrine is commonly found in cold medicine and is considered a
precursor in the manufacture of methamphetamine.

State police 1st Sgt. Niki Crawford, commander of the Methamphetamine
Suppression Section, said the only information required to submit a
tip on possible methamphetamine activity is the location where it is
occurring.

"We need to know what county it is, we need to know what location it
is so we can do an appropriate follow-up," she said. "They don't have
to leave their name, they don't have to leave their phone number
unless they want to. And we will follow-up on each one of these tips."

Crawford said the program was designed as an enforcement and
efficiency tool for police, rather than as a tool to prevent the
existence of methamphetamine labs.

"We do expect to seize more labs," she said. "But we're still going to
raise the efficiency of the law enforcement officers that are
investigating these cases. We're going to raise the efficiency of the
retailers that are selling the product (pseudoephedrine) and the
customer that's purchasing the product. It's a one-stop shop for meth
investigative information for law enforcement."

The program will also target smurf groups, Crawford said. Smurfs are a
person or a group of people who go from store to store purchasing the
maximum amount of pseudoephedrine allowed by law in a single sale.

Restricting pseudoephedrine purchases in Indiana began in 2005. The
new program allows for a quicker analysis of the information received
from retailers.

Crawford said buying pseudoephedrine is not illegal until multiple
purchases are made from different retail outlets in a short amount of
time.

"We've got people out there that are purchasing pseudoephedrine in
suspicious patterns," she said. "The really cool thing about this
program is that it looks for those patterns and it connects those
people as smurf groups."

Crawford said information about people who purchase products
containing pseudoephedrine for its intended use will be kept in a part
of the database that cannot be accessed by law enforcement.

"For the legitimate purchaser . . . their information will be
protected," she said.

State laws already prevent the amount of pseudoephedrine a person can
purchase in a seven-day period. According to police, smurfs use fake
IDs to make multiple purchases and will sometimes trade a box of a
pseudoephedrine product for methamphetamine.

Retailers are required to document all pseudoephedrine and ephedrine
purchases. Retailer participation in the IMIS is voluntary and there
is no cost as long as they have Internet access.

Crawford said Walmart, Target, CVS and other retailers were already
involved in the program.

Crawford said the program will help law enforcement officers identify
suspects quicker. In the past, she said, officers had to retrieve
sales information from each store and collate the information to
identify suspects after searching each paper log by hand, a process
that could take two to three shifts.

"Now . . . in a matter of minutes, they can see what their purchases
are, in a matter of a few more minutes they can see who their smurf
groups are," she said.

Crawford said that while demonstrating the benefits of retailer
cooperation to an undercover officer, a smurf group of five people was
identified within an hour.

"It's an incredible tool for law enforcement," she
said.

The IMIS system was provided free to Indiana by the Tennessee Meth
Task Force, which has been using the system since 2004, Crawford said.
Indiana is the twelfth state to begin using the program.

According to an ISP press release, in 1991 the first documented
methamphetamine lab was found in Indiana. Since 1995, the release
said, more than 8,913 methamphetamine labs have been shut down, with
more than 2,400 of them shut down in 2008 and 2009.

"Remember," Crawford said in the release, "we all have a vested
interest in the success of this system. . ."

The website is at www.in.gov/meth. Information about methamphetamine
lab cleanup, drug endangered children, methamphetamine laws and
information for retailers, is also available on the website.