METH MAKERS MOVING OPERATIONS INTO CITIES

PASCAGOULA -- Methamphetamine producers are coming out of the woods.

For years, methamphetamine production was confined primarily to rural,
wooded areas where the stands of hardwoods and pines hid the drug's makers
- -- commonly called "cookers" -- from the prying eyes of police officers and
drug agents and the open spaces helped dissipate their labs' tell-tale
intense ammonia odor.

But lately, methamphetamine labs are getting closer to many county
residents' homes; in some cases right in their own backyards or right next
door.

The cookers, authorities say, have moved into city neighborhoods and
heavily populated areas of Jackson County.

It's a revelation that's been well-documented during the past few months.

"We have cleaned up seven labs in Pascagoula, three in Moss Point, one in
Ocean Springs and one in Gautier," said Louis Miller, Narcotics Task Force
of Jackson County commander. "There's houses all around them, on the side
and in the back."

More recently, agents searching for a fugitive at a house in a residential
area of Vancleave discovered a methamphetamine lab last Thursday.

Several days earlier, Narcotics Task Force of Jackson County agents --
responding to complaints from residents in the South 16th Street area of
Gulf Park Estates -- discovered a meth lab and methamphetamine at a residence.

Two weeks earlier, state, federal and county authorities discovered a
working methamphetamine lab at a Hurley residence when they went to arrest
someone on a George County warrant.

"The people working (labs) in these small areas usually are people who are
addicted to the drug and make enough to supply their habit and a small
amount to sell so they can buy more ingredients to make more meth and
support their habit," Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics Agent Bruce Lynd said.

"The Hurley lab was more of a big operation; it was larger than what they
normally see."

Most of the labs that authorities find when they raid a house are so-called
"Nazi labs": Methamphetamine labs that are portable, easy and cheap to
build and use a chemical process called a "cold cook" that makes the
methamphetamine without using heat.

"When you mention meth lab to people, they think about the kind of lab they
had in high school and college, with glass bottles and tubes all over,"
Miller said.

"That's not true with a meth lab. You can probably get everything you need
for a lab by stopping at two stores. The glass containers they use are
pickle jars, mayonnaise jars and sports and 2-liter soft drink bottles and
small water bottles."

Lynd said the labs were first seen in 1999 in George County, where
methamphetamine got its start in the area.

"The people up there began to fight it and they ran it out of George County
and it moved to Jackson County and other areas."

When the labs first began moving into the cities and highly populated areas
in the county, law enforcement officers were able to find them because
neighbors complained about the intense odor released by the methamphetamine
process.

Miller said methamphetamine manufacturers have now learned to combine
chemicals and reduce the intensity of the odor to make it less irritating
and identifiable by neighbors.

Lynd said some people operating labs in cities and populated areas do part
of the meth cook at their house and then go into a rural area to do other
steps of the cook, such as adding anhydrous ammonia, that create the odor.

"We've seen them try to cover the smell (of a meth cook at home) by burning
oak leaves or something else with an odor to disguise the smell of the
cook," he said.

Besides producing an irritating, obnoxious odor, authorities said,
operating meth labs in densely populated areas increases the potential of
endangering others with harmful chemicals.

When authorities close a methamphetamine lab, they are required by law to
have certified agents dismantle the equipment and call in hazardous
materials specialists approved by the Environmental Protection Agency to
clean up the site.

State environmental officials have also been called to sites.

"What a lot of people don't appear to realize is that a lot of the
chemicals they're using to make methamphetamine are poison," Sheriff Mike
Byrd said.

"They are harmful to the people making the drug, the people around that
area and the police officers who have to go in and clean those labs up."

"We've arrested people who make methamphetamine and have severe burns on
their bodies where the chemicals have exploded and burned them during the
cook," Miller said.

"The real danger is that nobody knows for sure yet what the side effects
will be from exposure to those chemicals or the fumes."

Something that agents find disturbing is that they have also found children
at many of the houses with labs.

"These children can't choose where they live and they may complain about
the smell and momma and daddy -- if they're cooking -- might tell them to
go to bed," Miller said. "At one place, we found two 15-month-old children
- -- twins."

He said Jackson County Youth Judge Sharon Sigalis has ordered that state
Department of Human Services workers to be called if children are found in
a house with a meth lab.

"They pick up the children immediately and take them to the emergency room
and have them examined," he said.

Miller said the Task Force has been working with the sheriff's department
and city, state and federal authorities to find and clean up the labs.

Jackson County supervisors, he said, have met with members of the state's
congressional delegation about getting grants to fight these labs, and the
sheriff's department has applied for and received grants to pay the
overtime for cleaning the labs and to train officers so they can be
certified to go in the labs.

"All of the agencies work together and cooperate in getting these labs, and
I want to compliment the officers who go in to handle these labs; that is a
very dangerous job," Miller said.