TUCSON POLICE: METH EPIDEMIC SPREADING, BOOSTING CRIME RATE

Daniel Egurola grew up in a well-off family on Tucson's Northwest Side and
attended the University of Arizona. He had only done drugs a few times when
he first tried meth at a party.

But once he tried it, he couldn't stay away, even after spending two years
in prison for stabbing a friend.

Egurola is the face of a drug epidemic that has reached into every sector
of the city, but especially the middle- and upper-class areas on the East
and Northwest sides. Police say it's the cause for increases in every class
of crime, from burglary to identity theft to child neglect to assault.

Tackling the problem will require more restrictions on the sale of
ephedrine-related products, changes in the prosecution of meth cases and
more coordination among law enforcement, treatment specialists and
community groups, Tucson Police Chief Richard Miranda said Thursday. "We
can't arrest this problem away," he said.

The police will meet with the City Council Wednesday to explain the scope
of the methamphetamine problem and why a more broad-based, coordinated
approach is needed.

Police analysis of meth houses, sites where meth is either sold or
prepared, over the last six years, shows the number of houses ballooning
across the East and Northwest sides in 2003 and 2004. In 2005, the number
of identified meth incidents is down, but crime continues to rise. Police
Capt. David Neri, commander of the Counter Narcotics Alliance, said this
shows that meth hasn't gone away but instead has "gone underground."

Faced with increasing enforcement, larger labs have moved to Mexico, while
domestic production has shifted to smaller, more mobile labs that are
harder to detect, he said.

"We are pursuing this as drug enforcement, but our major concern is the
level of crime overall," Neri said. "That's not going down." Neri said the
recent state law that limits the sale of ephedrine products and provides
strict penalties for those who expose children to meth production was a
good start, but police need more tools. In a memo to city officials,
Miranda laid out several changes he said would help police combat meth more
effectively. He suggested: ? Requiring retailers to provide a formal
training process to employees who sell ephedrine products, similar to what
liquor stores provide ? Implementing an automated record-keeping system to
document who buys ephedrine products ? Removing meth cases from the Drug
Court, in which offenders trade jail for a monitored treatment program.

? Improving education about meth, expanding treatment options and adding
police officers and prosecutors.

Drug Court Judge Barbara Sattler said she opposes moving meth cases out of
Drug Court. She said the treatment required by the court includes home
visits and close supervision. She said there simply isn't enough money for
residential treatment.

But Miranda said meth addicts are more likely to return to the drug and are
often too dangerous to be on probation. They need rehabilitation, he said,
but in an environment where they are physically separated from the drug.
Miranda acknowledged the solution won't be cheap.

"If we have a lot more people in treatment, it's going to cost more money,"
he said. So will more officers and prosecutors. "It has gotten to the point
where we need a plan before meth overruns the city," said Democratic
Councilman Jose Ibarra, who asked Mayor Bob Walkup to put the issue on the
agenda in an Aug. 29 letter. Andrew Greenhill, Republican Walkup's chief of
staff, said getting more money will require lobbying the state and federal
government, but some measures, like stepping up education efforts by
community groups, would not. "There are things we can do without a big cash
outlay," he said. Egurola's case may hold out hope.

Today, the 30-year-old Egurola has been clean for 116 days with the help of
a court-mandated treatment program run by the Salvation Army. By the time
he was arrested on his first possession charge, 10 years after he first
tried meth, he was ready to leave meth behind, he said. Egurola thinks
little can be done to deter addicts until they decide to change, but if he
had known the consequences for his health and the things he would do under
the influence of meth, he wouldn't have tried it.