'SPEED' TRAP

Colorado busting a meth lab a day, but hasn't seen peak in number of
clandestine 'cookeries'

Colorado cops raid meth labs at a rate of more than one a day.

Two women are dead after sucking in smoke when an explosion blasted through
a basement cookery. Dozens of drug cookers are suffering serious burns.

And the toll on children who grow up breathing toxic fumes, soaking in a
deadly lifestyle, is yet to be known.

By all accounts, the state is reeling from a "speed" manufacturing madness,
and law enforcement officials say there's no cure in sight.

"This is not anything we've ever had to deal with before," said Sgt. Jim
Gerhardt of the North Metro Task Force. "(But) we haven't seen even the
climax here in Colorado. That's what the history of other states tell us."

From 1999 to 2001, the number of methamphetamine lab busts in Colorado
tripled, exceeding 450 last year.

Adams County has the most busts; investigators with the North Metro Task
Force took down 73 clandestine labs in 2001 and have discovered 35 so far
this year.

The task force's commander, Lt. Lori Moriarty, remembers the start of the
scourge. It was 1999, when two busts a month seemed like a strain.

"Right now if we had two labs a month, we'd be ecstatic," she said.

The increase has forced law enforcement agencies across the Front Range to
devise new strategies to confront the drug's unique challenges.

Unlike many other illegal drugs, methamphetamine swept across the country
from west to east, plaguing California and Washington long before it showed
up in Colorado.

What's most significant is how -- and where -- the stimulant is made.
Thanks to easily obtained ingredients, such as the pseudoephedrine in many
cold medicines, and the dissemination of information over the Internet, the
drug can be brewed in users' homes.

But not without significant risk. The process involves a potentially lethal
concoction of highly volatile chemicals, some odorless and some not, that
permeates carpets and walls. More sophisticated manufacturers have rigged
the labs to drain the hazardous waste into their neighborhood sewer system.
Others capture the fumes in garbage bags that wind up at the county landfill.

Children often are living in the homes where meth labs are operating,
exposing them to deadly vapors and searing chemicals. Fires are frequent.

The state logged its first fatalities in January, when Pamela English and
Tammy Campbell, both 33-year-old meth addicts, were trapped in a crawl
space in a Denver home.

Moriarty believes speed shops, whether in houses, motels, vehicles or
campsites, pose "the biggest safety issue for our community today."

Moriarty's crew began focusing on meth labs in the early spring of 2001,
after two investigators returned from training at Quantico with disturbing
news: The task force's previous approach to clandestine labs was woefully
inadequate.

"We went head-first," Moriarty said. "We said, what is it going to take to
do this right? We weren't going to say it was too hard."'

The fact that Adams County has uncovered more labs does not mean the
problem is more prevalent in the northern suburbs.

"There are no demographic issues with this drug. It's everywhere," Moriarty
said. "We're just at a different stage of recognition."

North Metro made several decisions that Moriarty and Gerhardt believe put
their agencies on track for identifying more labs.

The task force decided that every investigator and supervisor needed to
complete rigorous training in detecting clandestine laboratories.

Then they spread the word. Since May, North Metro investigators have
trained more than 1,000 officers on how to recognize the clues of meth
manufacturing.

Officers discover the majority of labs, often when responding to non- drug
calls, Gerhardt said. The training helps them rapidly recognize a lab when
they're on a call -- which investigators say could save their lives.

After nearly every class, officers come out saying, "Oh my God, do you know
how many labs I've been in and didn't even know it?" Moriarty said.

Sgt. Mark Olin, who heads the Denver Police Department's crime analysis
unit, said his agency needs equipment and more manpower dedicated to
finding clandestine labs.

"North Metro has a response vehicle. Other task forces have response
vehicles. I've got the trunk of my car," he said. "We are going to become
so saturated with caseloads and response calls, we aren't going to have
enough trained people . . . Burnout is right down the street."

The task force approach is considered key to law enforcement success.

"It holds great benefits because it opens a lot of doors that individual
agencies don't have available to them," said Lt. Al Wilson, who commands
the West Metro Task Force in Jefferson County.

Investigators said they hope agencies will come together to address the
problem in statewide cooperation.

"It's going to take a team effort to make sure the state of Colorado is a
safe environment and not a hazardous dump site," Moriarty said. "We can't
bury our heads in the sand."