By Justin Carinci and John Branton
CAMAS, Wash. — SWAT officers led a raid at a Camas home early Friday and arrested six members of a family who allegedly have been cooking methamphetamine there for several years.
“That house has been a trouble spot in Camas for a long time,” said Cmdr. Rusty Warren with the Clark-Skamania Drug Task Force.
In the 6 a.m. raid at 612 S.W. Utah St., police said they found an active meth lab that was producing small amounts of the illegal stimulant.
The cooks allegedly used household chemicals, red phosphorous and pseudoephedrine taken from over-the-counter cold medications.
A hot plate in the lab was still warm, suggesting a fresh batch of meth had just been cooked, said Washington State Patrol Trooper Dave Bourland.
Police said they found a small amount of finished meth in the home.
Neighbors alerted police to the lab after smelling solvents and witnessing suspicious activity, Bourland said. And they already had a reason to suspect the household.
Officers broke up a meth lab in the same house seven years ago, Bourland said.
“These people that got out of jail are now back at it again,” he said. “You have a revolving door on some of this.”
Evidence collected by detectives with the Vancouver Police Department’s Neighborhood Response Team convinced a judge to issue a search warrant, Warren said.
The raid made many neighbors happy.
“They’d just drive by and give us high-5 or thumbs-up signs to show their appreciation,” Warren said.
The owner of the home, 67-year-old Richard M. Climenson, was arrested on suspicion of maintaining a drug house, a felony crime. Friday evening, he was being held on $5,000 bail in the Clark County Jail.
Five other residents of the home were jailed for allegedly manufacturing meth: Aaron W. Kelly, 37; Pamela Elaine Kelly, aka Pamela Climenson, 50; Jennifer Eck, 27; Donald Eck, 55; and Steven Climenson, 23.
Four of the five were being held on $20,000 bail Friday evening. Steven Climenson was being held without bail for an alleged community custody violation.
The group is to appear in Superior Court on Tuesday, a jail employee said.
It might seem odd that an alleged meth-cooking operation was run by a family with members of widely differing ages, all living together, but Warren said he understands it.
“I think addictions run in families,” he said. “Kids see parents abusing drugs, and that makes it easier for the kids to become involved in the same drug subculture. And meth itself is such a horrible addiction. I sometimes think they’re driven by their addiction.”
Also arrested in the raid, for previously issued misdemeanor assault warrants, was William George Schaefer, 35, who lives at 14007 N.E. 14th Circle, according to a task force bulletin.
Dodging cold-pill laws
The suspected meth cooks were getting their pseudoephedrine by “smurfing,” which means going from store to store in Washington and buying their legal limit of cold pills at each one, Warren said.
Smurfing is a way of getting around Washington’s cold-pill restrictions — and drug detectives are hoping the Legislature will soon make it more difficult.
The task force once favored creating a huge statewide database that would know when someone bought their limit of cold pills. If the smurfer went to another store, the computer would notify employees not to sell any pills, Warren said.
Drug detectives now favor a simpler and less expensive solution: selling cold pills only to someone with a physician’s prescription, as is done in Oregon, Warren said.
Currently, Warren said, Oregon meth cooks simply drive to Washington and go smurfing.
The lack of coordination between the Oregon and Washington Legislatures calls to mind Oregon’s less-restrictive laws allowing Portland-area scrap-metal dealers to pay immediate cash to sellers.
Many of those sellers are thieves who steal the metal in Clark County, where dealers must wait 10 days and mail a check to the seller, police say.
Busting meth labs is still rare in Clark County, said Warren, who said he could recall only about two this year.
Meanwhile, Warren said, Mexican drug dealers are continuing to bring pounds of meth here, even though local police have made several very large busts. Eighteen pounds of meth were seized in the largest recent raid, in the La Center area.
After the Camas raid, officials with the Clark County Health Department posted the house as unsafe to live in. Were family members to return, they could be arrested, Warren said.
The SWAT team that led the Camas raid was composed of Washington State Patrol officers. Once the suspects were taken into custody, task-force detectives wearing protective suits dismantled the lab equipment and gave it to officials with the state Department of Ecology to be destroyed.
Officers with the Camas Police Department also took part in the operation.
Copyright 2008 The Columbian