POLICE DESCRIBE DYSFUNCTIONAL, VIOLENT DRUG HOMES AT FORUM

Officials tell the audience at a forum on children and methamphetamine that
the best things a community can do is build coalitions to fight the problem.

The baby on the bed was so lethargic that law enforcement officers thought
at first it was a doll. It slept as they searched the house and the nearby
camp trailer for drugs.

The baby was among five children officers found that day living in rooms
piled high in trash, dirty clothes and filth. Drugs were stashed in the
kitchen cupboard.

"The house was basically uninhabitable,' Walla Walla Police Sgt. Dennis
McKee told the crowd as he showed the search video at a methamphetamine and
children forum at Walla Walla High School Wednesday night.

The forum was sponsored by the Washington State Methamphetamine Initiative
and the Walla Walla County Substance Abuse Task Force Methamphetamine
Coalition.

The crowd murmured in disgust several times as McKee's video rolled.

The adults found in the drug house were arrested, McKee said. Five children
were taken by Child Protective Services and placed in foster care. Cats and
dogs were rounded up and sent to the Blue Mountain Humane Society.

"That's just one case that we did here in Walla Walla,' McKee said.

Last year, the local law enforcement officers removed 14 children
considered to be endangered by drug use or manufacturing in their homes.

In the early 1990s, it would have been highly unusual to find a child in a
methamphetamine manufacturing lab. Now it's common, officers said.

The difference is how easy it has become to make methamphetamine, officials
said.

Making meth used to require 12 to 24 hours, a lot of glassware and an
extensive recipe of hard-to-obtain ingredients. Most manufacturers made it
in remote areas.

A new manufacturing method developed in the mid-1990s now allows anyone to
cook up a batch in their kitchens in about the same time it takes to make
cookies. Ingredients are easy to obtain, said Gary Bolster, detective with
the Walla Walla County Sheriff's Office.

In Walla Walla County, officers sometimes find people making it at home
with the children underfoot. The ease of making it has fueled an increase
locally in arrests for use and manufacturing, officials said.

The methamphetamine made today is so potent it alters the neuropathways in
the brain after even short-time use, officials said. The need for the drug
supplants all other basic drives, including caring for the children.

"As cops, we used to go in and arrest the bad guys,' McKee said after the
forum. "We'd haul dad to jail, and leave mom to take care of the children.
That doesn't work anymore. The moms quit feeding the kids, quit sending
them off to school, quit changing the diapers.

"...We always thought we could arrest our way out of the problem. We know
now that we can't.'

When children are removed from methamphetamine homes, they do not cling to
their parents and cry like normal children would, said Roger Lake,
president of the Washington State Narcotics Investigators Association.

"There is no connection, no bond, no love in those houses,' he said.

Given the choice between the drug and the children, the parents will choose
the drug every time, he said. Drug use also promotes physical abuse, sexual
abuse, domestic violence, assault, theft and a myriad of other crimes.

Methamphetamine destroys areas in the brain, leaving extensive damage like
a series of strokes. People who previously might have been bright, kind and
caring will turn on those around them. Meth users have beaten their best
friends to death in fits of paranoia, Lake said.

"You see radical changes in them,' Lake said. "They will attack their
children, mom, dad, anyone.'

The children are left to raise themselves in violent, dysfunctional
households. It vastly increases their chances of becoming violent,
drug-using adults, perpetuating the cycle.

Lake has tracked the fate of a few children, now adults, who were raised in
drug households. One, for example, by age 36 was a drug addict who had
given birth to 11 children. All of the surviving children were placed in
foster care. Two died as infants while still with the mother. One was
pulled apart during a tug-of-war between the parents, and one dropped
head-first by the mother onto a sidewalk.

Treatment of meth users is difficult. Many end up in outpatient treatment
programs that only run 10 to 28 days, which is inadequate for the extent of
their problem, Lake said. Meth users need at least 60 to 90 days of
intensive inpatient treatment, and a year is preferred, he said.

The best things a community can do is build coalitions to fight the problem
as Walla Walla has, educate and try to prevent, officials said. Lake urged
parents to learn as much as possible about drugs.

"The number one way to prevent is to educate,' he said. "Educate yourselves
so you can educate your children.'

ON THE NET

For more information about what is being done statewide to fight drug use,
visit www.wsnia.org.

For more information on methamphetamine and other drugs, visit mfiles.org.