METH: SIZING UP THE PROBLEM

Testifying at her fiance's sentencing hearing last week, Melissa Dawn
Lattea described life in the weeks and months preceding their infant son's
death.

"We started hanging out with the wrong people," she said. "We started doing
meth."

The precise role of methamphetamine in the death of 6-month-old Jose "J.J."
Mendoza, Jr., is unclear. But the presence of methamphetamine in this or
any other crime or misfortune in Natrona County does not come as a surprise
to local law enforcement officers.

Statistics compiled by the Casper Police Department earlier this year show
methamphetamine was involved in 70 percent of all Casper auto burglaries
where someone was caught and connected with a specific crime. The numbers
are impressive across a spectrum of other criminal activities. Police say
methamphetamine was involved in 46 percent of assaults, 54 percent of
frauds, 44 percent of family violence cases and 32 percent of child abuse
cases.

"(Methamphetamine) is either the driving force behind, or a peripheral
issue in, much of the crime we deal with," said Casper Police Chief Tom Pagel.

In the days leading up to Casper's second Methamphetamine Awareness
Conference next week, knowledge of this connection may already be higher
than in most communities of a comparable size. One question, however, is
whether the attention devoted to methamphetamine in Casper indicates that
the local problem is particularly daunting or if it represents simply an
unusual effort to address it.

Statewide statistics suggest the latter.

Wyoming's Division of Criminal Investigations tracks its drug arrests and
cases by district. Last year in the central district that includes Natrona
County, DCI discovered two methamphetamine labs and made 49 methamphetamine
arrests, more than half of the agency's total drug arrests. Across the
state, DCI arrested 33 people on methamphetamine charges in the southeast
district that includes Laramie and Cheyenne; 27 in the southwest area that
includes Sweetwater County; and 46 in the northeast district that includes
Sheridan and Gillette. Information about the northwest district was
unavailable.

Kurt Dobbs, director of DCI, urged caution in reading too much into the
numbers, with large local busts in some cases skewing data from one area or
another. But he did suggest that the problem is roughly proportional to
population and that proximity to transportation corridors exerts a strong
influence.

"Our interstates are our pipelines," he said, describing the spread of a
drug that infects many Western states and that, because it is often
produced locally, reverses an old paradigm where drugs were expected to
filter up from states in the Southeast.

A common explanation for how it took hold in Casper is that it came with
the oil, gas and mineral industry. Scott Jones, Community Programs
Coordinator for the Casper Police Department, said the periodic hard work
required in these industries may have made the stimulating effects of the
drug appealing to many workers.

But now, he said, the effect of the drug is pervasive. "Probably 80 percent
of the children we place in foster care have meth in the household," he said.

Glory Walkin, a crisis advocate at the Self Help Center, offered a similar
picture of the drug's effects in the community. Asked in late December how
many of the recent cases she has dealt with related to methamphetamine, she
responded slowly.

"I think ... I did have one case last month that was not meth-related,"
Walkin said, explaining that she may have worked on nearly 20 cases in that
time.

Walkin said she has learned various things in her time working with
families affected by methamphetamine. She saw a burn on a girl's mouth
caused by using a light bulb as a pipe.

Now, she said, she is careful to smash her burned-out bulbs before throwing
them away.

A client who asked not to be identified in the newspaper offered other
details of methamphetamine use she observed as she endured her husband's
methamphetamine problem: holes drilled throughout the house; collected
neighborhood trash piled upstairs.

With the husband now in jail in California, she said her life has started
returning to normal. The mother of four girls, she said she is encouraged
that they have shown no inclination to follow in their father's footsteps.

"I think when you see that and you live it, you want to stay the hell
away," she said.