KEEPING KIDS IN MIND AT CRIME SCENES

PLATTSMOUTH - The men charged up the rickety steps to where the two
girls hid from the explosions in a small room littered with nails,
bugs and construction debris.

A wide-eyed 6-year-old stared silently at the masked officers, who
were dressed in black tactical gear and had oxygen tanks strapped to
their backs. A 13-year-old struggled and was handcuffed.

Downstairs, the entry team of law enforcement officers searched for a
meth lab in the old, boarded-up house just outside Plattsmouth.

About a dozen vehicles, a fire truck and two ambulances waited
outside, where the children were taken for evaluation. The team of
officers were from the Cass County Sheriff's Office and Plattsmouth
Police Department.

With the children in their care, emergency medical personnel debated
whether they should treat the youths, who could have been
contaminated by the chemicals used to make meth.

"We're too close right now," Paul Hale informed his fellow EMTs as
they stood a few feet away from the children. "We're dead if they're
contaminated."

But the children weren't contaminated, and this was no ordinary drug bust.

The entry team, medical responders and members from Cass County
Health and Human Services, Plattsmouth Fire and Rescue and Cass
County Emergency Management were part of the training exercise Wednesday.

The exercise was part of a program, Nebraska CHEM-L (Children Exposed
to Methamphetamine Laboratories) Protocol, which is made possible
with federal dollars and administered by the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln Center on Children, Families and the Law.

"This was designed to see how well law enforcement agencies and
medical personnel respond to children in a situation like this," said
David Walker, a detective with the Plattsmouth Police Department.

Through the CHEM-L program, agencies are trained how to react when
children are found at the scene of a meth lab, including how to
interview and medically evaluate them.

"We wanted to see the (entry team's) reaction to children suspects,
test Fire and Rescue's reaction to unknown variables like the
explosions and see how well the agencies communicated with each
other," said Walker, who monitored the entry team during the training.

Matt Watson, an investigator within the Cass County sheriff's
narcotics division, also monitored the training exercise and said
children are at risk in homes with meth because of possible
explosions, exposure to or consumption of chemicals, possible toxic
doses of the drug and poor parenting or living conditions.

Watson and Walker said they saw issues the entry team could work on,
including how to handle a baby (a rubber dummy was used Wednesday and
was stepped on a lot) and making sure the children are shielded when
being undressed for decontamination (the actors wore swimsuits
underneath their clothing).

This was the entry team's first CHEM-L exercise, Watson said, though
the team is trained in drug bust situations about every month.

"I think things will go a lot better next time," he said. Most of the
problems were people trying to decipher what was real and what
wasn't. "I think if the same incident occurred a week from now things
would go a lot smoother. They were learning how to take care of kids
and dealing with medical issues."

Handcuff-free, Allyson Cox, 13, said she, too, learned some things
during the training.

"That scared the crap out of me," Cox said. "I was all excited until
I heard them coming upstairs. Just think how real kids feel when that
happens, though."