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.
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