WHEN METH HITS HOME

Oklahoma Trooper's Routine Check Turns Fatal, Prompting Focus On Powerful
Drug Gaining Popularity

DEVOL, Okla. -- An hour before dawn and already dressed for work, Highway
Patrol Trooper Nik Green answered a knock on the front door of his
residence, a brown brick parsonage next to the First Baptist Church, where
he was part-time youth minister.

The woman at the door, who delivered morning newspapers in and around this
hamlet of 150 people, told the trooper of a car parked on the gravel road
less than a mile away with its doors and trunk lid open and a man slumped
in the seat.

When Green went to investigate, the 35-year-old father of three young girls
was sucked into the maelstrom of madness caused by methamphetamine, a
highly addictive and dangerous drug that has been spreading like a plague
across much of America. Minutes later, Green was dead, his body sprawled
face down in the ditch alongside a desolate country road, his brain pierced
by two bullets from his Glock .357 Magnum pistol.

Authorities said that on the morning after Christmas, the trooper
discovered meth user Ricky Ray Malone, 29, brewing up another batch of the
drug in a "mobile meth lab." Green's attempt to arrest Malone led to what
one investigator called a "horrific struggle."

Malone, 4 inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than the 6-foot, 180-pound
officer, seized Green's pistol during the fight, the investigators say. The
sounds of the struggle were recorded by a video camera mounted on the
patrol car's dashboard, although the fight was not in the camera's optic range.

"Oh Lord ... Jesus Christ," were the trooper's last words before a pistol
shot ended his prayer, and his life.

A 'classic example'

Malone, arrested three days later, was charged with first-degree murder. In
a court affidavit, investigators said he confessed, but gave no other
details. The prosecutor said he will demand the death penalty and will
accept no plea bargains.

Only months before, Malone had been a full-time municipal firefighter and
emergency medical technician in Duncan, a city of 20,000 people 60 miles
northeast of Devol.

"He offers the classic example of how fast meth can ruin a person's life
and cause them to become dangerous, very dangerous," Stephens County
Sheriff Jimmie Bruner said of Malone. "It's evil. It's madness."

Malone was fired from his job by city officials in October, a month after
discovery in the firehouse of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia
bearing his fingerprints. By December, he had been arrested twice on drug
and weapons charges, and had gotten out of jail on bond only four days
before the trooper was killed.

Malone's court-appointed lawyers would not discuss the case. A preliminary
hearing is scheduled for May 20 and a trial is likely in the fall.

The illegal drug, known as crystal meth, crank, ice, glass or speed, can be
made using recipes widely distributed via the Internet. The key ingredient
is pseudoephedrine, a chemical legally incorporated into a number of
over-the-counter medications for nasal congestion. Another key ingredient
in many recipes is liquid anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer used by many farmers.

"You don't need a PhD in chemistry" to make meth, said Oklahoma U.S.
Attorney Robert McCampbell.

"If you can bake a cake, you can mix up a batch of meth if you have the
ingredients," added Carey Rouse, chief investigator on a district
attorney's drug task force in Duncan.

Meth's intense effects

Depending on its form, the finished product can be injected, snorted,
smoked or swallowed. The resulting euphoric high can last for hours -- much
longer, experts say, than such drugs as cocaine or heroin. And it is
relatively cheap to make. Authorities say ingredients costing less than
$100 can produce meth with a street value of $1,000.

"Chronic use can cause violent behavior, anxiety, confusion, insomnia,
auditory hallucinations, mood disturbances, delusions and paranoia," warns
the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

In a paper distributed to local law enforcement agencies months before the
trooper's slaying, Dr. John Duncan of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs Control said abuse of methamphetamine can cause severe
neurological damage, "actually genetically restructuring the brain itself."

He told officers that chronic abusers "exhibit symptoms clinically
indistinguishable from paranoid schizophrenia ... quite often displayed as
intense aggression and violent behavior."

Oklahoma, like other agricultural states, has been hit especially hard by a
proliferation of meth manufacturing labs. In 2000, according to the federal
Drug Enforcement Administration, 279 labs were seized by federal, state and
local authorities in Oklahoma. Last year, state officials said, the number
jumped past 1,400.

One reason is that meth manufacturing can be a smelly and messy operation,
emitting noxious fumes and producing an abundance of toxic waste, so makers
of the illegal drug usually seek out an isolated area. Oklahoma has an
abundance of isolated areas. For example, Cotton County on Oklahoma's
southern fringe, where Green was killed, has a population of 6,614
sprinkled over 636 square miles. That's a geographic area about twice the
size of Nassau County, population 1.3 million.

Oklahoma farms also are a ready source of anhydrous ammonia. Meth makers
steal the chemical from pressurized tanks where it is stored in the
region's vast fields of grain or at its many farm supply stores.

No reply from 'George 198'

Besides Green, the deaths of two other Oklahoma troopers have been
attributed to the meth plague, one shot during a raid on a meth lab and the
other killed in a car accident while pursuing a meth suspect.

Nik Green joined the Highway Patrol six years ago after working as a police
officer in Guthrie, Okla., and as a deputy sheriff and then undersheriff in
Cotton County. He grew up in the county, graduated from Big Pasture High
School, went to a state junior college on a baseball scholarship and got
his bachelor's degree from the University of Central Oklahoma. He married a
young schoolteacher and they had three daughters, ages 2, 4 and 7.

Last year, Green got a sought-after transfer to his native county as one of
three troopers stationed there. He also became associate pastor and youth
minister at the Baptist church in this community four miles north of the
Red River. On Sundays, he drove the church's white bus through the
countryside, picking up farm children for Bible school and church services.

When not on duty, Green kept his Ford Crown Victoria patrol car, which was
black and white, parked near the basketball hoop alongside his driveway on
Devol's main street. The cluster of houses, church, post office and small
water tower is a half-mile north of well-traveled U.S. 70. Everybody
hereabouts, it seems, knew Nik Green and where he lived.

Thus it was to his house that the newspaper carrier drove after she saw the
parked car with the man slumped on the seat. The woman, who asked to remain
anonymous, knocked on Green's door about 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 26.

After listening to her report, Green telephoned the patrol's district
dispatcher in Lawton and asked whether the trooper on duty in Cotton County
was available. "I've had a lady stop by and tell me about a guy who's
passed out in his car a bit up the road," he said. When the dispatcher
responded that the nearest trooper was investigating a major accident,
Green said he would check out the report.

He contacted the dispatcher again at 6:42 a.m., this time via the radio in
his patrol car, saying he would "be 10-8 shortly, reference a 10-26
suspicious vehicle, about a half north of my residence, back to the west."

Meanwhile, a different type of memorial to the trooper is emerging at the
state Capitol. A law known as the Trooper Green Act is advancing through
the state legislature to regulate sales of pseudoephedrine tablets, the
cold medication that is meth's main ingredient.

"Pseudoephedrine is an excellent medicine that many of us use for a
decongestant," said state Rep. John Nance, one of the bill's authors. "In
the hands of somebody who knows how to cook, it becomes methamphetamine.
The only difference [in the chemical composition of the two] is one molecule."

"You control pseudoephedrine, you control the meth," said Mark Woodward of
the state narcotics bureau.

The new law would limit sales of the tablet form of the legal drug to 9
grams, or about 10 boxes, and would require the buyer to show a picture ID
and sign a register. Sales could be made only by a licensed pharmacist.

Now, the cold pills are available at convenience stores, discount stores
and grocery stores as well as drugstores. The restrictions would not apply
to gel caps or liquid forms of products containing pseudoephedrine, which
are more difficult to convert to meth.

Scott Rowland, the narcotics bureau's general counsel, said "large and rich
pharmaceutical companies have already begun to lobby against the bill." The
pharmaceutical industry says such restrictions will do more to
inconvenience consumers than to stop meth.

But Rowland urged citizens to call their legislators to "support them in
resisting these powerful influences" lobbying against the bill.

"Their state isn't being corrupted and corroded by this terrible drug
scourge," Rowland said.

Gaylord Shaw is a former Washington correspondent for Newsday.