By Matt Lakin
Knoxville News Sentinel
CHATTANOOGA — The trucks roll up when the labs shut down.
The call might come at any hour from anywhere in the state — Mountain City to Memphis, Union City to Chattanooga — on anything from a one-pot to a superlab.
“Any time law enforcement calls, they’re going to roll,” said Tommy Farmer, director of the Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force. “They need to roll us out on every scene.”
The truck offers a welcome sight for officers at a meth lab, bringing everything they need for support. Each carries a wish list of equipment — everything from oxygen masks, hazardous-materials suits and test tubes to quarantine notices, bottled water and bug spray — for processing a case from start to finish at no extra cost.
Thirteen trucks manned by retired police officers cover all 95 counties.
“Anything they need to go in the lab is on the trucks,” Farmer said. “No way could all of these agencies purchase all of the equipment they need. It’s just a more effi cient, more effective way to get it done. We can be at any spot in the state in 90 minutes if we’re not tied up.”
He believes the trucks illustrate the mission of the task force, formed 12 years ago in the Marion County courthouse basement in Jasper. Sheriffs in the rural counties around Chattanooga had written to federal prosecutor Russ Dedrick begging for help in the fight against a drug they couldn’t contain.
“We started with a handshake agreement, just everybody pitching in,” Farmer said. “We bought our first truck and built it ourselves. Now we’re statewide. We’re unique in the nation in that we train officers, give them back to their agencies and provide all the equipment for free. We get no funding from any state entity.”
The task force operates on a bud-Continued from previous page
phetamine Task Force. “They don’t know it’s not Mountain Dew or Mello Yello. Some live. Some don’t. Some lose an esophagus and will be on a feeding tube the rest of their lives.”
The bottles can turn up anywhere — sometimes with only a smell to give them away, sometimes not even that.
“I caught a guy who had a onepot in his jacket pocket, and it was still cooking,” Athens police Detective Scott Webb said.
Travelers might notice an odor in a motel room or hear a bang from next door.
Guests at the America’s Best Value Inn on Decatur Pike in Athens checked out in a hurry in March after drug agents seized suspected shake-and-bake labs in four rooms scattered around the motel. Police said the manager, Lonnie Matthews, made meth there and rented to other cooks for years.
“We shut the whole place down until they cleaned everything up,” said Mike Hall, outgoing director of the 10th Judicial District Drug Task Force.
Officers searching cars open bags that explode in their faces. Two Erwin police officers had to be treated for ammonia exposure in September 2008 after a one-pot lab erupted during a traffi c stop.
“One of our offi cers had stuck his head in the car and pulled out a backpack to see what it was,” Erwin police Detective Tony Buchanan said. “He set it on the trunk at about eye level. We didn’t know what was in there. He put his face down there pretty close, and he got a big whiff of it.”
The shake-and-bake recipe mixes ammonium nitrate from fertilizer or instant cold packs with lye and other chemicals to produce anhydrous ammonia, which becomes a gas at room temperature. The gas, which sometimes swells plastic bottles to nearly twice their size, can burn skin, sear lungs and explode get of about $3 million per year, funded by a federal grant. In the past decade, it’s trained nearly 1,500 officers on dealing with meth labs, honed an intelligence database that has earned praise nationwide and helped cover an average of about a half-million dollars or more per year in overtime for cash-strapped local agencies.
“These labs will burn up an overtime budget,” Farmer said. “In Mc- Minn County, the labs they’ve had would have already bankrupted that county. Some agencies seize meth labs and don’t call us. They’re doing that at their own risk. We tell them, if you don’t call us, don’t ask for overtime reimbursement.”
The task force helps out on the frontby serving as a clearinghouse for the tips and tidbits that hear rumors about their grant running out. If that ever happened, I don’t know what we’d do.”
The task force has shifted with the times and the threat, buying improved equipment and changing training as the meth cooks change recipes.
Those changes don’t come cheaply. Costs for hazmat suits alone have doubled from $20 to $44 apiece — an annual expense of about $100,000.
“Everything comes with a cost,” Farmer said. “If you get a meth lab seizure, your county is still going to pay for it. This way at least it’s divided by (a few hundred) million taxpayers instead of 6 million (statewide).”
lead to busts across county and state borders. The Tennessee Methamphetamine Intelligence System, designed by a National Guard data analyst, tracks pseudoephedrine purchases across the state and offers a ready-made database that other states can plug into for free.
“We’ve shared our program with 11 states at no cost,” Farmer said. “The taxpayers already paid to develop it. They shouldn’t have to pay for it again.”
Local officers say the support makes even the hardest work a little easier.
“If it weren’t for the meth task force, we couldn’t do our job,” said Mike Hall, outgoing director of the 10th Judicial District Drug Task Force, which covers McMinn and three other counties. “You always Matt Lakin may be reached at 865-342-6306 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 865-342-6306 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
once in October 2004 when a car exploded in flames on Interstate 75.
The 2004 case injured a passing driver, Preston Samuel of Timmonsville, S.C., who stopped to help and ended up overcome by ammonia fumes.
Two Nashville officers suffered injuries in March when police said a pickup exploded in a Walmart parking lot with an anhydrous cargo.
The tree lines along the interstate and beside rest areas make for attractive cooking grounds.
“One of the biggest things right now is to cook in the woods,” Knox County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Chris Bryant said. “You can stop on the interstate, put up your hood like you’ve got car trouble and start cooking.”
Authorities say there’s no sure way to be safe — just stay alert, be aware and stay away from anything that looks, sounds or smells out of place.
Leftover lithium strips from batteries, used to generate a fiery reaction, ignite on contact with moisture — even a drop of sweat.
An anhydrous ammonia explosion blew up a trailer, killed two cooks and nearly wiped out a third in Hawkins County in May 2002.
“It’s a very powerful irritant that combines with water in the mucous membranes — the eyes, nasal passages, throat and lungs,” said Dr. John Martyny, a professor of environmental medicine at the National Jewish Children’s Hospital in Denver. “In severe cases of exposure, the effects are almost like asthma. It may last only a little while, or it can last for a lifetime. If it explodes, you could get exposed to the anhydrous gas and have burning solvents like Coleman fuel all over you at once, so it’s a lot of problems in one fell swoop.”
Studies suggest the labs aren’t necessarily safe once they go cold. Stir up enough of the residue, and the reaction can resume.
That’s a lesson park rangers, litter crews and utility workers continue to learn.
“Depending upon what the stage is that those chemicals are in, that still might be a bomb that they’re exposing themselves to,” said Gregg Sullivan, acting U.S. attorney for Tennessee’s Eastern District. “It can still activate.”
James Rose of Sweetwater died June 6 when police said his car crossed the center line on Highway 68 and hit two other vehicles. Rescuers cut a 3-year-old boy and two other passengers from the car and reported finding a mobile meth lab in the passenger fl oorboard.
Campbell County deputies seized a suspected lab July 23 found in the glove compartment of a car riding on three tires and a worn- down rim.
Some cooks don’t settle for the small scale of a shake-and-bake lab. They steal anhydrous ammonia from commercial farms in the Midwest, where it’s used in fertilizers, and smuggle it home in propane tanks and oxygen cylinders.
Knox County authorities have shut down parts of the interstate twice because of suspected anhydrous ammonia labs — once in July 2009 when a 20-pound tank in a pickup on Interstate 275 appeared to spring a leak and
The labs can mean danger on and off the roads. Cooks sometimes drive through school zones with children in the back seat and a one- pot lab in the front.
“You’re talking about somebody who might not have been asleep for a day or two who’s high on meth, paranoid and mixing some very toxic, volatile chemicals together without regard for where they’re doing it,” Sullivan said.
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