LAWMEN FIGHT NEW BATTLE

Area Officers Discovering Meth's Dangers The Hard Way

His first day on the job, Franklin County Sheriff's deputy Tony Rouse got a
call to investigate suspicious activity on Gene Seale's Meadville farm. He
went to the scene and saw a man fiddling with an anhydrous ammonia tank.

The deputy struck up a conversation, and the man, Johnny Thorpe of Natchez,
said he worked on the farm. But the congeniality stopped there.

Thorpe turned and ran for his pickup truck. Rouse caught up and tried to
pull the fugitive from the cab.

Thorpe wheeled around and thrust a Phillips-head screwdriver through the
deputy's left hand, then fled on foot.

The tool went into Rouse's pinkie, traveled down the finger along- side the
bone and punctured the other side of his hand.

"I watched him pull it out," said Rouse, 32. "I broke for 10 minutes to go
to the hospital, got it bandaged up, went out back on the manhunt. I was
pretty mad."

Eighteen hours later, about 2 a.m. Sunday, March 5, 2000, a barefoot and
mud-caked Thorpe ran out of places to hide. Thirty-five lawmen from eight
agencies assisted in the manhunt.

"The day that happened: That's when I realized we had a problem," Rouse
said. "To see somebody act like a wild animal ... I knew we had a problem."

Until recently, Rouse and other area lawmen and firemen knew little about
the dangers associated with crystal methamphetamine.

But as meth use and production rapidly increases, they find themselves
confronted with criminals and chemicals not addressed in most training
manuals. They're learning on their beats and hoping their lessons aren't fatal.

The vast majority of meth cooks area lawmen encounter are what Mississippi
Bureau of Narcotics agent Conner Magee calls "meth monkeys" or lower-class
whites in their late 20s and early 30s.

"They get high, sit awake for two days and tinker on a race car," he said.
"If you see a trailer at the end of a dirt road, with a Rebel flag hanging,
that's grounds for a search warrant."

Area meth labs normally produce no more than an ounce of dope per cook,
usually much less, depending on what quantities of precursors cooks can
afford to buy and how much anhydrous ammonia they can steal. Their chief
concern is making enough dope to feed their habit, not the safe operation
of the lab, which is often thrown together in slapdash fashion, Magee said.

Meth cooks use a variety of hazardous chemicals to make their dope. At most
southwest Mississippi labs officials find anhydrous ammonia, ether, lye,
hydrochloric gas and lithium, which ignites when mixed with water. Cooks
frequently mishandle their lab apparatus and start fires.

"Ten years ago, we didn't even have to worry about things like that," said
Sam Walsh, Amite County fire coordinator. "Normally, in a house fire we use
protective gear because of the synthetics, the furniture and all that. But
a lot of times, on the exterior, we don't use protective gear. With a lab,
the fumes can be deadly. ... It's fear of the unknown more than anything else."

Throw a vial of lithium into an Olympic-size swimming pool, "it will blow
every drop of water out of that pool," Magee said.

Magee recently spoke to 20 area firemen, trying to educate them on meth
culture and the myriad dangers of meth labs. He attended federally funded
"clandestine lab" training school in Quantico, Va., a couple years ago and
is one of only two area bureau agents certified to investigate and clean up
labs.

One training school video left a profound impression on Magee: A few cops
filled a mason jar with ether, put it in a car and triggered an explosion.
When the smoke cleared, all that remained in the camera's view was the
engine block.

Anhydrous ammonia, while not flammable unless it composes 16 percent of
ambient air, also poses deadly risks.

"If you smell anhydrous, you got to leave," Magee told the firemen. "It
will kill you. It will take your breath away. Two weeks later, if you
weren't wearing a mask, you'll die of chemical pneumonia. You'll cough your
lungs out."

Magee hoped his anecdotes imparted one fundamental lesson: Meth lab
chemicals can "cause a human months of damage."

"If some (idiot) walks into a lab and lights a cigarette, they'll blow
themselves up," he said.

Southwest Mississippi Narcotics Enforcement Unit Commander Crieg Oster
considered the same scenario when he busted a meth lab recently.

"I was knocking on the door. I got this tremendous smell of ether coming
through the seams of the door. We had to very, very carefully make entry
into the home. The subject was dumping red lye, all types of precursors
down the commode. If anyone had lit a match ..."

To mollify their own meth-induced paranoia, cooks often keep large caches
of guns, including high-powered rifles and automatic pistols, Oster said.
Some set up surveillance cameras around their property and booby traps
designed to maim intruders and warn of an impending raid.

Booby traps seen by Magee, Oster and others include: Light bulbs made to
explode and rain glass shards down on whoever flips the switch; fish hooks
hung at head-level from trees to rend facial wounds; and a rat trap rigged
with firing pin and 12-gauge shotgun shell, designed to snap shut and
explode the bullet when triggered by a string tripwire.

"They're just freaks like that," Magee said of meth cooks.

Meth users' paranoia foils some common drug investigation techniques, such
as the use of informants, which 14th Circuit Court District Attorney Danny
Smith said is one of the most effective.

Meth proliferates not on street corners but among small circles of friends
centered around a cook, making infiltration of the meth community nearly
impossible, Magee said.

"You're not going to do that with a meth head; they're too skittish," he said.

Complicating officials' efforts is the new trend of "rolling" meth labs.

Magee said many cooks simply set up their lab in the bed of their pickup
truck and make meth as they drive down country roads.

So lawmen find themselves waiting for anonymous tips or lab fires to bring
them closer to the meth community.

In the meantime, they attend seminars on methamphetamine and listen to
their colleagues tell improbable stories about the drug's effects and
accompanying dangers.

Rouse vividly remembers how quickly his attacker became agitated.

"You can't holler at them," he said. "Now, speaking from experience, speak
from a distance, talk slowly. They're so extremely paranoid, everyone's out
to get 'em - always."

Later in 2000, Thorpe pleaded guilty to attempted theft of anhydrous
ammonia and simple assault of a law enforcement officer. Circuit Judge Al
Johnson sentenced him to six years in prison.

Shortly after Rouse got stabbed, he tried to explain to his family what
happened.

"My wife wanted me to quit. She said, 'This is it. It's one thing to fight
somebody and it's another thing to get stabbed.' When I tried to explain to
them about ammonia, what people would want to steal ammonia for, she was
astonished.

"There's no way we can stop this monster. It's inevitable. ... We're
fighting a losing battle," Rouse said. "We are basically running before we
even started crawling. This stuff has run in here out of the blue."

Index

US MS: Meth Hits SW Miss. Hard And Fast http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1152/a01.html

US: Meth Cooks Prefer 'Nazi' Method http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1152/a05.html

US MS: Farmers First Line Of Meth Defense http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1171/a14.html

US MS: Lawmen Fight New Battle http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1181/a09.html