KIDS CAUGHT IN METH LAB PRESSURE COOKER

Too often, cops say, they find children at home when drug raids are conducted

Makeshift cookers, stockpiled chemicals, stained carpets and scorch marks
from obvious, but unreported fires: These are signs methamphetamine lab
investigators expect to find.

But police are stunned by what they sometimes discover within arms' reach:
playpens, toys and stuffed animals. In some homes, meth processing products
are stored in old juice bottles in the family fridge.

"The scariest one I had, the one that just rattled my brain, was in the
basement of a single-family home," said Sgt. Mark Olin, who heads the
Denver police crime analysis lab. "There were playpens and riding toys, so
the children had to be little. This guy was making his dope at one end of
the playroom."

The meth was being cooked just feet from the furnace room, Olin said, where
a pilot light from a water heater could have ignited vapors at any time.

"I was fit to be tied, quite honestly, that someone would have that low a
thought for their own children that they would put making drugs first," he
said.

Olin's experience isn't unique. As more methamphetamine labs are uncovered
in residential neighborhoods, investigators say Colorado children are being
exposed to toxic fumes and potentially lethal fires.

Joseph Jueschke, a senior case manager with the Mesa County Department of
Human Services, said he has been horrified by the information he receives.

"I've had children as young as 8 break down the process (for manufacturing
meth). I've had 6-year-olds teach me how to fold the product for
distribution," he said. "These are kids who don't have a say about where
they live."

So far, Colorado has been slow to respond to the problem. The state does
not track the number of children removed from meth-plagued homes, and there
is no uniform protocol for handling kids found during lab busts.

That's in stark contrast to practices in at least two other Western states,
where the statistics tell a shocking story. In 1999, law enforcement
officers in Los Angeles removed 548 children from meth-lab homes.
Investigators in the state of Washington totaled more than 225 the
following year.

Liz McDonough, spokeswoman for Colorado's Department of Human Services,
said her agency recognizes that the threat to these children is an emerging
issue.

"Obviously this is something that is happening more and more," she said. "I
think we are probably getting to the point where we would like to keep
records on that."

In 1993, California established its first Drug Endangered Response Team, a
cooperative effort between investigators, the district attorney's office
and social workers. Several counties in Washington have full-time liaisons
between child protective services and law enforcement.

Only a smattering of human services departments in Colorado have attempted
to address the issue.

"We have nobody here" assigned to take on these children, said Lt. Lori
Moriarty who leads the North Metro Task Force in Adams County.

The task force in Mesa County is luckier. When investigators find children
during raids there, they call Jueschke.

About 50 percent of the 194 children who came through Mesa County's agency
last year were there because meth was a part of their lives, Jueschke said.
Not all had been raised in homes with meth labs, but those that were had
been deeply affected, he said.

The problems are physical and emotional, immediate and lingering.

Nearly half the children affected by meth that Jueschke has seen have been
diagnosed with learning disabilities and roughly 90 percent rely upon
inhalers to breathe.

"Most of the kids removed from these homes have huge respiratory problems,"
he said.

In most cases, parents have lied to doctors, who then treat the symptoms as
part of a stubborn infection or chronic asthma.

"This stuff will corrode any standing metal surface," Jueschke said of the
chemicals used during manufacturing. "The vapors are vented into huge trash
bags that are closed up when they're full. They call them 'death bags.' If
you were to open them and inhale the contents, it would kill you."

Often, Jueschke said, they also live with pervasive neglect, a prevalence
of sex and pornography, and the frequent comings and goings of strangers.
They are often malnourished and develop erratic sleeping habits. By the age
of 5, they may grasp that their life is different, but it is the only life
they know.

"What these kids miss out on . . . is a secure, emotionally healthy
relationship with a parent," said Terri James-Banks, director of social
work with the Kempe Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse. "They are
pretty direct in saying, 'My mom and dad love drugs more than they love me.' "

In the past year, North Metro investigators began collecting statistics on
children they encounter during raids. Last year, there were 15. Eighteen of
the 73 labs they busted were next to schools.

Many of those arrested were parents. "It was not uncommon for them not to
know where their kids were," Moriarty said.

Prosecutors are starting to add charges of child abuse to cases in which
children have been at laboratories, Moriarty said.

She worries that it is only a matter of time before disaster strikes.

"Children were dying in meth labs but no one knew they were meth labs.
There have been reports of children drinking chemicals. We're going to see
that (in Colorado)," she said. "These children are our future. If we don't
figure out the whole complexity of this issue, we're missing the boat."