Pubdate: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 Source: Tennessean, The (TN) Copyright: 2004 The Tennessean Contact: http://www.tennessean.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/447 Author: ROB JOHNSON MORE OFFICERS GET TRAINING FOR METH LAB SEARCHES As crime scenes go, the methamphetamine lab is the last place a drug agent should be entering in a rush. It bubbles over with hazardous materials and life-threatening fumes. Just deciding which products can safely be put into evidence and those that somehow must be disposed of requires moving gingerly through rooms of beakers and vats. It also takes highly specialized certification for agents, officers and deputies. ''First of all, they can't even enter a lab without having the certification,'' said Harry Sommers, the Drug Enforcement Administration's top man in Tennessee. Rather than send narcotics officers out of state for specialized federal training, the DEA and the local U.S. attorney's office are bringing certification class straight to what Sommers calls ''ground zero'' of Tennessee's burgeoning methamphetamine production. Although the labs operate throughout the middle part of the state, they are especially common near the Cumberland Plateau, where clandestine chemists mix a recipe of foul-smelling chemicals and over-the-counter medications into a highly addictive, illegal drug. The DEA catalogued 239 such labs in the state in 2000, ''and that's a pretty high number,'' Sommers said. In 2003, the number had swollen to 1,146. While local authorities have noted a few cases of meth labs operating out of Nashville-area motel rooms, as happened this past week, most of the labs are still operating in Tennessee's more rural corners. To investigate these labs, agents and officers need to be able to tell the difference between what's flammable, what's explosive and what's toxic. They must wear Tyvek protection suits and self-contained breathing apparatuses, Sommers said. They must know how to test the air quality. And they must know to collect evidence sufficient to make a case against a defendant without endangering others. Unlike a cocaine case, in which a prosecutor can take a brick of white powder into a courtroom to show a jury, a meth trial resembles a college chemistry class, as agents show pictures of beakers and as experts testify about the concentrations of chemicals recovered from grimy brown bottles. Often, the evidence from the scene, such as red phosphorous, is deemed too dangerous to be tested, much less brought to court, and law enforcement agents need to be qualified enough to describe what they smelled and what they saw. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul O'Brien, the federal prosecutor's office put up $125,000 to train 50 local law-enforcement officers over the past week on how to process these illegal operations. Now that these newly certified officers have received their federally funded training, they will be far more useful in cracking down on meth. For starters, they will be able, at least, to go inside the labs. Rob Johnson covers federal courts for The Tennessean. He can be reached at 664-2162 or tennessean.com. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart