Pubdate: Sun, 02 Jan 2005 Source: Casper Star-Tribune (WY) Copyright: 2005 Casper Star-Tribune Contact: http://www.casperstartribune.net/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/765 Author: Anthony Lane, Star-Tribune staff writer Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) METH: SIZING UP THE PROBLEM Testifying at her fiance's sentencing hearing last week, Melissa Dawn Lattea described life in the weeks and months preceding their infant son's death. "We started hanging out with the wrong people," she said. "We started doing meth." The precise role of methamphetamine in the death of 6-month-old Jose "J.J." Mendoza, Jr., is unclear. But the presence of methamphetamine in this or any other crime or misfortune in Natrona County does not come as a surprise to local law enforcement officers. Statistics compiled by the Casper Police Department earlier this year show methamphetamine was involved in 70 percent of all Casper auto burglaries where someone was caught and connected with a specific crime. The numbers are impressive across a spectrum of other criminal activities. Police say methamphetamine was involved in 46 percent of assaults, 54 percent of frauds, 44 percent of family violence cases and 32 percent of child abuse cases. "(Methamphetamine) is either the driving force behind, or a peripheral issue in, much of the crime we deal with," said Casper Police Chief Tom Pagel. In the days leading up to Casper's second Methamphetamine Awareness Conference next week, knowledge of this connection may already be higher than in most communities of a comparable size. One question, however, is whether the attention devoted to methamphetamine in Casper indicates that the local problem is particularly daunting or if it represents simply an unusual effort to address it. Statewide statistics suggest the latter. Wyoming's Division of Criminal Investigations tracks its drug arrests and cases by district. Last year in the central district that includes Natrona County, DCI discovered two methamphetamine labs and made 49 methamphetamine arrests, more than half of the agency's total drug arrests. Across the state, DCI arrested 33 people on methamphetamine charges in the southeast district that includes Laramie and Cheyenne; 27 in the southwest area that includes Sweetwater County; and 46 in the northeast district that includes Sheridan and Gillette. Information about the northwest district was unavailable. Kurt Dobbs, director of DCI, urged caution in reading too much into the numbers, with large local busts in some cases skewing data from one area or another. But he did suggest that the problem is roughly proportional to population and that proximity to transportation corridors exerts a strong influence. "Our interstates are our pipelines," he said, describing the spread of a drug that infects many Western states and that, because it is often produced locally, reverses an old paradigm where drugs were expected to filter up from states in the Southeast. A common explanation for how it took hold in Casper is that it came with the oil, gas and mineral industry. Scott Jones, Community Programs Coordinator for the Casper Police Department, said the periodic hard work required in these industries may have made the stimulating effects of the drug appealing to many workers. But now, he said, the effect of the drug is pervasive. "Probably 80 percent of the children we place in foster care have meth in the household," he said. Glory Walkin, a crisis advocate at the Self Help Center, offered a similar picture of the drug's effects in the community. Asked in late December how many of the recent cases she has dealt with related to methamphetamine, she responded slowly. "I think ... I did have one case last month that was not meth-related," Walkin said, explaining that she may have worked on nearly 20 cases in that time. Walkin said she has learned various things in her time working with families affected by methamphetamine. She saw a burn on a girl's mouth caused by using a light bulb as a pipe. Now, she said, she is careful to smash her burned-out bulbs before throwing them away. A client who asked not to be identified in the newspaper offered other details of methamphetamine use she observed as she endured her husband's methamphetamine problem: holes drilled throughout the house; collected neighborhood trash piled upstairs. With the husband now in jail in California, she said her life has started returning to normal. The mother of four girls, she said she is encouraged that they have shown no inclination to follow in their father's footsteps. "I think when you see that and you live it, you want to stay the hell away," she said. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D