WEAPONS AND CHILDREN FOUND AT LABS

When police raid their next P lab there is a good chance it will be in
a rental property cluttered with chemicals, weapons and other illicit
drugs.

The rental property may well be in the Waitemata policing district,
where nearly a quarter of all labs are found. There is also a
one-in-three chance there will be young children or babies in the house.

Police officially started recording clandestine labs numbers in 1996,
despite the notorious drug being almost unheard of in those days.
While the number of labs being found was low in the late 1990s, it
quickly rose in the early to mid-2000s.

Last year a not so welcome milestone was reached when the 1000th lab
was dismantled. The suspected cook was a 36-year-old man with gang
associations and an extensive criminal history which included
burglary, motor vehicle theft and assaults.

He was typical of many cooks found in New Zealand's labs - a Pakeha
male, aged between 20 and 40 with gang links.

Since 2003 police have found an average of 200 labs each
year.

While the labs now appear nationwide, they are still more prevalent in
the northern half of the North Island. Within that area a slight drift
from the Auckland region into rural areas of Northland and Waikato can
be seen - although the largest number of labs found was still in the
North Shore-Waitakere area.

While more than half of the 211 labs found last year were in homes -
rentals in particular - a growing number were discovered in hotels,
public places such as parks and school grounds, and storage units.

Nearly 40 were found in vehicles, although many of these were
partially completed labs, which appeared to be in transit or being
stored in the cars, rather than fully working labs.

In some cases the mobile labs were discovered after police noticed
erratic driving or suspicious chemical smells coming from the car
during a routine stop. A few labs were discovered in stolen vehicles
or in cars involved in car accidents.

Police arriving at residential P labs are finding not only highly
toxic and dangerous chemicals but an array of weapons, including
military-style guns, machetes, crossbows, stunguns and explosives.
Other drugs, from magic mushrooms to Ecstasy, are also found.

Of more concern, police are also finding children, almost a third of
whom were under the age of 5. They were present in a third of
residential clan labs discovered last year. Eight were babies under
the age of 1.

Nearly half of the labs last year were found through drug-targeted
police work, but 22 per cent of detections came from reports from
members of the public.

A small number were found after explosions or fires at the
properties.

This year, the number of labs found is slightly down on last year,
with 97 discovered across the country by the end of July compared with
120 at the same time last year.