O.C. Launches Crackdown on Meth Labs

A day after two police officers were injured by chemicals while raiding a methamphetamine lab, Orange County law enforcement leaders announced Wednesday a major new campaign to crack down on the volatile home labs.

The new Methamphetamine Clandestine Laboratory Task Force--billed as the first of its kind in the country--will team detectives from seven local police agencies with agents from the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement to “seek and eradicate” the county’s burgeoning number of methamphetamine home labs, officials said.

The task force will be armed with a custom-made $90,000 motor home, outfitted with special safety gear and protective suits for the agents who raid and clean up the toxic mess often left in the wake of a raid on a meth lab.

The task force joins two other narcotic enforcement teams already raiding local meth labs, but organizers say this marks the first proactive effort that will seek out clandestine labs by searching state records for chemical sales and using street-level informants. The task force will hit the ground running in upcoming weeks, officials said.

“We already have 600 solid leads for Orange County, 600 leads that have been sitting on a shelf because we didn’t have the resources to go after these people,” said Walter Allen, special agent with the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. “Now, we’re going to go out and get them.”

Methamphetamine is a cheap, easy-to-produce powder drug that delivers a long, frenetic high to users. The drug is also extremely addictive, can leave steady abusers with neurological damage and is “cooked” with volatile chemicals.

Methamphetamine is the best-selling illicit drug on the streets of Orange County, and the demand has inspired hundreds of criminal entrepreneurs to set up makeshift chemistry sets in their homes--a dangerous situation considering the ingredients are explosive chemicals and the “jailhouse recipes” are often inexact, Allen said.

“The small-scale labs are the most dangerous and unpredictable,” Allen said. “We call them the mad scientists.”

The number of “stove-top labs” have surged in recent years, Allen said. In 1989, 20 labs were raided in Orange County. There were 82 labs raided so far this year. Among the cities with the highest concentration were Anaheim, 14; Santa Ana, nine; and Huntington Beach, eight.

Labs in local homes and motel rooms have burst into flames, pumped out clouds of noxious smoke and, in one instance in Anaheim, allegedly led to the poisoning death of a young child. On Tuesday, two Orange police officers and a 31-year-old suspect were overwhelmed by fumes during a raid, and nearby residents had to be evacuated. None of the injuries was considered serious.

That incident was cited at a Wednesday news conference that brought together police chiefs from Brea, Buena Park, La Habra, Santa Ana and Westminster, along with Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi and Assistant Sheriff Doug Storm. The group heralded the task force as the best way to combat the manufacture of methamphetamine.

“It is an especially problematic drug because users become intensely paranoid and then sometimes violent because of that paranoia,” La Habra Police Chief Steven H. Staveley said. “They don’t eat or sleep, and they think everybody in the world is out to get them.”

The targets of the violence are often family, Staveley said. The task force will work closely with the county Health Care Agency and child-abuse workers because many raids often find labs in homes with small children, Staveley said. The task force will also have a full-time prosecutor assigned to work cases, Capizzi said.

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Nabbing Labs

The number of illegal drug lab seizures in Orange County has rocketed nearly 600% in five years:

1997: 82*

* Through Wednesday

Source: Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, Orange County Regional Office