Pubdate: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 Source: Maple Ridge Times (CN BC) Copyright: 2006 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc Contact: http://www.mrtimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1372 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?241 (Methamphetamine - Canada) CONFESSIONS OF A METH HEAD A crystal meth addict who fed his habit by stealing cars, breaking into apartment storage lockers and engaging in mail fraud vowed to turn from his wicked ways only after receiving a relatively long jail sentence. "I've been going in and out of remand - it's just been retarded," said the 23-year-old man, who police only identified as "Darren." "I've been arrested so many times, so many occasions, and I've just been released a couple hours later and it did nothing for me," Darren told police, in a video prepared by Cpl. Tim Shields of the Integrated Municipal Provincial Auto Crime Team (IMPACT). Darren first tried crystal meth at age 15 and within two years was a proficient car thief. "Crystal meth stole my life. It stole my relationship with myself," he said, adding the drug turns users into "the walking dead. "It sucks out your happy thoughts, is what it does." He said he's stolen maybe 1,000 cars in his life - as many as 30 per day, throughout the Lower Mainland. He's never held a drivers' licence, and felt "power" knowing he could steal a car in 25 seconds, calling it "an addiction of its own." He said he's started numerous police chases and almost hit a child once. "I've put lots of people in danger," he admits. "I would probably kill somebody to get away, not thinking that I'm gonna kill somebody, but I would've killed somebody to get away. That's the sad part. It wouldn't have hit me until I'm in jail for murder." For that reason, says Shields, police want auto theft reclassified from property crime to violent crime because of "intense risk" posed to public safety. Fortunately for society, Darren met his Waterloo in North Surrey last July 1st when he was arrested after stealing a bait car to cap off a nine-day meth binge. A video taken from a camera planted inside the car shows him driving like a maniac to get away from police. "F--ers!" he yells above blaring cop sirens. "They bait-car'd my ass!" He bailed from the car after driving through a school yard, leaving the car to coast into a fence. Darren was sentenced to six months in jail, but served five. Shields let him see the video for himself on Wednesday. "Man I look like a retard," Darren said, watching the footage for the first time. "What the hell am I doing?" "I'm just not going to be like that any more," he vowed, after eight years of car-thieving. "I've got to stop that before I'm dead, because I will die." During the video Darren discusses what kinds of cars thieves go for and why. He says thieves don't like immobilizers and are scared of alarms with blinking blue lights because they tend to be "highly sensitive." Shields said there's no outstanding charges against Darren and added he wasn't offered any inducements to participate in the video. "There was absolutely no reward in it for this young man," Shields said. "It's interesting to note that he's been in and out of the court system for the past eight years but it was finally when he got a long sentence, that was the turning point in his life to separate him from his addiction to drugs." Shields said police arrest the same thieves "over and over again." "With some addicts, the only way they'll be able to distance themselves from the drug is if they are forced, through custody, to have a separation from the drug. It seems like that's the only time they actually start to think clearly." Darren's story is the norm rather than the exception, he said. "There's nothing that makes them different, inherently, from anybody else with the exception of the fact that they tried a wickedly evil drug and were somewhat instantly addicted to it." Shields said B.C.'s bait car program has been "extremely successful." It started as a pilot project in Vancouver in 2002 and has since expanded throughout the Lower Mainland and to Vancouver Island, the Okanagan Valley and Kamloops. "It is now the largest baitcar program in North America and possibly the world," Shields said. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake