Pubdate: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 Source: Roanoke Times (VA) Copyright: 2004 Roanoke Times Contact: http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/368 Author: Shay Wessol, The Roanoke Times Meth: A New Drug Crisis Is Growing In Southwest Virginia (2 of 4) 'WE'RE FIGHTING AS HARD AS WE KNOW HOW,' AUTHORITIES SAY Local Police Say They Need More Resources, Including Drug Investigators Dedicated To Meth Cases, To Fight Effectively. In a matter of minutes, everything went horribly wrong. Shawn Michael Wright of Max Meadows spent last Halloween cooking methamphetamine at Brandie Marie Martin's apartment in Building 105 of the Meadowview complex in Pulaski. But the caustic smell emitted by the heated chemicals had caught a neighbor's attention. "The guy next door, he kept knocking and asking, 'What's that smell?' They said it was nothing," said Kim Gill, Meadowview's property manager. But in those few minutes it took to answer the door and appease a neighbor's question, the chemicals being heated on a gas stove burner caught fire. Wright and Martin fled without a warning to anyone, and the flames they left behind burned with a force hot enough to melt the refrigerator and the cabinets. "It looked like a little miniature bomb had gone off," Gill said. And the smell was overwhelming. "Like burning plastic with a little salt thrown in? I don't know how to explain it," she said. "But once you smell it, you never forget it." The nine other families living in the building escaped without injury. Police soon caught up with Wright, 22, and Martin, 23, and charged them each with manufacturing meth, conspiracy and two counts of child neglect since two young children were in the apartment as they cooked the drug. Attorneys had worked out an agreement in which Wright would plead guilty to the drug charges, but he backed out of the deal last Wednesday 7.21 in Pulaski County Circuit Court. The agreement would have sent him to prison for two years and ordered some kind of restitution for the fire damage, Pulaski County Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Sandy Wright said. Attorneys have not set a new date for the case to go to trial. Martin's case is scheduled schedule to go before a grand jury Aug. 4 and to trial Aug. 9. Building 105 has been rebuilt as part of a complex-wide renovation project that was already under way when the fire occurred. It is expected to reopen to tenants this week, Gill said. Even so, the fire served as a stark jolt that meth had arrived in Southwest Virginia - and that communities were ill-prepared to stamp out its assurgence. "Law enforcement is constant action-reaction," said Wythe County Chief Deputy Doug King. "We can't do anything pre-emptive." Wythe County, for example, has 30 deputies who work patrol, investigations investigators and in the schools. Those 30 deputies deal with 29,000 people spread across 480 square miles and use 105 miles of interstate highway, King said. And meth isn't the only drug they encounter, although, at the moment at least, it is the worst. It helps when merchants or citizens can tip off police to customers buying large quantities of the chemicals used to make meth, including writing down license plate information and clothing descriptions. The Meadowview fire spurred Pulaski police to start educating property owners and local merchants about the dangers of meth and what they can do to help stop its spread. Police have since taught two such classes to merchants and landlords, said drug investigator Lt. John Leeper. Last month, Attorney General Jerry Kilgore spread the message statewide, announcing the creation of Virginia Meth Watch, an initiative to train merchants statewide to spot potential meth cooks as they're buying ingredients. It all helps keep the pressure on the cooks and dealers, Leeper said. "As long as we can keep them changing what they're doing, they'll mess up," he said. "And if they mess up, we're going to catch them." In Smyth County, authorities meet regularly to share meth intelligence. Smyth County Commonwealth's Attorney Roy Evans has also convened a special grand jury with the power to subpoena witnesses and interview them under oath. "We just started putting together information on people who were, for lack of a better word, targets," Evans said. The last round of indictments, delivered in late June, helped sheriff's deputies shut down four active meth labs. No one knows how deeply meth will spread into Virginia. The drug has spent the last 20 years making its way here after being popularized by the West Coast Hells Hell's Angels biker gangs in the mid-1980s. West Coast states are still engaged in their meth battle. "I guess I'm hoping, in the back of my mind, that it's going to run its course," Evans said. "We're fighting it as hard as we know how." But local police say they need more resources, including drug investigators dedicated to meth cases, to fight effectively. Those dollars just aren't available to rural law enforcement offices, so they make do with what options they do have. "The biggest thing we can do is we have our drug programs in the schools to let them know this is not the life you want to live. The schools are our primary contact with the future drug users," King said. Meanwhile, investigators look nervously to neighboring states like Tennessee, where the federal Drug Enforcement Administration DEA busted 499 meth labs last year, and West Virginia with its 61 labs found, and wonder what tomorrow will bring in Virginia. The realty of the meth epidemic, for police, is that they can only enforce the law. They can't fix the problem alone, King said. "It's up to society as a whole to find another way," King said. "There has to be a blend of education, rehabilitation and enforcement. That's the only way." - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D