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FIGHTING METHAMPHETAMINE IN THE HEARTLAND: HOW CAN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

ASSIST STATE AND LOCAL EFFORTS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

FEBRUARY 6, 2004

Serial No. 108–179

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

——— ———

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

——— ———

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

——— ———

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. MARC WHEAT, Staff Director

NICHOLAS COLEMAN, Professional Staff Member and Counsel

NICOLE GARRETT, Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on February 6, 2004 ......................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Burns, Scott, Deputy Director for State and Local Affairs, Office of National Drug Control Policy; and Armand McClintock, Assistant Special

Agent in Charge, Indianapolis, IN, District Office, Drug Enforcement

Administration .............................................................................................. 5

Carraway, Melvin, superintendent, Indiana State Police; Curtis T. Hill,

Jr., prosecuting attorney, Elkhart County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office;

Bill Wargo, chief investigator, Elkhart County Prosecuting Attorney’s

Office; Daniel Anderson, Starke County Sheriff’s Department; and Tony

Ciriello, Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department ....................................... 35

Enyeart, Kevin, Cass County prosecutor; Doug Harp, chief deputy, Noble

County Sheriff’s Office; Sergeant Jeff Schnepp, Longansport-Cass

County Drug Task Force; Brian Connor, Acting Executive Director,

the Center for the Homeless, South Bend; Barry Humble, executive

director, Drug & Alcohol Consortium of Allen County; and Benjamin

Martin, Serenity House, Inc. ........................................................................ 87

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Anderson, Daniel, Starke County Sheriff’s Department, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 61

Burns, Scott, Deputy Director for State and Local Affairs, Office of National Drug Control Policy, prepared statement of .................................... 8

Carraway, Melvin, superintendent, Indiana State Police, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 38

Ciriello, Tony, Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 68

Connor, Brian, Acting Executive Director, the Center for the Homeless,

South Bend, prepared statement of ............................................................. 106

Enyeart, Kevin, Cass County prosecutor, prepared statement of ................ 91

Harp, Doug, chief deputy, Noble County Sheriff’s Office, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 98

Hill, Curtis T., Jr., prosecuting attorney, Elkhart County Prosecuting

Attorney’s Office, prepared statement of .................................................... 46

Humble, Barry, executive director, Drug & Alcohol Consortium of Allen

County, prepared statement of .................................................................... 112

Martin, Benjamin, Serenity House, Inc., prepared statement of ................. 117

McClintock, Armand, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Indianapolis,

IN, District Office, Drug Enforcement Administration, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 20

Schnepp, Sergeant Jeff, Longansport-Cass County Drug Task Force, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 101

Wargo, Bill, chief investigator, Elkhart County Prosecuting Attorney’s

Office, prepared statement of ....................................................................... 53

(1)

FIGHTING METHAMPHETAMINE IN THE

HEARTLAND: HOW CAN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ASSIST STATE AND LOCAL EFFORTS

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY AND

HUMAN RESOURCES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Elkhart, IN.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in the

Elkhart City Council Chambers, 229 South Second Street, Elkhart,

IN, Hon. Mark Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Souder and Chocola.

Staff present: Nicholas Coleman, professional staff member and

counsel; and Nicole Garrett, clerk.

Mr. SOUDER. The subcommittee will now come to order. Good

morning. Thank you for being patient as we are setting up here.

Let me kind of briefly, before I do my normal opening statement,

describe a little bit what this subcommittee is. It is the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources of the

Committee on Government Reform, and I chair this.

We have many agencies that we do oversight—HHS, Department

of Health & Human Services, Department of Education, Department of Justice, Department of Commerce, Department of Housing

& Urban Development are all under our subcommittee. We spend

about 50 percent of our time and staff on narcotics policy. It is the

main narcotics committee in the U.S. Congress. We not only have

oversight over any department, whether it is Defense, State Department, DEA, whatever the agency is, on narcotics policy. We

also authorize, which means we write the laws that relate to the

Office of National Drug Control Policy [ONDCP], commonly known

as the drug czar’s office, in addition to the community action funds

that go through our committee—COPS, Drug Free Workplace, a lot

of different bills move through. So we are unusual in that we are

authorizing and oversight on narcotics policy.

We do many different hearings and this one is focused on meth.

On Monday, we will be in Florida on Oxycontin where last fall they

had something like 10 deaths in the high schools in just a couple

of weeks and much of the center of the Oxycontin addiction problem is there, so we will be there on Monday.

We deal with lots of different issues. In a little over 2 weeks, we

will be doing a hearing on the heroin problem coming out of AfVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:21 Aug 26, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95267.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ghanistan in Washington. But that gives you kind of an idea of the

range of this.

Also, in our House Rules, you are supposed to have a majority

and a minority Member unless the minority is going to waive. We

have a very collegial atmosphere in our committee, that meaning

we get along very well and Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat, with the Congressional Black Caucus, is a close friend of mine

and we work together on the different hearings. He gives me a lot

of flexibility, he does not like to travel as much and so he is willing

to give me a waiver, we do so on multiple hearings. He has been

in Fort Wayne with me as well as Congressman Davis. Congressman Davis would have been here except for the Democratic retreat

this weekend and they decided that they had better show party loyalty as opposed to loyalty to me today. But I appreciate their willingness to go along to work on the narcotics issues on a bipartisan

basis in the U.S. Congress. They too are very concerned about

meth, even though meth is not the biggest challenge. The Democratic members on my committee are mostly from urban big cities

and meth is not the biggest challenge in their cities, but they are

supportive in helping us tackle problems that are more in our districts just like we try to help them. Elijah represents the city of

Baltimore, which is one of the highest drug abuse areas for cocaine

and heroin, among other things, and we are trying to work with

him.

With that, it is a pleasure to have you at this hearing in Indiana.

I would like to thank you all for coming. This hearing continues

our subcommittee’s work on the problem of methamphetamine

abuse, a problem that has been ravaging our region, our State and

our Nation.

Meth is among the most powerful and dangerous drugs available.

It is also relatively easy to make from common household or agricultural chemicals and simple cold medicines. It comes from two

major sources of supply. The most significant source comes from

the superlabs in California and northern Mexico. Most meth in Indiana comes from those superlabs as well, even though what we

read about are the small labs. These superlabs account for over 70

percent of the Nation’s supply of meth. The superlabs are operated

by large Mexican drug trafficking organizations that have used

their established distribution and supply networks to transport

meth throughout the country.

The second major source of meth comes from small local labs

that are generally unaffiliated with major trafficking organizations.

These labs have proliferated throughout the country, particularly

in the Midwest. The total amount of meth actually supplied by

these labs is relatively small; however, the environmental damage

and the health hazard they create make them a serious problem

for local communities, particularly the State and local law enforcement agencies charged with the duty to uncover and clean them

up. In Indiana, for example, more than 20 percent of the labs raided by police were discovered only after they had exploded and

started fires. Children are often found at meth labs, and have frequently suffered from severe health problems as a result of the

hazardous chemicals used in drug manufacturing.

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By the way, our first major meth hearing was I believe about 5

years ago where Congressman Mica and I went to northern California after a lab blew up and killed a young daughter and led to the

creation of California’s legislation that made having a meth lab

where children were present a crime in California. Other States

ought to be doing that. They have had lots of child deaths, particularly from these superlabs.

Our previous hearings, held in Washington, have looked at the

problem from a national perspective, but today, and at those hearings on the national perspective, we had testimony from the States.

Indiana is not the highest, we are increasing and we are high, but

the highest are actually Arkansas and Missouri after California

and Hawaii, which is up almost as high as Arkansas and Missouri.

We have had testimony from those States in Washington and we

are looking at doing more field hearings as we look at the meth

problem there. For example, Hawaii got a $2 million supplemental

to try to tackle their health problems in the recent budget, related

to methamphetamine.

Our previous hearings, held in Washington, looked at from a national perspective, but today we are going to look at a specific region that has been hard hit by meth trafficking and abuse right

here in northeastern Indiana. In Indiana alone, the State Police reported that 1,260 drug labs were raided in 2003, up 26 percent

from the 998 seized in 2002. And most of those labs were meth

labs. The problem is particularly severe in our rural areas, where

meth cooks can steal precursor chemicals like anhydrous ammonia

from local farmers, and then manufacture the drug in secrecy.

Major meth trafficking organizations have also made inroads.

Roman J. Montero and Cesar Anguiano, for example, were recently

sentenced for running the largest meth trafficking organization in

Indiana history.

The Federal Government has responded to the meth problem

both here and elsewhere with stricter laws against the precursor

chemical trade, tougher enforcement, and farsighted treatment and

local assistance initiatives. The growth of the problem has spurred

calls for further action. Most proposals have focused on the need

to assist local law enforcement in finding and cleaning up numerous small meth labs. A well-balanced approach, however, will have

to address both the smaller labs and the major traffickers that supply most of the Nation’s meth. The Federal Government must also

find new ways to help States and local communities provide treatment for meth addicts, and prevent meth abuse from starting in

the first place. Outreach to treatment providers, schools and pharmacists is crucial to success. We will hear from Superintendent

Carraway about the $700,000 that just passed the Senate. We

passed it in the House in December and the Senate passed it in

January for $700,000. I believe it is for Indiana and how we might

use that money on the meth issue.

One proposal, offered by our colleague Congressman Doug Ose,

provides for a broad range of initiatives aimed at the meth problem. Among other things, H.R. 834 would provide funds to help

States and localities find and clean up meth labs, including expanding assistance under the Community Oriented Policing Services [COPS] grant program. Additional resources for treatment and

4

prevention at the local level are also made available. I am a cosponsor of this bill and strongly support it.

This hearing will address these and other potential solutions to

the difficult issues surrounding the meth problem here in Indiana.

I first want to thank Congressman Chris Chocola for joining us

today. I am actually joining him, this particular spot is in his district, and I appreciate him hosting us here and for the assistance

that he and his staff provided for our subcommittee in setting up

this hearing.

We also welcome two witnesses who have joined us to discuss the

Federal Government’s response to the meth problem: Mr. Scott

Burns, Deputy Director for State and Local Affairs at the White

House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Mr. Armand

McClintock, Assistant Special Agent in Charge at the Indianapolis

District Office of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

At a hearing like this, it is vitally important for us to hear from

the State and local agencies forced to fight on the front lines

against meth and other illegal drugs. We welcome Mr. Melvin

Carraway, superintendent of the Indiana State Police, who we all

see at the gas pumps every day; Mr. Curtis Hill, prosecuting attorney for Elkhart County; Mr. Bill Wargo, chief investigator at the

Elkhart County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office; Detective Daniel Anderson of the Starke County Sheriff’s Department; Corporal Tony

Ciriello of the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department; Mr. Kevin

Enyeart, the Cass County prosecutor; Mr. Doug Harp, chief deputy

of the Noble County Sheriff’s Office; and Sergeant Jeff Schnepp of

the Logansport-Cass County Drug Task Force.

We also welcome three witnesses whose work in the field of drug

treatment and prevention is of vital importance here in northeastern Indiana: Mr. Brian Connor, acting executive director of the

Center for the Homeless in South Bend; Mr. Barry Humble, executive director of the Drug & Alcohol Consortium of Allen County;

and Mr. Benjamin Martin of Serenity House, Inc.

We thank everyone for taking the time to join us this morning,

and look forward to your testimony.

With that, I would like to yield to my friend, Congressman

Chocola.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very

much for taking the initiative to hold this very important hearing

on a very important topic.

I would also like to thank all the witnesses for joining us today

and braving our beautiful Indiana weather. It is always a great

thing to have people get up in the morning and slush through the

snow.

But this is a very important issue. It is hard to pick up a paper

in the morning and not see a report on a meth lab that was raided

or someone picked up for dealing or usage of methamphetamine.

I have only been in Congress a year, and just since I have been

in Congress, I have seen that it is a growing problem that is faced

in essentially every community in my district and I do not think

my district is unique. My district is relatively rural and working

with local law enforcement officials, we see that it is an ever-increasing problem every single day.

5

I think last year there were over 1,200 meth labs confiscated,

and that was a large increase over the year before. So it is an everincreasing problem.

I guess it is good news that we are finding more, but the bad

news is probably that there are more that we do not know exist.

And that is growing every day.

So it is clearly going to take cooperation between local, State and

Federal officials to address this problem and I think rectify the situation. I think we are very fortunate today to have representatives

from every perspective on how we can effectively address the problem.

So thank you again for coming. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for

having the hearing today and I look forward to the testimony.

Mr. SOUDER. Just a couple of procedural matters. I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to submit

written statements and questions for the hearing record and any

answers to written questions provided by the witnesses also be put

in the record. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Second, I ask unanimous consent that all Members present be

permitted to participate in the hearing. Without objection, it is so

ordered.

Let me explain one other thing. Mr. Burns and Mr. McClintock

are both familiar with this, the rest of you may think this is a little

strange, so let me explain this. It is the standard practice of this

committee, because we are an oversight committee, to swear in all

of our witnesses. To put in context what Government Reform oversight does, we are the people who did the Waco hearings, the

Chinagate, who hired Craig Livingstone, where were the FBI files,

and it is one of the only committees that has actually prosecuted

people for perjury. So tell the truth today. [Laughter.]

We are actually not going to do that. So if each of the witnesses

would stand and raise your right hands. Just the first panel. We

will do it one panel at a time.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that both the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

I appreciate that you battled through the snow yesterday to come

in from Washington, Mr. Burns, and up from Indianapolis, Mr.

McClintock, and we appreciate that you can help give us a national

perspective on this. And we will start with Mr. Burns, who has

been a leader for quite awhile over in the National Drug Control

Policy Office. He travels all over the country meeting with different

locations, with leaders and particularly on our borders and our

HIDTAs, and we appreciate you coming today.

STATEMENTS OF SCOTT BURNS, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR

STATE AND LOCAL AFFAIRS, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG

CONTROL POLICY; AND ARMAND MCCLINTOCK, ASSISTANT

SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, INDIANAPOLIS, IN, DISTRICT

OFFICE, DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION

Mr. BURNS. Thank you, Chairman Souder, Congressman Chocola,

and distinguished staff members of the subcommittee. I want to

thank you for the opportunity to testify about the use, trafficking

and production of methamphetamine in America. I intend to keep

6

my verbal testimony relatively brief and I would ask that the written statement I prepared be entered into the record.

Mr. SOUDER. So ordered.

Mr. BURNS. Thank you.

I would also like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership in Congress, not only dealing with these issues on a national

and international basis, counter-narcotics issues, but for your

strong voice for rural America. I would also like to thank you, Congressman Chocola, for your strong leadership and support of

counter-narcotics issues in Washington.

You talked about slushing through the snow, I am especially glad

to be here with you today in Indiana, part of the heartland of this

Nation. Before going to the White House and before going to Washington, I was a prosecutor elected in my hometown of Cedar City,

UT in Iron County, about the size of Cass County, where I served

for 16 years. And methamphetamine hit, as you know, the western

part of the United States in the mid and late 1980’s and I have

been dealing with this issue for some time.

Like my fellow prosecutors and law enforcement officers here in

Indiana, I have seen first-hand the damage that methamphetamine

labs cause to a community. And like my fellow prosecutors here

today, Curtis Hill and Kevin Enyeart, I have worked with officers

through the night processing meth labs and gathering evidence and

left them to wait hours for a meth cleanup company to arrive, taking its toll on overtime and precious budget dollars. And like my

fellow prosecutors and law enforcement officers here in Indiana, I

have seen the destruction and toll methamphetamine takes on lives

and children and families.

And like many here today, Mr. Chairman and Congressman

Chocola, I have struggled to come up with a strategy and commensurate funding to deal with this drug in a rural setting.

I think it is important initially to recognize that methamphetamine poses a different sort of threat than marijuana, cocaine or

heroin. On the one hand, nationwide, use of methamphetamine in

America is still much lower than marijuana and cocaine, and just

as heroin seems to be a more significant threat in some regions, for

example the northeast, in other parts of the Nation, we know that

methamphetamine has struck particularly hard in not only the

west and midwest part of our Nation, but in rural areas.

As we seek to disrupt the market for methamphetamine, it is instructive to look at where it is coming from. As you have stated,

Mr. Chairman, we know on a national basis that the small labs,

by sheer number, are the greatest, which usually produce the

smaller amounts of methamphetamine. At least 80 percent—our

numbers at the White House—of methamphetamine circulating in

America is a product of the superlabs that you have seen firsthand, defined as a lab capable of producing more than 10 pounds

of methamphetamine in a production cycle. Some of these labs are

found within our borders, some outside, especially in Mexico, but

they constitute the most serious production threat for America.

Our Federal enforcement efforts are focused on coordinating intelligence and enforcement efforts to take down the largest methamphetamine labs. At the same time, the smaller labs pose a seriVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:21 Aug 26, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95267.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ous threat to the environment as well as to the most innocent of

our society, our children.

Where methamphetamine labs exist, children who live in or near

them have been found with serious and life-threatening burns and

other serious health risks by exposure to the chemicals. In response

to this problem, the Bush administration is proud to have done several things to initiate and buildupon the DEC, or Drug-Endangered

Children Program, which we are underway trying to take nationwide. Treatment and early intervention programs to include drug

court and treatment facilities, specifically designed to deal with

methamphetamine. The National Methamphetamine Chemical Initiative that is working on a national and international basis to

bring together the women and men in the field that are actually

working methamphetamine cases. They discuss trends, best practices, how to stop the flow of precursors into the United States, and

all other issues specifically relevant to methamphetamine. It is an

initiative funded through the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area

and it is an attempt to bring the men and women that are actually

working on methamphetamine cases together semi-annually.

Mr. Chairman, Congressman Chocola, the HIDTA program,

which has several hundred initiatives, has 300 specifically aimed

at methamphetamine. That is, initiatives directly dealing with this

issue, and that is more than any other drug.

And while there are additional and important efforts by DEA,

which Mr. McClintock I am sure will address and OCDETF and

U.S. Attorneys and others on the Federal level, I do not need to tell

you that 94 percent of law enforcement in this country is State and

local, 98 percent of all drug cases in this country are prosecuted by

State and local prosecutors. So it is not an issue that the Federal

Government alone can have success.

I applaud you for bringing this hearing to an area representing

hundreds of towns and cities and counties that are dealing with the

problem of methamphetamine as we speak. Again, I thank you for

the opportunity to appear before you in my current capacity with

the Bush administration and I am happy to answer any questions

you may have about our anti-methamphetamine efforts, both in

major cities and more important today, in America’s heartland.

Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Mr. McClintock runs the Indianapolis office of DEA. We are

thrilled to have an outpost in Fort Wayne as well as Evansville

now in Indiana and we hope it will continue to expand. Having

those types of posts has enabled us to find not just how to pick up

the daily user that we see and the small time guys, but we are able

to trace this back to get the bigger organizations and the DEA has

been a tremendous help in Indiana in doing that.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Burns follows:]

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Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Souder

and Representative Chocola, my name is Armand McClintock and

I am assistant special agent in charge of the Indianapolis District

Office of the DEA.

First, let me express my sincere appreciation for your ongoing

support and for this hearing on fighting methamphetamine in the

heartland.

Mr. Chairman, the rapid rise and spread of methamphetamine

use and trafficking in Indiana has created a unique and difficult

challenge for Federal and State law enforcement officials. Unlike

more traditional drugs of abuse, methamphetamine presents some

distinctive challenges.

First, it is relatively easy to manufacture, anyone who can read

and measure can make methamphetamine.

Second, many productionsites are located in the rural areas of Indiana where there is limited day-to-day law enforcement presence.

Third, methamphetamine is a particularly intense stimulant,

highly addictive and devastatingly dangerous.

The combination of these factors has led DEA to pursue a multifaceted response. Overall, DEA offices in Indiana expend approximately half their investigative resources on methamphetamine-related cases, a substantial increase since 1999 when approximately

35 percent of cases were methamphetamine-related.

These investigations target Mexican trafficking organizations

while working closely with State and local law enforcement to

eliminate the spread of small toxic labs and alleviate their consequences.

DEA investigations into Mexican drug trafficking organizations

distributing methamphetamine within the State have more than

doubled since 2001, totaling 36 last year. In addition, the number

of methamphetamine traffickers and dealers who have been arrested and charged in Federal court, has grown from 80 in 2001 to

111 in 2003.

While more labs were seized in Indiana during 2003, the El Paso

Intelligence Center [EPIC], has documented 506 clandestine methamphetamine laboratory seizures, which is sixth among all States.

Adding dump sites, chemicals, glassware, and equipment seizures

together resulted in 805 incidents, fifth among all States.

In response to the rise of these labs, in 2000, DEA launched a

new training initiative to provide clandestine laboratory awareness

training to Federal, State and local law enforcement agencies and

fire departments. The demand for clandestine laboratory training

has been immense. DEA has provided clan lab methamphetamine

awareness training for 540 State and local officers in the State of

Indiana since 2000.

The small toxic labs I describe in my testimony generate significant quantities of hazardous waste during each production cycle.

Small rural communities within Indiana ultimately must pay the

price of the fiscal, environmental, health, and safety hazards associated with these drug trafficking organizations.

The methamphetamine trade is particularly insidious because of

its direct, alarming, and negative impact on our youth. Federal and

State law enforcement officials remain vigilant in our efforts to

keep youth in Indiana and across the country from the devastating

19

effects of this drug. Each of DEA’s field divisions has a victim witness coordinator to ensure that endangered children are identified

and the child’s immediate safety is addressed at the scene through

coordination with child welfare and healthcare service providers.

DEA has joined forces with our State and local partners to address methamphetamine-related trends from large trafficking organizations down to the small time producer operating out of their

homes in Indiana. Placing emphasis on DEA’s priority target program, eliminating small toxic labs, combining Federal regulations

with local initiatives to reduce the availability of pseudoephedrine

in the illicit market, and enforcing our chemical controls on meth

precursors all represent DEA’s intense focus on combating this epidemic on several fronts.

To see an example of our efforts with local law enforcement, you

need only look back to last December when DEA and approximately 90 local law enforcement officers concluded Operation

Sweet Home Alabama. This was a 6-month investigation, which resulted in the arrest of 18 defendants. The priority target involved

a Mexican national who oversaw the largest methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana ring ever exposed in Indiana. Just last week,

a Federal judge sentenced the head of the organization, Ramon

Montero to 20 years in prison.

In conclusion, the seriousness of the problems resulting from the

methamphetamine threat cannot be overstated. Perhaps more than

any other drug, methamphetamine puts all of us, users and nonusers alike, at risk. The innocence of children, the fortitude of law

enforcement, and the pristine state of our ecosystem are not immune to methamphetamine’s dangers. As a single-mission agency,

DEA will continue to devote its resources to identify, investigate,

and dismantle the organizations responsible for the spread of meth

across Indiana and our country.

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify before the subcommittee today. I will be happy to answer any questions at the

appropriate time.

[The prepared statement of Mr. McClintock follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. All statements, the full statements, will

be in the record. There were a couple of things I noticed in your

written statement that I think it would be good to highlight for

purposes of discussion today.

You said that DEA, in your written testimony, devotes half of its

Indiana investigative resources to meth?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Is most of that southern Indiana, a mix, Fort

Wayne office too?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. It’s a mix of all areas of Indiana, Congressman; largely Indianapolis, being the largest DEA office, has had a

role in each of these. Fort Wayne and Merrillville, Evansville, the

entire State.

Mr. SOUDER. Did you say that Evansville is devoting a higher

percentage to meth?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Yes, sir, I would.

Mr. SOUDER. We will hear more about that, but while we have

a big problem in northern Indiana, in southern Indiana, it is the

dominant problem, is that correct?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Yes, it is, Congressman.

Mr. SOUDER. You also said that you have dismantled 61 and disrupted 35 priority target methamphetamine trafficking organizations throughout the United States. And I wanted to ask both you

and Mr. Burns about, in particular, the precursor chemical. I have

been very active in working with the Canadians. That is where

there is a big problem with precursor chemicals coming from. Do

you believe their new regulations in progress are sufficient or

should we be pushing them in this next session of their Parliament

to even tighten up further?

Mr. BURNS. At this point, Congressman, I would say wholly insufficient.

Mr. SOUDER. Wholly insufficient?

Mr. BURNS. Through the National Methamphetamine Chemical

Initiative, we held our last conference in Ottawa and we did that,

frankly, at the request of law enforcement and others, to bring a

message to help Canada, that they must do more, they must do a

great deal more.

Law enforcement still does not know the quantities that are coming in and have difficulty tracking and identifying where the

ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine is going. So we need your help.

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. I think a representative example of the problem is in September 2001, the Indiana State Police stopped a Ryder

truck on Interstate 69 just north of Indianapolis for a traffic violation. A consensual search of the truck revealed 1,200,000 tablets of

pseudoephedrine. The driver and his passenger, both of Middle

Eastern descent, had crossed the Windsor bridge and came down

I–69 to I–70 and initially headed toward California. Unfortunately,

the terrorist attack of September 11 happened at that moment and

they changed directions, frightful of what awaited them in this

country and they turned around and headed back to Canada

through Detroit, hopefully, is what their plan was but they were

stopped by the Indiana State Police. With their tablets of

pseudoephedrine, you are looking at about 82 loads of methamphetamine if it got to a clan lab.

28

Mr. SOUDER. There were two other cases that have been in the

media, and I do not know how much you can talk about it, both

in Detroit and Chicago, where there were suspected ties to some

of these different groups, some may have been just profiteering,

some may have been connected to some of the terrorist groups. Do

you know of other cases that the Indiana DEA has worked with,

Mr. Burns, in looking at that particular area coming out of Detroit

crossing into Canada?

Mr. BURNS. I do not know of any others at this time, Congressman. I can research that if you like and get back in written form

to the subcommittee.

Mr. SOUDER. It is important to understand anhydrous ammonia

is a critical thing that we will be dealing with later in this hearing

this morning, but I am trying to understand the pressures that we

have here. The multiple pressures for job creation and how we control narcotics and how we deal with terrorist funding. What is clear

is that these things are colliding at the Windsor Bridge, and that

is the bridge, it is the largest trade bridge in the world. More trade

goes over that bridge than all the United States does with Japan,

for example. And that bridge is the choke point for much of our economic development in northeast Indiana. For example, the GM

plant in Fort Wayne, there are 100 border crossings at that bridge

in the making of each pickup. So we are constantly kind of doing

this battle of how much checking should we do at that border, how

much do we slow down the border, but what we need to understand

is these little meth labs that we are picking up are getting these

precursor chemicals because this stuff is coming through in large

illegal quantities. Now some of them rob, like the Oxycontin robberies, but much of this is coming through this type of network.

You also mentioned in your testimony that it is about $90 to

$100 a gram, $500 to $1,200 per ounce, $5,000 to $8,000 a pound

at a purity level of 24.8 percent. That is the Indiana figure.

Mr. Burns, do you know, or Mr. McClintock, how that compares

to nationally? If you were buying this stuff in California or Washington State or Texas where it is moving through closer to where

the labs are, is the price going up as it comes to Indiana?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. The price increases as it comes eastward and

the purity. We have had purity all the way up to actually 100 percent. Our DEA laboratory in Chicago has analyzed numerous samples of methamphetamine ranging from 24 percent all the way up

to 100 percent. It just depends on how much cut the distributors

put on it here in this State. The purity was higher, 2 or 3 years

ago. It has dropped a little bit because they are cutting it with

more adulterants in an attempt to stretch the amount of methamphetamine and increase their bottom line, so to speak.

Mr. SOUDER. Is the purity from the self-cookers higher than the

purity from the superlabs?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. The superlab purity has been 70 to 90 percent

pure, sometimes 100 percent.

Mr. SOUDER. So it is the reverse. So the stuff coming in from outside is actually more dangerous to the individuals in the purity

sense than the stuff that is being locally cooked.

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. That is correct. The local cooks are just cutting

it more with adulterants.

29

Mr. SOUDER. So they are buying the large stuff and then breaking it up.

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Yes, sir.

Mr. BURNS. A good rule of thumb, Mr. Chairman, at the White

House, we look at it as a business. They produce and manufacture,

they have transportation routes, they have wholesale and retail

distribution and then they have the financial aspects associated

with this illegal business that we call methamphetamine trafficking. A good rule of thumb is the further away from where it is

manufactured in the Central Valley of California, that comes across

from Mexico, the higher the price.

Mr. SOUDER. Higher the price, less the purity.

Mr. BURNS. Correct.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chocola.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Just briefly.

Mr. Burns, did I understand you that 80 percent of the methamphetamine used comes from the superlabs versus the local labs?

Mr. BURNS. Yes.

Mr. CHOCOLA. And is that a trend that is steady or is it changing?

Mr. BURNS. That is pretty steady. I mean the difficulty with this

issue is the mass quantities come from Mexico and Central Valley,

CA, but the number of actual labs of small amounts in the back

of a car or a Motel 6 clearly are within the midwest. So as far as

quantity, superlabs; as far as the number of actual lab sites, midwest.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Is that similar to the experience in Indiana?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Yes, Congressman.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Mr. Burns, you mentioned several initiatives the

administration has engaged in. How do those interact and interface

with local law enforcement?

Mr. BURNS. Well, for example, the National Methamphetamine

Chemical Initiative is an attempt to bring the real people that actually work methamphetamine cases together at least two or three

times a year. And we fund that. Officers say have you seen a green

meth? No, I haven’t. I just talked with a detective up in Minnesota

that saw some green meth. What do you think that’s about? They

talk about common cases that they are working on to try and put

together trends and the ability to go after them on a nationwide

basis.

The Drug Endangered Children Program helps State and local

law enforcement because prosecutors like me 15–20 years ago

would come across a methamphetamine lab and the last thing we

were worried about was the two or three children that were there.

We would find a neighbor or a friend or just get them out of the

way. We have now come to realize that the most important thing

at that meth lab site are those two or three children. And so the

Drug Endangered Children Program brings together law enforcement and a child protective person, usually a guardian ad litem.

Children are taken to a medical facility and they are checked for

toxicity or burns. The juvenile court will be brought in to find a

safe placement for the child. And many States are passing laws

that make it a felony, similar to child abuse. So we are trying to

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take that program nationwide, we initiated that in Iowa about 6

months ago.

Mr. CHOCOLA. A lot of the articles I have read, a lot of these labs

are detected by the odor when they are actually cooking. Being exposed to that odor, is that hazardous to anybody’s health, like children, if they are around it? Does it just smell bad or is it harmful?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Both, Congressman.

Having started my DEA career in San Diego, California in 1983

and having worked in a clan lab group as a young agent before we

used any protective gear or breathing apparatus, not only do they

smell badly. They are harmful to everyone’s health and the environment.

Mr. CHOCOLA. I need to go way out on a limb here and make the

prediction that all these programs you are talking about are not

over-funded?

Mr. BURNS. No.

Mr. CHOCOLA. There are obviously limited resources. Where are

the most effective kind of focus of resources? Is it the precursor

stage or the cooking stage or the distribution stage or is it the user

stage? If you had to pick a point in the process to focus the most

resources, where would it be?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. I would say, Congressman, all the above, but

the precursor availability is certainly the first place to start. If they

do not have the ingredients, they cannot make the drug. We need

education, we need awareness training, especially for our youth in

school, about the dangers of the drug and drug abuse in general.

We need a concentrated law enforcement effort combined with

State and local help with the Federal Government to alleviate

these Mexican drug trafficking organizations and all these small

toxic labs.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Where do the precursors come from? I mean locally it seems that they are stolen from the local drugstore or they

try to buy large quantities. Are there programs with retailers to try

to make them aware? Are they aware and do they have programs

in place to try to prevent precursor purchases?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Absolutely, Congressman, there are programs

in place with retailers that limit their ability to sell

pseudoephedrine, for instance, which is a common ingredient in

cold medicines, which is an over-the-counter drug found in all drugstores and places like that. And a lot of times, there is a form that

has to be filled out and people have to give identification, which

drug traffickers do not want to do, to buy over I believe 9 grams

of that.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Do you think that is being effective?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. I think it is. However, I think it is again education of all the public who is involved in retailed sales to know

about it. We get calls occasionally in that regard.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Do the superlabs get the precursors the same way

as somebody out in a trailer somewhere in a field, just larger quantities, or do they have sources for pseudoephedrine that’s different?

Mr. BURNS. It’s in truckloads in the back of tractor-trailers over

the border from Canada and up from Mexico, and to buildupon Mr.

McClintock’s response, if we could have better successes in Canada

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and Mexico, I think it would be extremely effective. If they do not

have the flour, they cannot bake the cake.

With respect to those States and jurisdictions that have had success, it has to be prevention and education, it has to be treatment

and it has to be law enforcement. The communities that I have

seen that have successfully dealt with methamphetamine are when

everybody gets involved. When big box stores, retail stores, know

that somebody is buying tubing and glassware and tincture of iodine, they give a call to local law enforcement. If somebody knows

that a methamphetamine lab smells like cat urine. If they are educated, if they smell that when they are walking to the store, to

school or in any setting, and call law enforcement. And when the

message goes out in the community that this is dangerous to our

children, this is dangerous to our citizens, you are polluting our

rivers and we are not going to take it. You are not wanted here.

That is when we have seen serious declines in methamphetamine

production, distribution and use.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Thank you both.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I want to do a few followup questions.

Could you describe a little bit, either of you, why this started in

Central California and how its progression is moving. And Mr.

McClintock, for the record, actually was with DEA in San Jose as

well as down in San Diego.

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. The close proximity to the international border

and the port of entry at San Ysidro being the busiest land border

crossing in the world made it a readily accessible entry point for

any Colombian organization utilizing Mexican nationals to work in

the area of being a transshipper, to bring it through Mexico and

into the United States through California or Texas or any border

State. The epidemic of methamphetamine has worked its way eastward. The original drugs that started coming across the border

were marijuana, heroin and cocaine. These are poly drug Mexican

drug trafficking organizations that added methamphetamine when

they realized that there was a demand here. They are entrepreneurs and in it comes and it traverses our great country.

Mr. SOUDER. In the pattern that you are describing, let me ask

one other question as a followup. In this network of how the small

labs get their precursor chemicals, and I know there are lots of different ways that they do it in Indiana, are there middlemen where

they know there is somebody receptive where they know they can

buy the precursor chemicals?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Absolutely.

Mr. SOUDER. So there is like a wholesale dealer that you kind

of know, a friendly drugstore that you know. Penetration with the

pharmacies is one of the problems we had a number of years ago

that was raised to me in Noble County. So you would know that

this guy will sell you a larger quantity of this than other places or

is it like an undercover guy who says hey, I have a load in my car?

How exactly does that work?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Congressman, it can be either of those situations. With the Internet today and communication via the Internet,

it is not uncommon for people to even share their suppliers for

these precursors over the Internet, as well as formulas to make

methamphetamine. They explain on the Internet quite readily how

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methamphetamine can be made and a variety of methods and if a

precursor chemical cannot be found that you need, you have other

things that are common household chemicals that you can buy and

make a different—hydriodic acid, for instance, or any chemical that

you need. There is a lot of networking going on.

Mr. SOUDER. You have described two different things. One of

which is, I am going to ask you how it came from California across,

it was a poly drug, Mexican-Colombia connection coming in and

then moving gradually, adding this to their market mix as they developed the market. But we also have the Middle Eastern groups

bringing in these huge quantities of precursor chemicals from Canada and we are concerned about Canada.

How do these two things fit together? Are Canada’s laws lax

enough that they are bringing them in and then hooking up with

the Mexican networks in the United States? Or are they supplying

two different things; the precursor chemicals supplying the small

labs and the superlab stuff being sold in the street through a different network?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. The large quantities of precursor drugs are

going directly to the Mexican drug trafficking organizations in

large quantities for the superlabs.

Mr. SOUDER. I hesitate because this is not good news, because

one of the things we have been watching is if the Middle Eastern

networks hook up with the Mexican network, all of a sudden, the

south border becomes a more complex question in regards to terrorism as well as other things in the deal. We do not have a lot of

information, these groups have hooked up before and if this is the

way they start to hook, we have deeper problems in our country in

addition to the narcotics.

One other question, Mr. McClintock, for you. On the west coast,

there is a new form of meth called yabba. Have you seen that from

southeast Asia, has that been in Indiana yet?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. It has not been to Indiana yet, that I know of.

Mr. SOUDER. One other question for you, Mr. McClintock, and

then I have a few more for Mr. Burns. A lot of meth trafficking

used to be with bike gangs like Hell’s Angels, much like Tibet gold

and some of the high grade marijuana coming from the eastern

side of Canada is done through motorcycle gangs bringing it in.

Some of the busts in this district in a number of counties over in

the northeast side have been with motorcycle gangs. Do you still

see that in meth or is that a change?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. We still see it in methamphetamine. Recently,

DEA and our State and local counterparts in Vigo County worked

a large methamphetamine organization headed by the former president of the Diablo’s motorcycle gang. We dismantled that organization. Now the Sons of Silence and the Outlaw motorcycle gangs are

still in the State and participating in methamphetamine trafficking, but not to the extent that they did years ago when they dominated the market.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Burns, one of the things that you mentioned

was the HIDTA program which, for people who do not know the

initials, is High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, and the only one

in Indiana is up in Lake County, correct?

Mr. BURNS. Right.

33

Mr. SOUDER. So we have Chicago with a HIDTA and Lake County with a HIDTA, but the rest of Indiana not really being in a

HIDTA at this point. But do you agree that one of the priorities

of HIDTA should be to focus on the large labs? How do you see that

being directed to the smaller labs? How do you see the HIDTA program working with the meth problem in particular?

Mr. BURNS. I would agree with you, Congressman, in that the intent of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program is to attack the problem on an international and a national basis. And as

such, a great deal of our focus and from your oversight has been

to go after the large precursor transactions, go after the superlabs.

We have sent additional moneys, we have sent additional technical

assistance and frankly, I think we are having success. Notwithstanding the attitude in Canada, the law enforcement effort along

the borders and in California as we speak I think is fluid. I think

that there is a great debate going on among and by and between

those in the trenches with respect to whether now we have shifted

that to Mexico.

Mr. SOUDER. In the evolution of how we look at HIDTA programs, it seems like more of those HIDTA programs are becoming

almost statewide programs, as they move into that. As you look,

and not necessarily answering this question now, but as I look at

how we deal with Indiana, we are trying to keep a proliferation of

HIDTAs everywhere.

Mr. BURNS. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. In our new draft legislation, we said OK, here are

the highest areas that should get this much money, the second tier,

the third tier. But in that, to be able to access into the information

in Fort Wayne, South Bend, Evansville, Indianapolis with a

HIDTA, any suggestions you would have of how to do this, and

what the pros and cons of that would be, would be helpful.

Mr. BURNS. And I think that it is the responsibility of the White

House and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and I know

John Walters, the drug czar, when he directed me to come out here

made it clear that we do not just operate under a HIDTA. It is my

intent to send folks back here to Indiana and we are going to have

a series of meetings with State and local law enforcement and

treatment people. I intend to come back again if I can, and we are

going to provide assistance through the office but not necessarily,

as you say, making every area in every State a HIDTA.

Mr. SOUDER. I appreciate that. As we were talking and have

been working with this hearing, Director Walters had called and

made that offer to northern Indiana, because we still need assistance even if we do not set up a HIDTA. And to come in today as

the star of this program to work with our State and local law enforcement, to get interconnected, we appreciate that.

One other area we have in the President’s new initiative on drug

treatment. Do you know of anything, and have you heard any discussions whether any of this is going to be meth treatment oriented

specific? It is an area, because the larger cities, including even in

Indiana, the larger cities of Fort Wayne, South Bend, Indianapolis

are as likely to have a meth problem as the smaller towns, but

drug treatment funding tends to be oriented on treatment, research

34

and treatment related to other types of narcotics. Do you know

whether there will be anything?

Mr. BURNS. Are you talking about the 100 million Access to Recovery?

Mr. SOUDER. Yes.

Mr. BURNS. The intent of that—the numbers that we have, there

is a treatment gap of about 3 or 4 million people in this country.

We identified in 2003 about 100,000 people who woke up one morning and made that incredible commitment to get treatment and

could not. In America, that is not right. If 100,000 people wanted

treatment and could not get it, the President’s initiative, Access to

Recovery to spend $200 million a year over 3 years, $600 million,

to at least help those that have made the commitment to seek

treatment from the disease of addiction. We got half of it.

That will be administered through the States and that will be

something that the State of Indiana can have the greatest impact

on where it goes and I would assume a great deal of it would go

to treat those that are dealing with this terrible drug, methamphetamine.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, we are going to explore this a little later on

one of our panels, but one of the things I want the drug czar’s office

to look at, because in working with HHS, and Charlie Curry is

from Indiana, who heads the substance, alcohol, mental health

area, but sometimes different drugs have different impacts and require different types of treatment. And if we do not have accurate

information on how best to deal with those types of addicts, and

each State is too small a unit of dollars to actually do the distinction between the different types of things, and particularly do the

research with it, we need to look at the Federal level of how best

to set this up or say to the States, OK, for meth people, this is the

type of thing you need. It may not be able to be farmed out over

the whole State, it is a different type of a treatment center than

say treating somebody who is addicted to marijuana or cocaine.

Mr. BURNS. I would love to have those discussions with you.

Spent all day yesterday in Tulsa, OK where they are wrestling

with that very question you raise.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Do you have anything additional?

Mr. CHOCOLA. I just have one more quick question. I understand

that there are Web sites on line that will go through step-by-step

process of how to manufacture methamphetamine?

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. That is true.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Is there anything that Federal officials can do

about that? Is it illegal to do that or is there nothing we can do?

Mr. BURNS. Well, at the White House, we have set up a subcommittee, we have the FTC involved and DEA and others, in addition to the illegal prescription drug popups and Internet ads, we

also go after those. We have had great success. The DEA, whenever

they do something good, we take credit, with the paraphernalia.

Mr. SOUDER. That is on the record, by the way. [Laughter.]

Mr. BURNS. The paraphernalia cases in the United States, and

we are looking at trying to do something with the Internet as well.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Are they abundant, those Web sites? Are they part

of the problem? I would assume they are, but are they part of the

problem?

35

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Yes, sir.

Mr. CHOCOLA. But there is no program to try to actually get

them shut down, or are you working on it?

Mr. BURNS. As soon as you shut one down, as I understand it,

they can switch to a different site. But there is an effort underway

in our office in conjunction with going after the prescription ads to

work with the FTC to see if we cannot come up with a way to deal

with that.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. But you also, if you have any suggestions of international coordination that we can work with the U.N. Office of

Narcotics, we have in this year’s parliamentary group, we have

people who work on narcotics committees all over the world are

getting together and it is going to be down in Miami in late May,

and it is coordinated by the U.N. narcotics control people and we

are the hosts this year.

But one of the problems on the Internet is it does not even have

to be a U.S. source, so U.S. laws may not cover it. And if we crack

down, how do we do that. We need to try to figure out how to address this question from an international perspective because if we

do not have the different countries working with us, they just pop

right over to Canada or somewhere else.

I thank each of you for coming. We will probably give you some

additional written questions for the record.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Thank you very much.

Mr. SOUDER. If the second panel could now come forward. That

would be Mr. Melvin Carraway, superintendent of the Indiana

State Police; Mr. Curtis T. Hill, Jr., prosecuting attorney, Elkhart

County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office; Mr. Bill Wargo, chief investigator for the Elkhart County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office; Detective Daniel Anderson of the Starke County Sheriff’s Department;

Corporal Tony Ciriello, Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department.

If you will stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

We will start with Mr. Melvin Carraway, superintendent of the

Indiana State Police. Thank you for coming up today.

STATEMENTS OF MELVIN CARRAWAY, SUPERINTENDENT, INDIANA STATE POLICE; CURTIS T. HILL, JR., PROSECUTING

ATTORNEY, ELKHART COUNTY PROSECUTING ATTORNEY’S

OFFICE; BILL WARGO, CHIEF INVESTIGATOR, ELKHART

COUNTY PROSECUTING ATTORNEY’S OFFICE; DANIEL ANDERSON, STARKE COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT; AND

TONY CIRIELLO, KOSCIUSKO COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

Mr. CARRAWAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr.

Chocola as well for this opportunity to address you this morning

on the issue of methamphetamine in Indiana.

With me also today is Major Mike Mettler, who is the commander of our Laboratory Services Division as well.

Methamphetamine, the highly potent, dangerously addictive, controlled substance is spreading as an epidemic in the State of IndiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:21 Aug 26, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95267.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
36

ana to the extent that it threatens to disrupt and destabilize various governmental programs and services. Law enforcement, health

care programs, the courts, corrections and child protection agencies

are all suffering from the effects of the spread of this drug and the

associated kitchens of death; clandestine laboratory operations.

Methamphetamine and meth labs were first identified in southern Indiana in 1988. Realizing that this poison had finally reached

the State, a drug lab investigation team was formed by the Indiana

State Police. Responding at that time to only three drug labs in

1994, the number of labs processed has nearly doubled every year

since. In 2003, 1,260 meth labs were identified in this State.

An equally disturbing trend is the significant increase in the

number of meth case submissions to our State Police Laboratory facilities. In 1994, State Police reported receiving only 401 methamphetamine case submissions; 8 years later, the number of submissions has skyrocketed to nearly 2,800 submissions. In 2002, the

number of meth submissions exceeded, for the first time, the number of powdered cocaine submissions.

Demand for this drug is increasing at an alarming rate, as is evidenced by the recent seizures and convictions of local meth traffickers that you have heard before my testimony. However, in a recent

investigation in Indiana, 25 individuals were arrested and were alleged to have distributed more than 100 pounds of meth a month.

This prompted U.S. Attorney Susan Brooks to state, ‘‘I think this

shows we have an incredible demand here in Indiana.’’ In another

investigation, it was established that another organization had distributed approximately 1,600 pounds of meth over the course of

just 2 years. Realizing that clandestine laboratory operators or

cooks generally arise from the user population, as user populations

increase a proportionate increase in drug lab activity is also to be

expected.

In the spring of 2002, the Indiana State Police and the Indiana

Criminal Justice Institute co-hosted the first statewide Summit on

Methamphetamine. Bringing together law enforcement agencies,

health care workers, judges, prosecutors, probation officers and representatives from children and family services, discussions were

held to assess the impact meth was having on these vital services.

The findings were clear. Meth threatens to disrupt and destabilize

all of the governmental respondents’ ability to provide their conventionally mandated services by inundating these agencies with

methamphetamine related issues.

Law enforcement agencies throughout Indiana have responded

by increasing and directing enforcement activities focused on methamphetamine. In 2003, more than 950 individuals were arrested on

charges related to illegal drug lab operations. Nearly 200 children

have been removed from parents who create these chemically toxic

home environments. For example, in 2002, 110 children were removed from 57 families in Knox County, IN and 48 children were

removed from families in Vigo County due to methamphetamine offenses. Foster case expenses in Vigo County, IN have amounted to

$250,000 to $300,000 in 2002.

House bill No. 1136 has been introduced in the Indiana General

Assembly. The purpose of this bill, if enacted, will be to establish

a Methamphetamine Abuse Task Force. The goal of the task force

37

will be to develop and update a coordinated strategic plan to combat methamphetamine and to protect the citizens of Indiana.

We are certain by bringing together these combined forces of

Federal, State and local law enforcement, our strategic aim shall

be to reduce the availability of methamphetamine at its two

sources. Illegal foreign importation and domestic clandestine laboratory operations. Our goal is to rid the State of this threat.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Carraway follows:]

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39

40

41

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Mr. SOUDER. I would like to point out for the record that Superintendent Carraway is one of the greatest singers that I have heard

and the whole country would have been much better off if he had

been the Super Bowl half time show. [Laughter.]

Mr. CARRAWAY. Thank you very much.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Hill. I want to particularly thank Mr. Hill for

his leadership, which is a lot of the reason we are here today.

When he first decided to run for prosecuting attorney and we got

to know each other and I saw his intense interest, actually from

way back when he was interested in being U.S. attorney, and we

talked in my office long before I ever knew I was going to represent

Elkhart County. I was very impressed with his aggressive commitment and had he been the final choice for U.S. attorney, he was

committed, as I am sure the current U.S. attorney is as well, but

he was very focused on this issue. And when he ran for prosecutor

and then got elected prosecutor, I said we are going to do this together, and we are finally getting it done.

So I thank you for really hosting us here in Elkhart today, along

with Congressman Chocola, and look forward to your testimony.

Mr. HILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Representative Chocola, my

name is Curtis T. Hill, Jr. and I am prosecuting attorney for the

34th Judicial Circuit, Elkhart County, IN. As a resident of Elkhart

County, which is a part of the second and third congressional districts, I am also honored to be so ably represented in Congress by

Chairman Souder and Representative Chocola. Furthermore, I

would like to thank Chairman Souder for convening this field hearing, appropriately entitled ‘‘Fighting Methamphetamine in the

Heartland’’ here in Elkhart County, which is a community truly indicative of America’s heartland.

By way of brief background, Elkhart County is comprised of approximately 183,000 people disbursed among medium sized urban

centers of Elkhart, Goshen and Nappanee as well as the towns of

Bristol, Middlebury, Millersburg, New Paris and Wakarusa. While

maintaining a significant agricultural base, Elkhart County is also

nationally recognized for manufactured housing, recreational vehicles and other manufacturing industries. This has resulted in a

generally low unemployment rate here in Elkhart County. If you

cannot get a job in Elkhart County, you do not want one bad

enough.

I would like to also point out that the geographical location of

Elkhart County adds to the characteristics that make this area redhot for distributors of methamphetamine. A relatively close proximity to the major metropolitan centers of Detroit and Chicago, along

with our access along the Indiana Toll Road, literally makes Elkhart the cross roads of the midwest. As a result, this particular

area of the country, where this committee is sitting today, is a

prime location to do business, both legitimate and otherwise. Many

of the characteristics that attract legitimate business and industry

to this area are the same characteristics that attract the more notorious and corrupting influences that engage in organized criminal

activities, including the distribution of methamphetamine. As a

representative of the Indiana criminal justice system, I appreciate

the opportunity to address this committee on the difficulties facing

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our local communities and on working together proactively and

finding real solutions to these difficulties.

Within the past few years, the criminal justice system has witnessed a dramatic increase in the use and distribution of methamphetamine. It has seemingly come out of nowhere to become the

dominant illegal drug of choice in this area. Our courts are not only

deluged with delivery and possession of methamphetamine crimes,

but a growing percentage of other crimes indirectly related to

methamphetamine activity continue to increase as well. The corrosive effects of domestic violence, child abuse, robberies, burglaries

and identity thefts are indirect consequences of methamphetamine

activity and are devastating our communities. Philosophically, I

recognize that education and treatment programs that work are

vital to decreasing the phenomenal demand that fuels the methamphetamine monster. However, interdiction combined with swift

and effective law enforcement is the best hope for destroying the

organized networks that pump these poisons through our communities.

I became Prosecuting Attorney in January 2003. I believe that it

is incumbent upon every productive citizen to take a part in saving

our communities from this spiraling decline brought on by illegal

drug use. If left unchecked, the deterioration here and in the remainder of the midwest region will continue to escalate until we

see a time in the not so distant future where it will seem normal

for young children to smoke marijuana cigarettes. If unchecked, it

will become ordinary to live next door to a crack house. If the deterioration goes unchecked, users, manufacturers and distributors of

methamphetamine will no longer hide in the shadows of our community like so many cockroaches under a rock, but they will be out

openly, spreading their pain because the rest of us let it happen.

So you want to talk about fighting methamphetamine in the

heartland. Let us talk about it.

To fight methamphetamine in the heartland, we should begin

with the word fight and what fight means. It is a word that is used

by many people for many things, but for me, it means fight to win.

No one ever won a fight by digging in or holding his ground. If the

fight ends in a draw or your opponent withdraws, the only thing

that is assured is that your opponent has a better understanding

of how you fight and an opportunity to come back and fight another

day. To win a fight, we need to take the fight to our opponent and

remove our opponent’s capacity and will to fight on. That is called

winning. I have no doubt that if we begin with the premise of winning the fight rather than merely fighting the fight, we will then

come to terms with the resources that will be required to achieve

our objectives.

While clandestine laboratories are the more typical source of

methamphetamine in the rural communities of the midwest as well

as many of my neighboring counties, the largest source of methamphetamine in Elkhart County is, oddly enough, the importation

from Mexico and the superlabs out west through expansive organized criminal networks taking advantage of our strategic location

as the midwestern gateway to the east and their ability to blend

into certain aspects of our community to establish major distribuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:21 Aug 26, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95267.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tion lines. Chief Investigator Wargo covers this area in greater detail through his testimony.

While we would appreciate assistance from the Federal Government, we have started our local fight against methamphetamine.

Before taking office, we began to develop our anti-drug strategy

utilizing the resources available to us locally. The central piece of

our local strategy is information. Information is the single most important and powerful weapon in proactive crime fighting. Centralizing information as well as distributing information along a line of

communication through law enforcement allows us to combine our

efforts, reduce duplicity and confliction, and ultimately be more effective. If I can point to a single advantage that organized crime

has over law enforcement, it is that they recognize no jurisdictional

boundaries and they work together. By borrowing a page from the

criminal’s handbook, local law enforcement as well as State and

Federal law enforcement cannot be limited by jurisdictional boundaries and must work together when it comes to organizing a plan

for fighting methamphetamine.

Local communities such as Elkhart County have sub-communities which have their own separate and distinctive characteristics. Therefore, the tactical planning must be flexible enough to

adapt to local circumstances. For example, the city of Elkhart and

the city of Goshen, though separated by only 11 miles, do not share

precise issues regarding methamphetamine, crack cocaine and

marijuana. Therefore, we sought input of all our local law enforcement partners in designing an organization that would serve as the

central repository for criminal intelligence and dissemination

among law enforcement, coordinate and strategize the overall antidrug effort, and supervise and conduct long term investigations

concerning organized criminal activity including manufacture, distribution and use of methamphetamine.

The result of this collaborative effort was the creation of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Unit which is housed in the

Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and supervised by my chief investigator. The personnel of this unit are on assignment to my office from

various law enforcement agencies within our county. The most exciting aspect of our organized effort is the establishment of satellite

anti-drug teams working within the city of Goshen’s Police Department and the city of Elkhart’s Police Department, retaining their

respective independence in dealing with shorter term street level

interdiction while remaining an active regular partner in the overall effort.

We have a philosophy that not all drug activities require the

same approach. In many instances, a long term investigation involving confidential sources and undercover drug buys is the correct approach. However, many other situations require a swifter,

more decisive action that may or may not result in arrests but is

designed to restore neighborhoods and remove criminals. The development of this prototype allows us to target minor to mid-level

problems and make them go away. By responding to neighborhood

complaints quickly, members of the community are getting a

stronger sense that their complaints are not being ignored and,

therefore, more complaints and reports of suspicious drug activity

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are being reported to my office and disseminated to the appropriate

response team and addressed within appropriate time limits.

On a weekly basis, 20 to 25 police officers and prosecutors meet

at my office to exchange intelligence information. We refer to this

process as our Criminal Intelligence Sharing System. Each law enforcement agency in the county has representatives from their department participating, as well as representatives from the Indiana

State Police and the DEA. Through this communication process, we

have set specific targets and, working together, we have been very

successful in bringing many of those targets to justice thus far,

with great confidence for others to come.

I firmly believe that the Federal Government needs to step up

to the plate and join us in recognizing that there are other areas

in northern Indiana outside of Lake County that are in need of assistance in fighting back organized criminal activity and drugs.

While we wait for the Federal Government to strengthen border

controls and immigration policies addressing undocumented aliens,

we here in Elkhart County need Hispanic law enforcement officers

and/or Hispanic undercover operatives to assist us in gaining access to information that is hidden, largely out of fear of deportation. Although my office has developed a very sound relationship

with the South Bend office of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, we need

to develop initiatives that go beyond being merely supportive of

each other’s efforts, and being partners in a truly collaborative

process that allows the resources of the Federal Government to be

fully operational by the leaders of local law enforcement.

When it comes down to it, we need money, people and information. Money to supplement and expand investigations into areas

that we know of but are limited due to financial constraints. People

in the sense of broadening our scope, limited by the resources

available to us locally and the lack of Hispanic confidential sources.

Information as it pertains to developing stronger and greater regional intelligence and strategies, given our recognition that a delivery of methamphetamine on a street corner in Elkhart County

tonight has implications far beyond the confines of that particular

location.

I would like to thank this committee again for providing me an

opportunity to address you on these issues and for taking seriously

your responsibility in providing assistance to local communities in

winning the fight on methamphetamine.

Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. We will next go to Mr. Bill

Wargo, the chief investigator for the Elkhart County Prosecuting

Attorney’s Office.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hill follows:]

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Mr. WARGO. Thank you, sir. Chairman Souder and Congressman

Chocola and guests, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before

you today. My name is Bill Wargo, I am the chief investigator with

the Elkhart County Prosecutor’s Office and I have been a police officer for 27 years. I currently supervise and coordinate all the illegal drug investigations throughout Elkhart County.

There are several monumental concerns confronting law enforcement in this county in its efforts to investigate and prosecute the

manufacture, distribution and use of methamphetamine. Not the

least of these, however, is that while methamphetamine distribution and use has become our No. 1 single drug enforcement problem, we still must face and maintain a focus on the interdiction of

the distribution and use of other illegal substances such as crack

cocaine, powder cocaine, marijuana and the diversion of prescription medications.

African-American street gangs, such as the Gangster Disciples

and the Vice Lords have long cherished Elkhart County as fertile

territory for their illegal enterprises. The primary base of operations for these organized criminal organizations is Chicago. And

these two entities are primarily responsible for the wholesale distribution of crack cocaine in Elkhart County.

The spotlight on lower level and street level interdiction initiatives requires a significant commitment of personnel, yet rarely results in a large seizure of product. These types of investigations

have a positive, but cosmetic effect. Because these types of dealing

operations are highly visible, they generally produce a large number of citizen complaints and these complaints require a law enforcement response.

Our dilemma is balancing the response to highly visible, yet low

yield, investigations with upper level, high volume investigations.

The commitment of police manpower and manhours gives the appearance to the community that the police are being effective in

their efforts. While the police effectiveness is naively measured by

body count statistics, the actual impact on the total problem is

minimal.

This is not to say that these street level enforcement efforts

should not be undertaken. In fact, they are an effective law enforcement tool to develop intelligence and informants to assist in

the investigation of mid-level, upper-level and wholesale traffickers. The quick hit interdiction efforts are the foundation of addressing all these other issues.

Mid to upper-level drug trafficking investigations require an ongoing commitment of personnel and a mechanism to prevent confliction of investigations that are being conducted by other agencies; Federal, State and local.

The explosion of methamphetamine use and its associate manufacture and distribution has been partially exacerbated by the

stepped up efforts of Federal law enforcement agencies to interdict

the importation and distribution of cocaine from South America.

Meth distribution has several distinct advantages over cocaine.

The primary advantage is that the substance can be manufactured

from chemicals and items that can be purchased at numerous retail

locations. The process clearly is not rocket science and while it is

extremely hazardous to the manufacturer and anyone who may be

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in close proximity, individuals of relatively low mental capacity are

able to combine the materials together and make a reasonably high

quality substance. The fact that we have as few conflagrations and

explosions as we do is probably a testament to luck over skill.

The local production of meth, using primarily the Nazi methods,

is prevalent in this area for several reasons. One of the primary

reasons is the ready availability of the primary ingredients such as

anhydrous ammonia. The primary cookers are biker types that

have received their training in manufacturing from other equally

unsophisticated individuals.

The Indiana State Police and their clandestine meth lab teams

are the sole agency qualified to dismantle these operations on a

local level. This places an appalling onus on that agency.

While this local production problem is of major consequence in

this county and we are constantly vigilant to investigating clandestine labs, we have not established that as our primary focal point.

Our focal point has been determined for us by the huge influx

of Hispanics into Elkhart County. Over the past several years an

environment has evolved that has made this county a significant

distribution point for Mexican nationals dealing in methamphetamine.

Elkhart County, by anyone’s definition, is heartland America.

Elkhart is nationally known for its manufactured housing, recreational vehicle industry as well as other manufacturing activities

and this situation means that there are numerous jobs available.

In addition, this county has historically been a leader in the State

of Indiana in poultry and agricultural employment. These factors

have made Elkhart County an encouraging destination for immigrants looking for steady employment. It could easily be estimated

that 90 to 95 percent of the Hispanics that have located in this

area have done so in search of the American dream. They have

come here for employment, to raise a family and to make a life that

will be better for their children than what they themselves have

experienced.

The unfortunate aspect of this is that this has also provided an

opportunity for Hispanics that have a separate, illegal agenda, to

also infiltrate this community. Historically in this country, new immigrants have held onto their own culture, language and life style

through at least the first generation. These newly arrived Hispanics are doing the same thing. This creates a situation wherein

law enforcement has the added hurdle of trying to infiltrate illegal

activities of the minority of the Hispanic population. Law enforcement officers that do not have a background in Hispanic culture

are hard pressed to conduct covert investigations into the sub-culture that is drug trafficking.

The purpose of these hearings on this matter are to try to determine what the Federal Government’s role in addressing these

heartland issues can and should be.

Our office currently has a good working relationship with the

U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Bend. We have also developed

strong ties with DEA’s Merrillville office through the designation of

one of our officers as a Task Force Agent. The coordination of our

investigative efforts has been a positive in our ability to underVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:21 Aug 26, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95267.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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stand the scope of the problem. And we have agreed to investigative strategies that support and supplement each entity’s effort.

The deficiencies that we have is that we do not have sufficient

Hispanic undercover operatives. Sworn personnel and reliable confidential sources that are Hispanic and fluent in the language are

a prerequisite to infiltrating the Hispanic drug cartels and distribution networks.

The other deficiency is funding for long term investigations. The

quantities that are commonly being sold in and around Elkhart

County are large. Where several years ago, we felt that a multiple

ounce buy of cocaine was a major accomplishment, we now find

ourselves with the ability, but not the resources, to make multiple

pound purchases of methamphetamine.

There are several initiatives that can be promulgated. Some of

the initial steps have already been accomplished.

Initiatives that have been successful in other jurisdictions but

not put in place and dedicated to Elkhart and St. Joseph Counties

are such as: A posted duty station for this area; designation of an

OCIDETF Task Force to focus on this Elkhart/St. Joseph County

problem; establishment of a HIDTA group for Elkhart and St. Joe

Counties; and maybe most importantly, the assignment of a criminal analyst to focus on the methamphetamine distribution problem

in Elkhart and St. Joe Counties.

A prime example of the ready availability of the Mexican methamphetamine in Elkhart County is the price points that have been

established in just over the past 9 months. Since last summer,

when a pound of methamphetamine was going for $7,500, through

the fall, Thanksgiving, Christmas and now into January where we

are now under $4,000 a pound tells anyone that the supply and demand is there. The laws of supply and demand apply to illegal as

well as legal commerce.

The comparison of cocaine and methamphetamine seized or purchased by law enforcement agencies in this county over the past 5

years is reflected in the attached graphs, which I have submitted

with my written testimony. It demonstrates very, very graphically

that the meth problem is growing at an alarming rate.

If we are unable to find ways to attack this problem with appropriate funding levels and additional law enforcement personnel and

equipment, there is little hope that we are going to be able to stem

the tide of the meth explosion relying on our resources alone.

Thank you, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

Detective Anderson.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wargo follows:]

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Mr. ANDERSON. Good morning, distinguished Chairman Souder

and Congressman Chocola, my name is Detective Daniel Anderson

from the Starke County Sheriff’s Department located in Knox, IN.

I would like to request that you use my written statement because

I will go off of that a little bit.

Our county is very small, population, 25,000 people. Our drug

task force is very small. We have one full time officer and two part

time officers assigned to narcotics investigations.

The last 5 years or so the meth lab count has just kept going up

and up and up. Two years ago, we did approximately 80 controlled

buys in Starke County for different various narcotics. Last year, we

did approximately six. The majority of our efforts have concentrated on the methamphetamine problem. The money that we

use to purchase illegal drugs has now been spent to buy equipment

for the officers for safety to enter these meth labs and investigate

the meth labs.

In my prepared statement, I talked about our first methamphetamine lab was a rather large lab and I gave a quoted price of street

value of $2,300 per ounce. In our area, we do not have an influx

of Mexican methamphetamine, the majority of ours is all homemade, small clandestine labs and they average about half ounce to

an ounce per manufacturing process.

I listened to the DEA and they were talking about large scale

pseudoephedrine. The majority of our groups are traveling in a vehicle to dollar stores, WalMart, whatever. They will take six or

seven individuals, go into the store, buy three boxes of cold medicine and stay under the suspicion level and exit the store and go

to the next store. It is a round shopping trip, how they do it. The

average batch, like I said, is around an ounce per batch. Seven individuals doing that or five individuals in the course of a day can

get enough products to produce an ounce of methamphetamine.

We have two Farm Bureau co-ops in our county which are the

supply for anhydrous ammonia. We have worked investigations on

theft cases there and tried to limit that and then they started hitting the local farmers that have the product. So we have tried to

concentrate our efforts on just the precursors and the chemicals

needed, to not much success. We have met with retailers, tried to

talk to them about their issues and it seems like lately the only

conversation we have with retailers is when their shoplifter or

theft loss rate gets up to the point where they are alarmed.

As far as the county goes in the last year with meth labs, we

handled 23 illegal drug lab cases, 11 of those were where the Indiana State Police clandestine lab team came in and assisted. One

of those labs, we netted nine individuals and three separate

batches of methamphetamine were cooking at that time. All nine

of those individuals went into court, asked for speedy trials, requested pauper attorneys and it bogged down the system.

Then as we went on through the year, we kept finding more labs,

more individuals and the court and the prosecutor staff just became bogged down. There was no way that they could get small

claims court issues, civil issues through the court for a period of

time. The docket right now stands with 12 or 15 settings and the

majority of them are all criminal cases, per day. The probation department has been overwhelmed as well as the jail. Our jail was

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originally designed for 45 inmates. At periods last year, we were

running in the 80’s. At the time I typed this up, our population,

inmate population, 50 percent of what we had in the jail were

methamphetamine related inmates.

Initially when they come in, they need to go through a period of

time where they come down off the drug. We have to put them in

separate areas to protect themselves and protect other inmates

from them due to the violent, abusive nature, and that takes valuable space in the jail that we could use for work release and other

individuals. So we talked about that a little bit.

And as far as our coroner in the county, we went through and

looked over the last couple of years and our problem is kind of

unique in the fact that we have a large Oxycontin, Oxycodone problem with the methamphetamine problem. So we looked at the

amount of deaths in a 2-year period related to those two drugs, and

it was in the area of 16 deaths. For a population of 25,000, that

was quite a bit.

I am not going to burn up as much time, but what I would like

the Committee to do is look at what they can do for the small counties, the small town areas of the State. We do not have the Mexican meth problem, we have just the local problem. We need to look

at trying to help from the beginning of child endangerment all the

way to the jail, to the court, to the prosecution, to the probation

office and then to the Department of Corrections.

I have seen individuals go to jail for 365 days, get released from

jail and be re-arrested for methamphetamine 2 weeks later. There

has to be some treatment or something we can do besides just

housing them.

We had one case where in December a girl that we arrested with

an illegal drug case, methamphetamine, was out of jail for a week

and then she was found with an overdose in another county. So we

have to do something.

I pointed out what the future is with the methamphetamine

problem. Every county in the State is affected by the illegal methamphetamine problem. We will soon run out of funds from this epidemic in one form or the other, whether it is the jail, the prosecutor, the court, child welfare, child services. Every State in the country that is affected by the illegal methamphetamine problem will

run out of funds to fight this epidemic. In Indiana now, every year

we are doubling our stats almost on illegal drug labs taken down,

and at some point, Indiana is going to run out of money.

And my third issue on that is every citizen in the United States

will bear the cost of this epidemic or become a victim to a methamphetamine related incident. And by that I mean we all pay the

cost of these cleanups, drug cases, inmates and treatment of the inmates.

What can be done to solve the problem? Our key issue in our

area is pseudoephedrine and ephedrine. We talked about it being

imported into the United States through Canada and Mexico.

Somewhere, if you take away that product, you cannot, as the other

officer said, you cannot bake the cake. And I do not know what the

recommendation for that is other than to go to by prescription only

or to just take the product off the market. But something has to

be done.

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The second issue is you have to increase funding to State and

local governments that have had the problems with the manufacture of methamphetamine and the influence of Mexican methamphetamine coming in and help clean up the existing problems

and hinder a further one.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Anderson follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. And maybe before we go to

Corporal Ciriello, you mentioned that Starke County is about

25,000 people, so if somebody looks at this record, to put this in

context, we have a pretty wide range today. Elkhart County is

170,000–180,000 people, Kosciusko is 70,000–75,000 people. We

will have witnesses on the next panel from Noble, Cass and DeKalb

Counties which are more in the 35,000–50,000 ranges and then

from Allen County, which is 320,000. So we have Fort Wayne in

Allen County, is a mid-sized city; Elkhart kind of at the lower end

of mid-sized cities to smaller and rural counties. So we will have

a good mix of the meth problem throughout northern Indiana and

really tracking the country.

Corporal Ciriello, thank you for coming up from Warsaw.

Mr. CIRIELLO. Chairman Souder, Congressman Chocola, thank

you for having me here today. My name is Tony Ciriello, I am a

Corporal with the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office assigned to the

Drug Task Force.

We are a small task force made up of five officers, three from the

Sheriff’s Department and two from the Warsaw City Police Department. We do operate off of a Federal grant, that is the majority of

our budget and funding for our unit.

As was mentioned, our area is approximately 76,000 full time

residents, but due to the fact we have 101 lakes in our area, our

population doubles in the summer time, and with the population

doubling, we also see an increase in our drugs doubling in the summer.

We have three bulk facilities within our county that handle anhydrous ammonia and supply it to the farmers and also we have

13 cities or towns within our county that our drug task force provides drug enforcement for.

Our task force started back in 1988, went full time in 1989 and

in moving into the 1990’s, we saw a lot of cocaine moving in and

a lot of marijuana that we have dealt with. We heard about meth

coming in but we did not see it. In fact, we did not see methamphetamine that we knew of in our county until the last 5 years.

And within the last 5 years, we have seen it skyrocket. Dramatic

increases in the amount of meth being sold, imported and made in

our county.

We started finding our first meth lab in 2001, a clandestine lab

in the basement of a home. In that year, we ended up finding five

active drug labs within our community. We were pretty devastated

by that: it is something we never had to deal with. And in 2002—

I am sorry, in 2001, we dealt with 10 labs and in 2002, we dealt

with 5. And those were active labs where we had to call in the

State Police Clandestine Lab Team for cleanup. We found just as

many that were not in the process of cooking, but had all the precursors and reaction vessels and everything ready to cook, but they

were not in the process at the time we did those. In 2003, we increased to 11 labs and more than 30 where we just found the precursors. So there is a continuing increase. Right now, we are finding mobile labs, we are finding labs in wooded areas that are very

hard for us to detect. When they are doing it in a neighborhood,

the neighbors smell the fumes, as was discussed earlier, and call

and report it. But when they are going out in the middle of the

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woods to do their chemical part of it, we are missing a lot of it.

Farmers are finding it or hunters are finding it and calling us and

reporting those.

All of our labs that we have dealt with use anhydrous ammonia,

we have yet to see a red phosphorus lab in our area. However, I

have recently received information that there are people buying

large amounts of iodine that live in our area. Iodine is a component

in a red phosphorus lab. So we may begin to see those in northern

Indiana a lot more.

Besides the problem with our locals manufacturing meth, we also

have a large Hispanic population in Kosciusko County and that has

led to a lot of importing of high grade methamphetamine. The majority of methamphetamine we get in Kosciusko County is imported

from Mexico. We work closely with the Bureau of Immigration and

Customs Enforcement out of Texas. They have sent agents up to

work with us and we were very successful last year in arresting

several illegal aliens and seizing large amounts of marijuana and

meth as well as cocaine.

It is not the majority of our Hispanic population but a large part

of them are illegal aliens. They travel around, stay with different

people. We make cases on them for methamphetamine dealing,

they move away. We issue warrants for them, they come back 3

weeks later as somebody else. It is very hard to keep track of them.

We have determined that most of the people we have been dealing with, at least in one family, have ties in Mexico, they come to

Chicago, IL; Warsaw, IN; Pasco, WA and recently we discovered

Gwinnett County, GA as being a part of that.

With the large importation of Mexican meth in 2002, we thought

we were doing really good. We had about 4 ounces of meth, of

which we made undercover buys and received. In 2003, we did 2

kilos. That is a lot for a small unit. But again, the majority of that

is imported Mexican meth.

We have a lot of resources made available to our unit but funding is something that we lack. As I said, we operate on a Federal

grant that provides us some money, but we only get $1,500 a year

for training out of that budget for five officers. To be able to send

them to quality meth lab training is impossible. Currently our

grant runs out at the end of March and a new grant takes over

April 1. I am down to $212 worth of buy money to buy drugs for

the remainder of that time. So, you know, with the increase in the

meth and the increase in meth cases, it has been tapping us financially.

In 2002 our unit made 100 cases. We thought we were doing

really well. In 2003, we made 190 cases, 46 of those being meth.

That averaged out to 3.8 cases per month involving meth. Up

through last night, we have now made 11 cases of meth so far. We

are way above our average, we just made an arrest last night. So

our meth cases are increasing, we are seeing more of that than any

other drug.

We do see a large importation of Mexican marijuana too, which

we have taken almost 300 pounds of marijuana off the street last

year and the majority of that came from Mexico.

But meth continues to be our biggest problem and it is a problem

that like anybody else in this room, we are doing our best to battle

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it, but we are all struggling in the funding end of it and the resources throughout the United States. And I think these hearings

are pulling us altogether and giving us a chance to meet other people, work with other people and maybe solidify our war on methamphetamine and maybe try to slow it down.

We have had good luck with our cases. We are an aggressive unit

and we look forward to working with other agencies, and I wish to

thank you for the honor to testify in front of this committee.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ciriello follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I know you were trying to be respectful

of the time, but my first question to you is going to relate to something you have in your written testimony, the town of Burket.

Would you go through that part of the story, because I have a particular question I want to ask about that.

Mr. CIRIELLO. Certainly. I talked about the three bulk facilities

we have. One of them is located within the town limits of Burket,

surrounded by houses, a school, churches and a few businesses. On

November 21, we had surveillance cameras set up to try to catch

the people who were stealing anhydrous, but on November 21, in

the middle of the night, we thought we might have some problems,

so we were out and about and we decided we would check on this

facility. And when we did, we found two men in there trying to

steal anhydrous. They were taken into custody without a problem.

However, the problem we found out, once we got company officials there to work with us and see what all they had got into, we

discovered that they were unscrewing a plug on a inch and a half

main fill line on a 45,000 gallon bulk tank that was 85 percent

filled. The company representatives told us they were three threads

away from getting that plug out of that tank. And that is what

they told us and I sincerely believe them, knowing what anhydrous

can do. If they that plug out, it would have killed the majority of

the people in Burket, IN. Burket, IN is a small area, about 250

people, but it is 250 of our citizens that were endangered by these

two men.

Being in the middle of the night and as rapidly as the anhydrous

would have come out of that tank on an inch and a half line, evacuation would have been impossible. There would have been no saving any of them.

Mr. SOUDER. You mentioned then about a potential regulation.

Could you explain what kind of regulations you would think, ideally would be done at the State level, but even at the Federal level,

where there are large units? Our goal is not to restrict farmers or

wholesalers, but there needs to be some way that you do not all

of a sudden in the middle of the night wind up dead because some

idiot decides he wants to do a meth cook.

Mr. CIRIELLO. And when you were at our office a month or so

ago, I discussed this with you. You take a propane facility that has

bulk propane tanks, they have to be fenced and secured from the

public, to try to prevent thefts and because of the explosion hazard

and a lot of safety issues. Well, anhydrous is just as dangerous,

maybe not as much with explosion hazard but with a health hazard. And I think, on these large bulk facilities, requiring them—

the same regulation, of being fenced in. It would provide more security to them. People who really want in are going to get in,

whether there is a fence or not, but it is going to stop a lot of people from getting into the bulk facilities.

The downside to that is they will target more the farmer and

their tanks sitting out in the field. But generally a farmer’s tank

sitting out in the field is in a remote open field, and not in a heavily populated area like we find a lot of our bulk facilities.

It is regulations like that that could help slow down the theft

and the real danger involved with the bulk facilities like we could

have had in Burket.

74

Mr. SOUDER. Well, thank you very much.

First, I appreciate all of your grassroots level work in each of

your communities. It is very important, there is never enough tribute. Eventually I want to ask some questions of each one and so

will Congressman Chocola. But maybe for the record, just like we

have heard about how the town of Burket could have been taken

off the face of the map, could you describe, I know both in Elkhart

and Kosciusko, I have heard and I am sure it is true for the State

Police and also in Starke County, could you describe the struggle

that the individual officer has when he goes into a place where

there is a lab and how we are putting each of you at risk? Let me

ask a question of Detective Anderson, you said you used your

money on vests?

Mr. ANDERSON. No, we bought personal safety things such as

masks.

Mr. SOUDER. Have you ever worked with the Federal Government where they make different things available? Is there anything available to get protection in that program for officers?

Is Scott here? There. In the CTAC funds, do you know if there

is money for safety equipment for officers when they go into a meth

lab?

Mr. BURNS. That has come primarily from First Responder

money. You are talking about the hazmat suits and the DEA training? Is that not right, Nick?

Mr. SOUDER. Can you come forward. This is Scott Burns who testified from the first panel. I will have to swear him in again.

Mr. BURNS. Let me answer it this way, Congressman, I have a

meeting at 1 p.m., with several of the State and local folks and I

will commit to you and Congressman Chocola that we will find out

whether it is from Homeland Defense First Responder money or

from CTAC, how we can assist.

Mr. SOUDER. Because it seems like if there is this huge demand

at the local level, that ought to be one of the things we are offering

to local law enforcement.

Mr. CARRAWAY. Homeland Security is making available the purchase for those first responder equipment. Some of those dollars, to

my recollection, have not all been distributed, but my understanding is that the purchase for these hazardous material suits will be

available out of those Homeland Security dollars.

Mr. SOUDER. Is that an Indiana Homeland Security?

Mr. CARRAWAY. Yes, that is for every State that does its homeland security initiative strategic plan, those are those Federal dollars that come down for the use of that equipment.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I know we have legislation moving forward through our Homeland Security Committee right now——

Mr. CARRAWAY. These are the old 2002–2003 dollars.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. To address some of that, because we

would like to see a similar thing, which they are trying to set up

inside Homeland Security, like we have in CTAC in narcotics,

where they offer different equipment. There is an analysis of what

an individual community needs, what the risk level is, whether

they can maintain the equipment.

But here is an unusual thing, because one of the problems we

have in Homeland Security is that, for example, Coast Guard, BorVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:21 Aug 26, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00078 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95267.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
75

der Patrol, Customs are now under the Department of Homeland

Security, and they clearly have the large part of the narcotics mission. In addition, FEMA and emergency response kind of relates to

this and it is over in Homeland Security, but here we are using

drug money, buy money, to get protection for the individual officers

who are going in. Something is messed up in that process.

I got myself digressed from the first question. We have made the

case that we need to do something about the vests. Could you describe, Corporal Ciriello, maybe you can because you are out there

in the task force, what is it like walking up—what are you fearful

for, what are you watching, have you seen individuals, you or your

friends who have been caught up in this, and maybe you can describe some of the things in the other places too.

Mr. CIRIELLO. Well, given the chemicals that they use to manufacture meth, being anhydrous, ether, paint thinners, drain cleaners; you know, they are all hazardous chemicals when they are

breathed in by anybody. Most of these guys that make the meth,

you will find them having their masks or at least dust filters or

things that they are wearing to try to protect themselves.

When we walk in on a lab, especially unsuspecting, we do not

know what we are going to get into. And two of the biggest things

are the health hazards associated with the fumes in it and the explosion hazard if a spark is set off. Because most of these that we

find in the buildings are done in garages or basements where, you

know, they are fairly air tight or as air tight as they can be to keep

people from smelling it. And those are two of the biggest things we

have.

One of our officers, about 2 years ago, we went to check on a tip

of somebody possibly dealing in meth. It was a knock and talk at

the door. Well, come to find out they had a lab up there, so we

were doing some searching and there was a large Coleman cooler,

opened it up and it was filled with liquid anhydrous. Our officer

got the fumes of it, just a big faceful of it. He spent 7 hours in the

hospital taking breathing treatments and then went to outpatient

breathing treatments for a few days afterward and was on medication, just for that one large faceful.

That is something that we are facing a lot in these labs and at

these anhydrous facilities when we are out sitting on them at night

trying to catch the people that are stealing it. And a lot of times

when these guys come in, they don’t know how to handle it, so they

will come in and get their little dip and run off and leave the valve

open and we end up with the fire department down there to try to

wash things down and some evacuation. But those chemicals are

very toxic to the human body, and not only the officers going in,

that is one of our big concerns, but as testimony has told a while

ago, the children in there.

We had one guy we got three times last year, three different labs

and his twin children were in the house every time. And we removed them with the help of child protective services all three

times. The family has now since moved away from our county to

a county in the northern part—a little farther north of us to get

away from us because they feel that we are targeting them and

picking on them. But three active methamphetamine labs in 6

months.

76

Mr. SOUDER. I am trying to figure out what county.

Mr. CIRIELLO. It would be north and just a little west, not quite

your county, just a little west of you.

Mr. SOUDER. Anybody else want to share anything on that?

Mr. CARRAWAY. It is very important to understand, Congressman, that we stress time and time again to law enforcement agencies, to the public, to those that have a suspicion that someone is

cooking methamphetamine or that anhydrous ammonia is being

utilized, to make a call to the Clandestine Lab Team. It is obviously against the law to go into these places without the appropriate protection, but also because of the zealousness of law enforcement in trying to do the right things, these accidents end up

happening. But we urge again and again to make a phone call and

get the appropriate responding agency. Sometimes it just happens

and we all understand that, but realizing that they are very, very

dangerous situations, particularly if you suspect that is happening,

a phone call to the appropriate responding agency may avert a

tragedy.

Mr. SOUDER. So how, as a practical matter if knock and tap, is

that what you said?

Mr. CIRIELLO. Knock and talk.

Mr. SOUDER. Knock and talk. Sounds so friendly. [Laughter.]

Knock and talk, and they say they have a meth potential cooking

situation and you do not know——

Mr. CARRAWAY. Back out of the situation, make a phone call to

those——

Mr. SOUDER. How long does it take the State Police to get there?

Mr. CARRAWAY. We have 100 officers that are part of the Clandestine Laboratory Team. There is not a day that goes by that the

team is not called out to either remove an abandoned site or an active site. So certainly the timeframe is insignificant to the danger

and the amount of harm that could happen to them. I do not have

any stats about how long it would take, but these teams are strategically placed across this area.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Wargo.

Mr. WARGO. Sir, our office, along with the State Police, hosted

a presentation here early in 2003 and invited everyone in Elkhart

County that works for the various cities and county agencies; building inspectors, fire personnel, volunteer fire personnel, State police

personnel, put on a very extensive program. What we had hoped

to accomplish by that, and we invited all of our law enforcement

officers as well, is that as soon as you suspect that you have a

meth lab, back out, secure the perimeter, contact Indiana State Police. So our officers are very much aware that they have no skill

in trying to deal with what they may encounter in this situation.

The problem is making sure that they are aware of their surroundings if they see 300 empty boxes of Sudafed and they start putting

two and two together coming up with four. But the main thing is

to secure the perimeter and contact the people who have the expertise, the equipment and the ability to dismantle it.

Mr. SOUDER. Detective Anderson and then Corporal Ciriello. I

need to yield to Congressman Chocola, but I want to kind of play

this out.

77

All that sounds really good, but you are saying you are using

drug buy funds to buy protective equipment. They are saying the

State Police is supposed to come in and do that. Why do you need

protective equipment? You are saying your officers were there in

the middle of it, they did not necessarily know what exactly they

were getting into. What is your reaction to that? Let me be really

kind of inflammatory here for a second. If you are from Allen County or St. Joe County or Elkhart County, are they big enough, do

you get response fast enough? What is the deal here?

Mr. ANDERSON. We bought the equipment after we raided the lab

with nine individuals and three batches cooking at the same time.

We had one individual down in the house and we had no way of

assessing even what was going on. They were at the point of using

what is called an HCL generator and there was just a lot of smoke

in the house. As you got near the door, you could feel the acid

burning on your tongue. So that is when we decided that we needed to protect ourselves, because eventually, even after the clan lab

gets there, we are still going to be in there helping them process

the evidence.

Mr. SOUDER. But do you agree that the best approach and that

that is functional to say OK, this looks like we see some materials,

back up?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes, we call them every chance we can.

Mr. CIRIELLO. And we do the same thing. Every time we find a

lab, we do call them to come in for the cleanup process. Our thing

is, and we talked about the hazards to our officers, is when we first

pull up and discover the lab, and we have individuals in there

working the lab cooking, we have to make the arrests on them and

get them out and secure the area. Once we get the individuals that

are doing the manufacturing out of there, we secure it, we stay

back, we call them and let them come in and do their thing.

Mr. SOUDER. We will followup on this a little bit more. Mr.

Chocola.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Just to followup on that. If you have information

that there is a potential lab, do you call the State Police to go with

you or do you go by yourself, if you had previous knowledge?

Mr. CIRIELLO. If we know that we have a lab that we are going

to be going to, we go ahead and contact the clan lab team from the

State, let them know where it is at, and they have questions that

they need answered, so they know who to call out, how many to

call out and so on. We answer them the best we can. We have not

in the past waited on them to get there. Generally where we are

at, the closest place to us is Fort Wayne and it takes 2 or 3 hours.

It is not their fault, I mean, you know, the equipment has to come

or they may be tied up on other labs. We go ahead and serve a

search warrant and get the individuals involved and again secure

the area from there. But they are notified as soon as we are going

to get a search warrant on a meth lab, we call the lab team and

let them know.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Detective Anderson, you brought a kit with you.

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Could you describe that just briefly?

Mr. ANDERSON. Basically that is a safety kit that the three officers have. There is a respirator in there with different cartridges

78

for whatever gases they might encounter, whether it be anhydrous

or phosphene, and then some field test kits for, you know, sampling

the drugs to determine what you do have.

One of the things that I have been called out to several times is

leaking anhydrous cylinders, and one of them that was another

reason that I purchased the safety equipment, kids went to get on

a school bus at a house over by North Judson and there was a big

white cloud like a fog coming out of the woods back behind them.

Apparently their father had bought some old anhydrous tanks to

convert to propane for irrigation systems and somebody had found

them and started stealing the leftover anhydrous and left the valve

open. So I went out there with a fire department person and we

had to shut the tank down because it was blowing right at the two

houses there.

So sometimes, we do not have the luxury of waiting or calling

and waiting for the State Police, we have to go in and secure suspects and secure the area to keep other innocent people from becoming involved in the mishap.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Are these people that are operating these labs, are

they typically violent and do you have to go in there fearing for

your personal safety? I am sure you do, but do you typically encounter violent situations or not?

Mr. WARGO. In our experience, I would say yes, sir, and also in

addition to all of the hazards associated with the chemicals, the

precursors, I do not think we have done a search warrant on a

meth operation where there were not firearms also recovered.

Mr. ANDERSON. We are finding a lot of firearms in our arrests.

Most of them usually run or fight or we find firearms.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Do they use other drugs as well? Are they typically involved in several different drugs or are they pretty much

strictly on methamphetamine?

Mr. WARGO. No, they are very much multi. They will be smoking

pot, snorting meth and cooking at the same time. If you take someone who is really not very sophisticated, they have picked up this

recipe—I heard some folks talking about the Internet, that is one

source. These people exchange this information amongst each other

in jail and other places. A very unsophisticated person putting together and cooking a bath of meth, smoking dope and doing it all

at the same time. Obviously you put all those ingredients together

and it is probably the most dangerous thing I think that law enforcement has to deal with.

Mr. CHOCOLA. One of the most revealing things to me that we

have heard in testimony today, I had the impression that most of

the methamphetamine in our local area was the result of local

manufacture in these labs, but we heard from the previous panel

that 80 percent of it is coming from outside of our area and Mr.

Hill, you testified that is probably the experience here in Elkhart

County. Is that correct?

Mr. HILL. Yes.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Starke County may have a different experience.

Mr. ANDERSON. I am not aware of any of it.

Mr. CHOCOLA. The question I have is why does anybody engage

in local manufacture? Are they doing it because it is cheaper for

them or are they doing it because there is effective enforcement of

79

things coming in, so that they do not have the supply coming from

these superlabs so they resort to doing it themselves? Why are they

engaging in it?

Mr. HILL. Actually if you do have the stuff coming in from out

of the area, it is better quality, you can get it fairly cheaply and

you do not run the risk of blowing yourself up. So it is a much better deal for someone. I think in the areas where it is being cooked,

it is probably an example of less availability on the organized networks and then along that line, I want to emphasize one point. We

have talked a great deal about this coming in from Mexico and Hispanic organized criminal contacts. This is not a, methamphetamine

is not a Mexican problem or Hispanic problem in that sense. We

have large populations of Hispanics that are in the area, many

legal, some illegal, and many of those who are in the area that are

illegal are not here to engage in criminal activity. We are really

talking about a small minority that is taking advantage of the

availability of these Hispanic communities here to blend in, to hide

among them, and to become a distribution line. So I think it is important to understand that this is not an issue of Hispanics are

here and so is the meth, and let us blame all Hispanics. That is

not the issue. It is a matter of taking advantage of the fact that

there are people who want to be in this community and hiding

among them.

Mr. CHOCOLA. If we were to shut down every lab in Indiana, we

still have a huge problem. That is accurate, right?

Mr. HILL. Yes, sir.

Mr. WARGO. In addition, I think Mr. McClintock referred to it

and I referred to it early in my testimony, our crack cocaine wholesale operations are primarily out of Chicago. We have developed intelligence very recently that some of our local African-American organizations have developed contacts with some of the Hispanics

here and are getting cocaine product from them as well.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Carraway, we recently—I mentioned the budget

and we were talking a little earlier that, is it $700,000 that the Indiana State Police has?

Mr. CARRAWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Could you describe, that we specifically in the appropriations bill earmarked for meth in Indiana.

Mr. CARRAWAY. Sure.

Mr. SOUDER. So could you describe a little bit what you are likely

to use that for and what your greatest need areas are, as we look

at next year’s budget?

Mr. CARRAWAY. As you can imagine, the largest portion of any

of the resources that are utilized to clean up laboratories, to be

there to collect evidence, to be part of the investigative team, is the

manpower hours that are utilized. Individuals are called out at all

times of night. As I explained, there is only about 100 of these certified officers in the State and there is not a day goes by that I do

not get a report of at least two to three of these labs in the middle

of the night that have been assembled. So overtime manpower dollars is a large portion of that. Another portion is for equipment,

both personal protection equipment as well as laboratory services

equipment; breathing apparatuses are very important, evidence

80

kits for the technicians are very expensive. Also the containers in

which you collect and then dispose of, trailers utilized to move this

back and forth to disposal areas are also very expensive. Laboratory analyzing equipment has also been utilized and also manpower dollars to hire technicians to actually analyze a lot of the

submissions that we receive. As you heard, our submissions are up

enormously.

Another part of the dollars have been spent is for training.

Training of officers, training of hotels and motels, training of social

services workers, training of co-op farmers as well as co-op opportunities. So those are some of the areas where those dollars actually

have been spent. As you can imagine, they do not last very long.

Mr. SOUDER. Particularly if you are paying people $180,000 a

year.

Mr. CARRAWAY. Now, now.

Mr. SOUDER. Our officers in the line of duty are not overpaid, I

think most of us agree with that, no matter what their level is.

Mr. CARRAWAY. Sure.

Mr. SOUDER. In listening to Mr. Ciriello’s point and as we try to

work this through, do you see if labs are doubling every year and

their drug task force has five people. How many would you say on

a bust like that would be involved, two officers or your whole team?

Mr. CIRIELLO. No, we use the whole team.

Mr. SOUDER. So the whole team is there and if somebody cannot

get there for 3 hours, the entire county’s team is tied up waiting.

Do you see additional staffing posts around or how do you see addressing that question? Otherwise, the police departments are not

going to be able to function with this, particularly if it is doubling

every year.

Mr. CARRAWAY. I think each one of these gentlemen addressed

the issue and so did Mr. Burns and Armand in their presentation.

One of the most vital ingredients to helping eliminate and take

down a meth lab is information, intelligence, to share that information, to get a broad sense of what really is happening before action

has been taken.

And I think we can do that in a number of different ways. Mr.

Hill talked about the criminal intelligence sharing, which is an initiative that is taking a broad approach across the country. We understand how difficult it may be to establish a methamphetamine

HIDTA but Mr. Burns talked about bringing a lot of resources into

the community with which to deal with that. One of those ingredients, one of those resources will be that of sharing intelligence information, criminal intelligence information. What we probably

need to establish again, this is just simply my take on this initiative and something we are going to try in central Indiana, is to create an intelligence fusion center. By doing that, bringing together

again all the partnerships here in the area, share that criminal intelligence information, whether it be drugs, violent crime, fraud investigations. All of those issues in ways will address the issue of

drug movement in the area but will also address probably another

issue that we do not think so much about, terrorism. And we can

accomplish that and then utilize those homeland security dollars to

accomplish it.

81

Mr. SOUDER. Can I ask you a very particular question, there are

State Police folks on I–69 in Fort Wayne, and they have lab training. That is where they would move out of?

Mr. CARRAWAY. That is correct.

Mr. SOUDER. Is there a similar one up in the South Bend area?

Mr. CARRAWAY. Another laboratory?

Mr. SOUDER. No, a place where——

Mr. CARRAWAY. We have a post in Bremen, yes. And the toll

road.

Mr. SOUDER. And if somebody called for help for clandestine lab,

any of those posts could respond?

Mr. CARRAWAY. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. How many total people do you have that would do

that?

Mr. CARRAWAY. Again, 100 individuals that are certified.

Mr. SOUDER. For northern Indiana or that is for the whole State?

Mr. CARRAWAY. That is the whole State, 100. That is very important because they have to be certified, OSHA certified in doing this.

As you can imagine the liability issue is very important, so they

have to be certified to do this.

Mr. SOUDER. Do the posts have multiple teams trained in this?

Mr. CARRAWAY. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And you felt it is better to have them concentrated

than have them——

Mr. CARRAWAY. Well, again, as you can see, this issue is all over

the State, but we have to be able to call them out at a minute’s

notice. So yes, sometimes it may take that long for officers to get

there.

Mr. SOUDER. Do the people who are responding when they call

and say I need a cleanup team, that 100 is designated specifically

for that issue, they cannot be diverted to another issue?

Mr. CARRAWAY. Oh, yes, certainly. It is not all 100.

Mr. SOUDER. Part of the problem, Fort Wayne is the biggest area

in my district and it is 330,000 people in Allen County, about 220,

240 in the city with annexation, which rapidly changes every day

it seems like. That was a political statement.

Mr. CARRAWAY. I understand.

Mr. SOUDER. Allen County is sitting there with 330,000 people,

the tremendous demands on the State Police post there, how does

that impact if that is the primary area, all of these smaller counties where the meth labs have the greatest pressure and Allen

County does not have that? I am just wondering how that tradeoff

occurs when you are the commander and you have cocaine busts

going down, huge truckloads of marijuana coming through, heroin

on the street, Oxycontin, Ecstacy and all this going on in Fort

Wayne. Trying to deal with all that and then these smaller counties call up and say we are sitting at somebody’s house, he has got

meth and they are told they cannot go in. I mean is there any way

we are going to be able to do more training down so it does not

have to be concentrated just with the State Police is kind of what

I am asking.

Mr. CARRAWAY. Sure, I think that can occur, certainly. The DEA

obviously is having a rough go at trying to train everyone in that

aspect of doing it, but it is very important. This is highly explosive

82

and toxic material that people are dealing with. And I think the

training is 40 hours just to be certified and being able to dispose

of this issue.

So yes, that can occur, but it is going to cost dollars, it is going

to cost manpower. We do not have all the resources, and you are

exactly right, Congressman, we do not.

Mr. SOUDER. If it is going to double every year.

Mr. CARRAWAY. What we try to do is simply meet the need that

has been happening and with all your help, the dollars that you

have been providing to us has been allowing this overtime to be

spent on these officers to respond.

Mr. SOUDER. And it is hard for us, particularly with all the

media stories, to understand the problem is actually greater in

southwest Indiana.

Mr. CARRAWAY. That is right.

Mr. SOUDER. Oh, by the way, I wanted to have Mr. Wargo go

through that chart he started because one of the things we measure as to whether something is effective or not effective is the price

going up or down. You have a chart in your written testimony that

you alluded to that is really dramatic about meth in Elkhart county.

Mr. WARGO. Yes, sir. Over the past 9 months, purchases by un- dercover personnel, in the summer of 2003, $7,500 a pound; in the

fall of 2002, $6,500; Thanksgiving, $5,500; Christmas, $4,500 and

into January 2004, it dropped below $4,000 a pound.

Mr. SOUDER. That is a really rapid and consistent reduction,

which is kind of worrisome.

Mr. WARGO. Yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Hill, you as well as Mr. Wargo mentioned about

the lack of Hispanics to work undercover. I remember when I

worked with Dan Coats and we were focusing on a lot of this type

issue I think back in 1989, in the entire State of Indiana, we had

one undercover Hispanic who was working out of Kokomo and who

was fearing for his life because every police department in the

State was using him at that point.

Mr. HILL. That is right.

Mr. SOUDER. What efforts are done, we have looked at this in the

terrorism area of needing a rapid expansion of people who understand Arabic. Right now something could come across the bridge

and be anthrax in Arabic and we would not even know unless we

caught it another way.

But in the Hispanic language, it would seem to a person who

walks in here that there are plenty of Hispanics around who can

speak Spanish. Do we need to do specific, targeted recruitment programs aimed at law enforcement to welcome people in, to work

through this, what needs to be done to boost this?

Mr. HILL. I think generally speaking, we would all, all of us in

law enforcement would love to see more minority representation

across the board or representation of all the multi-faceted people

that are in our community. It is always helpful. And that would

just be from a regular patrol officer, let alone undercover

operatives.

The nature of the undercover operation is such that it takes a

particular type of individual. Not every police officer is really qualiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:21 Aug 26, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00086 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95267.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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fied or good at being undercover. So that is something. We need to,

because as Mr. Wargo indicated, we are in this phase of having so

many people first generation, there are some cultural buildups of

mistrust in terms of what this community, how we treat, for example, domestic violence, and how it is treated in other areas. I spoke

at a forum several months ago where the issue of domestic violence

came up and the concern was we cannot come and talk to you in

your office about domestic violence because we are afraid that you

are going to report the abuser. We get into those concerns.

So I think it is very important that we try to concentrate on

ways to get people in. Now we can send out signals and say we

would like for people to apply, but because we have had in the last

5 years a huge rise in the number of people here, we may just not

have the pool of available people who want to engage in law enforcement. That is from the police officer standpoint. From the confidential source standpoint, that is always an interesting subject in

terms of who wants to step up and help the police. That is not exactly an easy thing to do at all times. So we are working on those

things as well. It would be very, very critical to us to gain information on who are the bad folks, and we talk to people about that.

And I think the Hispanic families that I have talked to here in this

community, their understanding, they do not want to be associated

with that negative stereotype that all Hispanics are bad or all Hispanics are on drugs. And that is the message we would want to

send, if we can get information about who the bad people are that

are making them susceptible to the stereotype. We can help ferret

those people out of here so that we can all live together in one

happy community.

Mr. SOUDER. I assume it is especially hard to penetrate certain

families that have a history of criminal activity, who are inter-connected? Talking about the one family that may, if it is Pasco, WA,

that is a big migrant labor area that deals with fruit and vegetables; in Indiana we have some of that; so does Gwinnett, GA. The

vice chairman of this committee, Nathan Deal, happens to represent Gwinnett County, GA and we see this kind of pattern of

movement. But I would assume if you have large, and not in the

local cooker part, but in the large dollars coming through, what we

have is inside certain sub-groups that are not necessarily, but probably has intense pressure on the families. Could you describe a little bit how this would relate to trying to penetrate into that larger

network which comes in in both Elkhart and Kosciusko? You said

those were networks. And then the second thing is the ranking

Democrat member on this committee, Elijah Cummings, caught me

on the floor the night before last and said we have to do more for

witness protection.

In the ONDCP reauthorization, we have a thing, in tribute to the

Dawson family in his district in Baltimore, where a lady started

working with law enforcement and one of the drug gang people fire

bombed her house and burned her and all her kids to death. There

has been a rise in intimidation in a lot of these big cities in particular, but I am sure it is elsewhere, of witness intimidation. Have

you seen any of that? When you say people are unwilling to come

forward, part of it is look who you are cooperating with, are you

being a traitor to my family, but another thing is the actual danger

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to the individuals. Particularly the bigger the type of case. If it is

part of the transportation network that is putting a lot of narcotics

into a zone, I presume it is a lot more pressure than a small one

where they can basically abandon it and run to something else or

move to another county. You are looking at potential Federal violations, life sentences, all sorts of different things.

Any comments?

Mr. WARGO. There is very much an intimidation factor that we

have to try to overcome, especially with the first generation individual. Whether they are from Latin America, Central America,

Cuba or Mexico, they do not trust law enforcement, they do not

trust the judicial system. So they are very reluctant to talk to us

at all. So it is even more easy to intimidate those people, because

you not only convince them that if you talk to the police I am going

to kill you or cut your throat. Or No. 2, if you talk to the police,

you know they are all corrupt, they are all crooked and, you know,

they are going to tell me that you have been talking to the police.

They are predisposed to believe that what they have experienced

in their home country prior to coming here. It would be very easy

for someone to convince them that both of those things are true.

No. 1, I will cut your throat. No. 2, if you talk to the police, they

are on the take and they are going to tell me that you have been

talking to them. So the intimidation factor is huge.

We have had several homicides in Elkhart County in 2003 that

are directly related to the drug trafficking and intimidation. We

had one witness that was murdered that was going to testify in a

trial the following week. We had another person that was murdered as part of another drug investigation that was ongoing. And

it is very easy to point to those murders, and in some cases I think

they take credit for murders they do not commit, and say you see,

you saw what happened to him, right? Well, that is what will happen to you. So that is a huge problem that we have and then complicate that even more by the language barrier. And that is what

we are trying to overcome.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Ciriello, do you have anything to add?

Mr. CIRIELLO. The things that Bill said are the things that we

see also.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Anderson, you said you had some deaths in

your county due to Oxycontin.

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. If you lump the two together, how many were

Oxycontin?

Mr. ANDERSON. I do not have those exact stats. They have what

they are mixing and calling a Knox cocktail, and that is where they

are mixing Oxycontin, Xanax, methamphetamine together and

what I looked at on those 16 deaths were one of any one of the

three as a combination in overdoses.

Mr. SOUDER. OK. Do you have any additional questions?

Mr. CHOCOLA. Just one last, Detective Anderson, your testimony

today and our conversations earlier, it strikes me that you say

somebody could be incarcerated for a year and within a week they

are back at it. What is a deterrent? I mean are prison sentences,

harsher sentences, is that a deterrent for this or not?

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Mr. ANDERSON. Well, we certainly would hope so. Here in our jurisdiction, we firmly believe in utilizing long prison sentences for

dealers as an effort to deter and essentially raise the stakes and

say if you are going to come into this community, here is what you

are going to look at. Is that the complete solution? Probably not,

but I also hear talk about treatment which we all would like to see.

But with the treatment aspect, unless someone is willing, No. 1, to

seek treatment and then also willing to take the medicine, if you

will, treatment can sometimes go up in smoke as well. So it is

going to be a multi-faceted approach.

But certainly if you have major distributors of methamphetamine

in your community and you want to send a message to that person

and you want to send a message to all his buddies that are out

there waiting to take his place, it is come on out and we will send

you down to prison once we get you. That is the message that we

continue to drive home.

Mr. CHOCOLA. I unfortunately will not be able to stay for the

completion of the third panel, but I wanted to ask this to the folks

on that panel. If someone is willing to engage in treatment, rehabilitation, is there success? Have you seen success? Or is this a

tougher or different drug than some others?

Mr. HILL. I would say the first thing is if someone is willing, that

is half the battle right there. What we see sometimes in law enforcement and the court system is everybody steps up to the plate

when the judge is on the bench and says Judge, I need help. And

that is a little disingenuous at that time. We do not know if that

person really needs help, desires help or wants to show contrition

for the sake of getting through the system.

From my standpoint, any time someone steps up and says I need

help, I need treatment—if we had somebody that came to our office

today and said look, I am a large methamphetamine user, you have

not caught me yet, and I need help. We are not going to arrest that

person. We are going to do what we can to find that person some

help, because they are somebody who said I need help and I am

willing to step up to the plate. It is a little bit different once we

have caught them in the net in terms of how at least I view it.

Mr. ANDERSON. What I have been seeing a lot in our area is the

local doctors are prescribing methadone or methadose to try and

bring them off of the meth and the Oxycontin and the last problem

we had, we were finding methadose tablets all over this lab location, so I am not sure that is a cure either. You do not use a drug

to break another drug.

Mr. CHOCOLA. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I really appreciate the patience of the

third panel, but I want to do one other thing before we do this. And

we do not usually do this at a hearing but there is a particular circumstance.

Mr. Murtaugh, you have been here this morning, if you could,

would you like to say anything? If you would come up, I will briefly

swear you in because he is from the U.S. Marshal’s Service.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Will you state your name and position for the

record?

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Mr. MURTAUGH. David Murtaugh, U.S. Marshal, Northern District of Indiana.

Mr. SOUDER. You have been able to listen to two panels here.

Will you spell your name for the court reporter?

Mr. MURTAUGH. M-u-r-t-a-u-g-h.

I believe I can only support what they have said here. The information highway is what needs to be brought here. As the superintendent said, we have information from Elkhart County and it is

not being shared with information from St. Joe County or Starke

County or Kosciusko County. And that is what the HIDTAs are intended to do. They are intelligence driven and that is what we are

trying to do, is to try to develop intelligence data bases so that we

share information, so that we share jail records, so that we share

what other task forces are doing, because criminals go from one

area to the next and if we are not in a position to be able to share

the information with our fellows in law enforcement, then we are

breaking down.

That is one of the other things that I think we really need to

move forward with and we need help in those areas because that

is something that is very easy to do with the information technology that is available today and data bases. If we put those in,

then data bases can be built and they can be shared statewide.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. And if you want to insert anything additional in the record, I wanted to make sure that I got it into the

record that you are here because the U.S. Marshal’s Service is

often not as recognized in the process because you are the executing division. The bottom line is if you do not get the warrants

served, if you do not get the guys from place to place, the whole

system breaks down. And we appreciate the efforts that you have

done in northern Indiana in assisting in the narcotics effort.

Mr. MURTAUGH. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. With that, this panel is adjourned. We are going to

take a brief recess, very brief, and if the third panel will come forward.

[Recess.]

Mr. SOUDER. The subcommittee is now back in session. If each

of the witnesses for the third panel will raise their right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that all the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

First up on this panel is Mr. Kevin Enyeart, he is the Cass County prosecutor. We appreciate, let me say up front, the third panel

always gets kind of the short end of the stick in one sense because

everybody in the first two panels will tend to go, although a few

will be around I can see here. But under our committee procedures,

the standard is pretty clear that the Federal Government representatives are in the first panel and then we try to do a mix on

the other panels and I appreciate your patience with this. It will

all be there the same regardless. But I appreciate your willingness

to be patient with us getting a little bit of a late start and then

having lots of witnesses.

This has been very comprehensive as you can see, and as we

move through this, we are continuing to move through the law enforcement side and then into prevention and treatment questions,

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because we cannot just do it with the law enforcement side. That

is why it is a good balance to work through the process in the hearing of identifying the problems and then what we are trying to do

to help with the problem, not only with law enforcement, but also

with the treatment side.

So, thank you, Mr. Enyeart, for your willingness to be here as

a prosecutor dealing with what we heard earlier of some of the

challenges. I will yield the floor to you.

STATEMENTS OF KEVIN ENYEART, CASS COUNTY PROSECUTOR; DOUG HARP, CHIEF DEPUTY, NOBLE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE; SERGEANT JEFF SCHNEPP, LONGANSPORTCASS COUNTY DRUG TASK FORCE; BRIAN CONNOR, ACTING

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE CENTER FOR THE HOMELESS,

SOUTH BEND; BARRY HUMBLE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

DRUG & ALCOHOL CONSORTIUM OF ALLEN COUNTY; AND

BENJAMIN MARTIN, SERENITY HOUSE, INC.

Mr. ENYEART. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon now.

My name is Kevin Enyeart, I am the elected prosecutor for the

29th Judicial District of Indiana which is Cass County. I have been

in that position as the deputy prosecutor/prosecutor for over 8

years now. I want to add something that is not in my written testimony.

When I was a part time deputy prosecutor, I also represented the

Division of Family & Children, something I took a great of pride

in. And I could not agree more with the testimony of Mr. Burns

earlier when he said this should be about children first. I say that

for a lot of reasons, one of them being an example. One of our

methamphetamine labs that we shut down, we went in and a 5-

year old boy was helping his father cook methamphetamine. The

boy told law enforcement ‘‘I am helping daddy make medicine.’’ I

think that underscores the importance of putting children first and

we need to do that also in the methamphetamine problems that we

face.

I consider it a great privilege to be able to be here today to testify and I will start out by telling you a little bit about Cass County. We are a rural county. Logansport is the county seat, we are

just under 41,000 people. And the reason that is important is because the large methamphetamine problem that we have is directly

related to the easy access of anhydrous ammonia in our community.

Prosecutor Hill said earlier that a large part of the problem here

appears to be outside sources of methamphetamine, and I do not

want to underscore that enough. I think that in Cass County, we

also have outside source problems with methamphetamine, but

what we are seeing in the lower socio-economic levels is methamphetamine labs that are made, set up to sell methamphetamine.

You also have the low level users who are doing it just for their

own use, but we are seeing a lot of people who are actually setting

up their own lab in order to effectively market and make a profit

in the methamphetamine problem.

We in Cass County have been overwhelmed by the methamphetamine problem. We have had an additional court added recently.

We have a great number of cases in our system. We tried just one

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this week. There are both direct and indirect consequences to the

use of methamphetamine, but from a criminal justice perspective,

it is very important that we focus on the indirect. The direct is obvious, the people who are hooked on methamphetamine, the people

who are distributing methamphetamine and the people who are

manufacturing methamphetamine. But in my opinion, as a prosecuting attorney and looking at what we see in the criminal justice

system, the most important things that we need to look at are the

indirect consequences—the health of the people involved, the loss

of jobs, the loss of homes, the problems that we have dealing with

children and the long-term effects on them.

One thing that I have not heard highlighted today is the highly

addictive nature of methamphetamine. I think it is so well recognized among everybody who testified, we take that for granted. But

in the criminal justice system, what I have seen, once we have

somebody charged with felony offenses, it is not uncommon—in

fact, it is rather regular for us to see someone bond out on an A

or B felony methamphetamine charge and then be picked up again

while they are out on bond. Previous people who were testifying

talked about as many as three or four labs at a time while they

are waiting for the first case to go to trial. And Cass County, IN

is no exception to that. The burden on our criminal justice system

is extraordinary. That is the one thing that I would like to highlight.

As a prosecuting attorney, I am concerned with not only the enforcement of our existing laws, but the long-term negative impact

that methamphetamine has on our family members, our friends,

our neighbors and our children. The cost is not just in dollar terms,

but it is extraordinary. I think that is one of the things that I think

is part of the job of a prosecuting attorney, to get that message out.

I often say that a prosecuting attorney has a pivotal role in our

criminal justice system and to our communities in general because

we have the ability to be the mouthpiece in areas such as methamphetamine.

And in Cass County, our Chief Deputy Prosecutor accompanied

me today, her name is Lisa Swain. We have taken very seriously

reaching out to young people. I think we need to go even younger

than we have, but we have been concentrating on high school aged

children. And recently, when I was speaking to children, to high

school students, I was shocked, because we started talking about

methamphetamine and one of the things I have been trying to do

as a prosecutor is tell young people do not do it. In my opinion,

methamphetamine is much worse than cocaine. And when I was

speaking to that classroom group of high school students, two girls,

one of them turned her back to me, looked at one of her friends and

I saw her roll her eyes. That was shocking to me. It was a rural,

small community high school, and that really opened my eyes to

the problem that we have.

Our first meth lab was in January 2001 and each year we see

more and more of a problem. In Cass County, we were able to, in

2001, obtain a Byrne Drug Grant. That has been essential to me

as a prosecutor because that money that is administered by the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute allowed me to hire another prosecutor. The problem is that money is drying up this year for our

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office. We will not have that money next year unless Congress does

something to restore that funding and make me eligible for yet another year of that funding. And I think the consequences of us losing that money would really hurt our office.

I believe that criminal prosecution is necessary and should be

used in a large number of cases. However, whenever possible, our

society should look at incarceration as a last alternative. And I am

looking at that from a small town perspective. I was born and

raised in Cass County and a lot of the people that we see on methamphetamine are hopelessly addicted to it. And that is why I wanted to talk about the highly addictive nature. Our recidivism rate

is extremely high. I do not know what the numbers are, but I can

tell you that my guess would be at least 9 out of 10 people, when

they are sitting in jail, as soon as they get out, they are going to

go try to find or make some more methamphetamine. And I have

actually talked to criminal defendants who have spent time in prison who will tell you honestly as soon as I get out, I’m going to go

set up another lab and I’m going to take some more meth. That is

why we need to look at education and that is why we need to look

at other alternatives to incarceration.

As you know, Mr. Congressman, the cost of incarceration is the

most expensive thing that we can do in our criminal justice system.

I believe in a large number of cases, that is what we should do. But

we also need to look at other alternatives. And what I think that

Congress can do to help at the local level is to help us set up

money and resources for drug court programs. In limited cases,

people who I consider to be low level users, we could consult with

judges, probation, prosecutors and other community services to decide who would be allowed to get into that program. If we do not

educate these people and give them the resources necessary, then

we are just going to see them back again and again and again. And

I have seen in the criminal justice system people lose everything.

I have had mothers lose their children, I have had people lose their

jobs, their homes and everything that they have ever worked for

in their lives. And that is why that is really important, that we

need to look at alternatives to incarceration.

Some people that are on methamphetamine are hopelessly addicted and we need to do whatever we can to help them get off that

drug. In my opinion, the Federal Government can assist local prosecutors and local law enforcement in two ways. First and most importantly, education. Education on a national level, whether that

be through print media, television media or other ways, it is very

important. Second, as everyone else previously has said, we need

money. We need to finance our other efforts, our other alternatives

and we need that assistance from the Federal Government. Programs like the Byrne Drug Grant have been essential to local prosecutors and they should continue. Funding of these programs is difficult in these times, but we need to keep doing that because every

dollar we spend in those kinds of programs helps us from spending

$10 more in the future.

Methamphetamine and that problem is not going to go away any

time soon and we must address it, and that is the reason why I

am here today. And I do appreciate the time and offering to let me

testify. I appreciate that very much.

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you for that testimony. We now have a recidivist of sorts, Mr. Harp, who has actually testified before this committee before.

Mr. HARP. That is correct.

Mr. SOUDER. In Washington, DC. Thank you for being patient

and we look forward to your testimony.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Enyeart follows:]

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Mr. HARP. Thanks for having me again, I do appreciate it.

In 2001, I testified before this committee, along with former

Sheriff Doug Dukes. And one of the things that we talked about at

that point in time was the growing trend of meth usage in our

county, Noble County, and we also cited at that time a lot of the

examples of cases which exemplify the bizarre behavior of the meth

user and the increasing violence associated with the users.

At that time, we were certain that we had not peaked in terms

of meth usage and production. And unfortunately, our predictions

were correct. We currently have the distinction of ranking 10th

among the 92 Indiana counties in meth lab arrests. In 1996, Indiana recorded just six meth labs for the entire year. And this year,

investigators shut down 1,260 labs throughout the State. So the increase is just incredible. If you look at that in terms of percentages,

it is mind-boggling. The cost for disposal of these labs is estimated

to be in excess of $66,000, which I think is very conservative. And

one of the factors not included in this is the cost of the manhours

involved.

The statistical information regarding the increase in meth production and usage is staggering and very frightening. A recent

study conducted by the Rural Indiana Profile reports that eighth

graders in rural settings are 108 percent more likely to use meth

than eighth graders in urban areas. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, arrests for meth offenses in Indiana rose 81 percent from 1995 to 1998. I cannot imagine what type of increase we

have had since 1998.

We have seen a dramatic increase in the anhydrous ammonia

thefts. I know a lot of people have talked about that. We have farm

supply facilities in our county and we also have a lot of production

facilities that also use anhydrous in their production process and

we have seen thefts in those areas as well.

I know one of the things that was talked about was the pricing,

and we have seen that decrease in pricing as well. Our prices are

going down. I worked in an undercover capacity for a couple of

years and, you know, any time you see the price of narcotics going

down, you know that you have a lot. It has been flooded, your market has been flooded. And we have seen it just like everybody else

has, in the decrease in meth prices.

One other area of concern for us, which just really has happened

recently, is one of our neighboring counties has an active chapter

of the Outlaw Motorcycle Club and the Outlaws historically have

maintained a very sophisticated methamphetamine network. They

are also known to absorb puppet clubs to assist them in the drug

distribution. And this very scenario is taking place in our county.

I know that a couple of people have addressed the motorcycle clubs

and I think downplayed that a little bit with the Mexican nationals, you know, and so on. But I still think that’s a very, very good

source of methamphetamine distribution and we are very, very concerned about that. And association with that, obviously the violence

that comes with motorcycle clubs, motorcycle gangs.

What can be done to stem some of these meth trends? We feel

pretty good in certain areas, we feel in training our deputies, our

firefighters, our EMS personnel throughout the county, we have

done a lot of training and we feel very good about that. We have

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also done a lot of programs, conducted a lot of public awareness

programs, both in the schools and the community as far as education. We have a lot of work to do in addition to that yet, but we

feel pretty good about that right now.

What can be done to help us at the local level, and one of the

things that we obviously need is funding for training, equipment

and manpower. And one of things that I do not think I have heard

addressed today, which in looking at the past couple of years is

something that we have had to do in terms of our budget. To try

to decrease spending in our budget, we looked at overtime that the

officers were paid and we went to compensatory time in lieu of

overtime dollars. And on the face, it makes us look really well, you

know, it is an administration, we have knocked down the overtime

budget considerably. But when I got to looking at what it meant

in terms of available police manhours last year alone, 2,132 hours

in 2003 where we normally we have had a police presence, we had

officers off because they were off on comp time. You know, if we

are going to fight meth and fight it effectively; you know, we have

gotten a greater increase in meth production and meth labs and we

have gone backward in terms of police presence that we have on

the road. A lot of our cases are generated by the road officers out

making traffic stops because, as you have heard today in some of

the other testimony, a lot of the labs right now are very mobile and

we get a lot of results from traffic stops.

So the big thing for us, again, is like everybody else, manpower,

equipment and funding.

But again, I would like to express my gratitude for being invited

here again and I appreciate everything that Congressman Souder

has done. He has always been very helpful in this problem and we

do appreciate it.

Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Sergeant Schnepp.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Harp follows:]

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Mr. SCHNEPP. Thank you. I would also like to express my gratitude for being here to tell you all the problems in Cass County

along with my Prosecutor Kevin Enyeart.

I have been assigned to the Cass County-Logansport Drug Task

Force for 5 years and I have been a police officer for 23 years. Our

task force consists of four officers; myself, two Logansport Police

Officers and an Indiana State Trooper.

Our first lab discovery was January 2001, we are averaging 12

to 14 labs a year.

I will skip through a lot of this and make it go quick if I can.

We have two labs this year, we recovered a partial lab Wednesday night. Anhydrous thefts are doubling. We have three distribution centers. We also have three or four businesses that use it for

cleaning purposes. We are doing stakeouts on the distribution centers when we can and when we have the manpower.

Our probation department has 1,200 people on probation. They

just really started testing for meth the last few years. They have

had a 5-percent increase in the last year on meth tests for positive

results.

The problem we are getting into with the meth labs, the last

three we have taken down have all had some type of surveillance

equipment. They have cameras on the barn, telescopes in the windows, they have night vision equipment, they have radio frequency

detection to see if we have a wire if we send an informant in to

them.

The bottom line is the bad guys are better prepared than we are,

they have better equipment than we do. We do not have any night

vision. We are a small department, we have really been running

into problems with some of these guys with all their counter-surveillance on our officers and also their equipment. They are watching our office, they are doing counter-surveillance on our vehicles.

I just ran a wire on a buy Tuesday night, I just got a new vehicle

3 weeks ago and they were talking about what kind of vehicle I

had on the wire. It kind of amazed me.

What I would like to see is a multi-county federally funded methamphetamine task force within maybe our district. I personally,

and the other guys on our task force, we call Howard County,

Miami County, White County, we try to give them as much information, we work together as much as we possibly can. But with cocaine buys, marijuana buys, Oxycontin buys, we just do not have

the manpower to focus straight on methamphetamine, which I believe we need to do.

That is about all I have.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you for your testimony. We are going to

make a little bit of a transitioning in my questioning. I will split

that too. We are now going to go to Mr. Connor, who is the acting

executive director of the South Bend Center for the Homeless.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Schnepp follows:]

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Mr. CONNOR. Thank you.

I appreciate the opportunity to testify today on the important

issue of methamphetamine use in this State and also the influence

of drugs on our community.

I would like to thank you for drawing attention to resources, for

the needs of communities dealing with the effects of illegal drug

use.

I am here today representing the Center for the Homeless, one

of many service providers in this region who witness daily the effects of alcohol and drug use on those living in poverty and on the

brink of homelessness. The Center for the Homeless offers residential services to 200 people daily, including 22 families with 60 children.

We collaborate with many partner agencies from the community,

all dedicated to breaking the cycle of homelessness. We provide a

broad range of onsite services, including shelter, food, medical care,

pediatric-occupational therapy, Montessori pre-school education,

case management, drug and alcohol treatment and adult education.

All services provided by our partner agencies are free of charge to

guests of the center.

The goals and the objectives of our programs and partnerships

are designed to help people transition from homelessness to selfsufficiency and to help them create a life in which they can give

back to their community.

The overwhelming majority of people who seek services at the

center suffer from serious problems such as mental illness, drug

and alcohol addiction, poor medical health, illiteracy, unemployment and isolation from a supportive network of people and resources.

The center’s services are targeted to address the depth and diversity of needs present among homeless persons, especially families.

Among the population we serve, at least 60 percent are struggling with drug or alcohol addiction and 30 percent suffer from

mental illness which is often undiagnosed. Many are dually diagnosed with mental illness and substance abuse issues. Among our

population with substance abuse issues, the majority abuse alcohol

and cocaine. While the percentage of those with a methamphetamine addiction is not nearly as high as with either cocaine or alcohol, the number of methamphetamine abusers has steadily increased over the last several years.

Typical treatment options for people with addictions issues are

individual and group counseling sessions as well as Alcoholics and

Narcotics Anonymous meetings. For those who are dually diagnosed, their mental illness is also addressed, often through medication and case management. Many meth users who come to the

doors of the Center for the Homeless do not stay in treatment for

long enough periods of time to allow for a complete recovery. Many

are seeking treatment for the first time and do not have the necessary desire to stay clean. Others are seeking treatment solely because it is court ordered. We believe that for both of these groups,

relapse occurs because they do not desire sincere change in their

lives. We hear that it often takes six or seven attempts before you

are able to stay clean and sober with treatment.

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Based on our experience, for lasting change to take place in a

person’s life, you must have a strong desire to change your lifestyle. The AA and NA model instructs those in recovery to change

their people, places and things, meaning they must not associate

with the people or frequent the locations where they lived while

they were using. These life changes are only successful when people have a sincere desire to change their ways. In many instances,

this happens only after they have lost everything important in

their lives as a result of their addiction; literally hitting rock bottom.

The difficulty in changing one’s lifestyle can be compounded by

other issues that affect those living in poverty. Many of those we

serve also do not possess a high school diploma or GED. Without

a proper education, it is difficult to obtain sufficient employment to

support a family. In addition, a lack of transportation is a tremendous barrier for people who live in poverty. With these limitations,

the people we serve have a lack of choices in where they can live

and what types of jobs they can hold. With limited options, many

people who have sought treatment for substance abuse return to

the negative influences in their lives as it is the only thing they

know. This often leads to a cycle of poverty that can affect several

generations as children pick up the behaviors of their parents.

While the research is clear that methamphetamine is a highly

addictive drug, one of the most frightening aspects of its use, from

the perspective of a service provider, is the long-term effects that

it can have on the brain in cognitive functioning of users as well

as the severe health issues that it can create. The health effects of

meth use can include cardiovascular problems such as irregular

heartbeat, increased blood pressure and rapid heart rate. Withdrawal effects can include depression, anxiety, fatigue, paranoia

and aggression. Damage to the brain caused by meth use has been

compared to the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, epilepsy and

Parkinson’s disease.

From our perspective, successful treatment is only the first step

in true recovery for a meth or any drug user. After treatment for

substance abuse issues, we recommend that persons addressing the

underlying issues that led them to use drugs or alcohol in the first

place. Only after beginning to address these issues does our organization seek to prepare guests for a return to the work force. Many

times, a chronic substance abuser will have a very poor job history

or long periods of unemployment due to their drug use. In this

case, it can be very difficult for a recovering drug abuser to obtain

a level of employment that offers a livable wage and will allow

them to live in a neighborhood that is removed from serious drug

infestation. If the drug abuser is a mother, she often has additional

barriers to work due to the childcare and educational needs of her

children.

The greatest needs we can identify for those seeking to overcome

drug addiction are in the areas of housing and employment. Without safe, affordable housing options, those who have received treatment for drug abuse are forced to return to neighborhoods where

drug use is rampant. This increases the difficulty in remaining

clean and sober. In order to pay for safe housing, those in recovery

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vanced education. Without improved employment options, people

are forced to work for wages that do not allow them to support

their families. This drives many to become involved in illegal activities, such as prostitution or selling drugs.

For service providers to be effective at bringing all of these services together for those in need, there must be support at all levels

of the government for organizations that effectively address these

issues. This support is most needed in order to continue service

provision for people as they move through this process and work

to improve their lives and become self-sufficient.

I would like to thank you again for the opportunity to be here

today and to testify on this important issue.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Connor follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Next, we will hear from Mr. Barry

Humble, who has worked up in Noble County and now down in

Allen County. We appreciate you coming up today.

Mr. HUMBLE. Like my predecessors who have already had a

chance to speak, I express my appreciation for this opportunity to

share some information and experiences and hopefully some recommendations about dealing with meth in northeast Indiana.

My level of understanding concerning methamphetamine took a

serious spike when I began my duties as executive director of Drug

Free Noble County in 1999. I like to tell people that previously in

my professional life I became a recovering school teacher and had

that opportunity to work in a rural school corporation for 21 years

and my major responsibility was as a substance abuse educator

and student assistance program coordinator, so I dealt with the

baggage that young people came to school with every day.

Then before I went to Noble County, I worked for the Governor’s

Commission for Drug Free Indiana and worked with seven different counties and this idea about the negative impact of alcohol

and drugs has already been there, but the situation dealing with

methamphetamine just increased dramatically.

The devastation that is caused not only by the use of methamphetamine, as has already been brought out, is not limited to

just the cooking process, but also needs to be included is the disposal process of the toxic waste. And that, here in Indiana, could

be incredible. In my professional life, I have not accounted a substance that is so quickly addictive, is so readily available and is so

difficult to treat.

My responsibilities as a former executive director of Drug Free

Noble County and currently of the Drug and Alcohol Consortium

of Allen County emphasize the roles of prevention, treatment and

justice. It is within that framework that I share a concept developed within the State of Kansas that is being pursued within the

15 northeast counties of Indiana. The following counties each have

a community anti-drug coalition and participate in a confederation

known as the Northeast Regional Advisory Board. Those counties

include Adams, Allen, Blackford, DeKalb, Grant, Huntington, Jay,

Kosciusko, Lagrange, Miami, Noble, Steuben, Wabash, Wells and

Whitley, which actually covers three Congressional Districts. I am

currently the chairperson and we receive guidance from Kelley Wilson, who joined me today from the Governor’s Commission on Drug

Free Indiana and her three staff persons. During 2003, there were

134 meth labs found in these counties, according to the Indiana

State Police. Deaths, property loss from fires and environmental

contamination has resulted from these labs. The Northeast Regional Advisory Board was looking for a means that a community

could effectively address these issues and discovered a program

called Kansas Meth Watch.

The key fixture of this program includes employee and management training of stores that sell precursor products involved in the

manufacturing of meth. With some modifications and additional

pieces, we would like to replicate this program to be called the

Northeast Indiana Meth Watch. Our program has three features.

First, community awareness. A PowerPoint presentation will be

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lice Department, Mick Newton, in cooperation with the Indiana

State Police. This presentation will be used by each community coalition with service organizations, fraternal groups, churches and

whomever else they can get in front of in each of their counties.

Their presentation will be supplemented by pamphlets, billboards

and media coverage.

The second piece is employee and management training. Information will be provided to retailers that sell legitimate products

that are precursors to the manufacture of meth. Many of these

products are sold at convenience stores that historically have high

turnover of employees. Information that can be a part of new employee training as well as ongoing training will be made available

to assist retail employees with protocol when a suspected sale of

precursor products occur. In addition, signage will be available to

retailers to identify their store as a member of Northeast Indiana

Meth Watch. In addition, we would like to partner with agribusiness agencies to distribute tamper tags for anhydrous tanks.

Currently, farmers can purchase a lock to put on their tank that

might be sitting out in the field that costs $150. What that results

in is a loss of a $150 tank lock and still the farmer is at risk. I

have done some investigating with farmers to ask them, you have

this big tank sitting out there, would you be able to tell if you lost

500 gallons worth of anhydrous? And their common reaction is they

would have no clue. Well would you be able to tell if you lost 100?

No. Well, the guys that are out there stealing take about 10, they

don’t know that their tanks are missing. What we would like to do

is get these agribusiness agencies to get these tamper tags that

cost about 20 cents apiece and then a farmer would know if his

tank has been broken into. When they have done this in Kansas,

they found some places that they had to change and have multicolors because the tanks had been broken into so many different

times. What we will be able to do is hopefully prevent a dangerous

accident.

The other concern with employee management training is when

I was in Noble County, we conducted a workshop that was entitled

Meth in the Workplace. And what we were able to do is create an

awareness for employees, but sometimes the mentalities that, particular manufacturing based agencies hold, is that they are working by production and if they are working by pieces and the employee knows that they are going to make more money, a lot of

them will purposefully use meth to be able to go at high rates of

speed for a period of time, knowing full well that after they have

had this experience, they may not show up for work. So that was

an awareness that a lot of employers were not aware of, that the

mentality that they created also creates an environment to encourage meth use.

The third thing that we are looking at doing is developing a tip

line. We have had great cooperation from the Indiana State Police

Post there in Fort Wayne, and the post had distributed throughout

these 15 counties some posters a couple of years ago working very

diligently with employers and helping employee training. They had

developed an 800 tip line and that would be made available to us

to use for folks who can call in when they notice things that are

kind of disturbing or might be indicative of meth development.

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The reasons for this cooperative venture are many. First the

manufacture and distribution of meth is not limited by county

lines. Because of the high quality of investigative work and previous awareness by law enforcement agencies, cookers are purchasing precursor products in one or more counties, conducting the

manufacturing process in still another county. While Allen County

has had only one meth lab busted in 2003, police agencies acknowledge the amount of meth on the streets of Fort Wayne is increasing. I give this point of evidence. Allen County Probation in 2002

had in their drug urine tests, six cases of meth showing up. Now

remember, these are people who are already in the system, not

first time, but are already in the system. In 2003, that number was

over 100. So if people who are already in probation and they are

having dirty urine screens because of meth, you can kind of multiply that astronomically to the potential number of people who are

using it.

Second, a unified message for the region, led by the coalition in

each county will create an effective and credible effort. This unified

message allows for diversity of delivery with a common theme. The

intent is not to hinder the sale of products used in a lawful manner, but rather create awareness that the unlawful use of these

products to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine will not

be tolerated in northeast Indiana.

The effectiveness of the program requires a great deal of cooperation and the Northeast Regional Advisory Board intends to bring

together its resources to make this endeavor possible. In terms of

what assistance the Federal Government can provide, I have these

recommendations.

First, as has been stated before, financial assistance with the development and production of videos to be used for employee/management training. Information concerning identification and protocol would be put in a convenient format that would be of great assistance to retailers and their employees.

Second, assistance in developing media campaign material such

as newspaper slicks, billboards and radio/TV spots.

And finally, and this may be the most important, we already

have a significant number of people addicted to meth. Treatment

providers indicate it is difficult at best to have a successful treatment leading to recovery. Research and effective treatment modalities need to be developed. In the Northeast Region, we might be

able to come up with the means to cover the first two requests, but

we are really struggling to answer the third.

Thank you for your concern about meth in the heartland and we

do appreciate this opportunity to share our thoughts.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. Our cleanup hitter is Mr.

Benjamin Martin of the Serenity House.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Humble follows:]

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Mr. MARTIN. Thank you, Congressman Souder. I am not going to

read my whole report. I am going to highlight a few items that I

think are important, and the first one I think is most important because I do not think the Federal Government believes, understands

or whatever it might be, but recovery is not treatment. I am in the

recovery business, I am not in the treatment business. It is a way

of life as outlined in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Treatment, on the other hand, is medical oversight with scientific and

medical information given to the person being detoxed and then

evaluated in a way that prevents relapse. However, there is very

little chance of treatment alone working for sustained recovery

without peer support that they get, that structured recovery programs offer. It makes the scientific numbers of success look real

good because they get their recognition for their success number

when in fact because there is no differential between treatment

and recovery by the Federal bureaucracy all the credit goes to the

scientific and medical community. However, without the recovery

programs themselves they would be largely unsuccessful. Hence,

funding is only given to the scientific and medical community for

prevention, treatment and research.

The specific purpose of this testimony as stated in your invitation

letter to me was to examine the state of methamphetamine trafficking and production in the midwest region and how the Federal

Government can assist State and local authorities in combating

this growing problem. First and foremost, we must stop recidivism

among offenders. We spend billions of dollars on research and

largely disregard our incarcerated population who by the National

Institute of Justice’s Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program

[ADAM], has evidenced that 70 percent of all males and 67 percent

of all female arrestees for felony crimes ranging from larceny/theft

to homicide test positive for illicit drug use at the time of their arrest and this figure does not include alcohol.

Shelving, if one can, the cost of human life and the collateral

damage inflicted upon families and dependents and the communities in which the alcoholic and addict reside, it is clear that just

in the area of public and fiscal policy, both in terms of prevention,

research and treatment, incarceration, our current efforts are proving an abject waste.

So what do I believe the Federal Government can do to help us

at the State and local level? No. 1, make it mandatory for all Federal, State and community prison and jail facilities to provide both

treatment and recovery programs available to the incarcerated individuals. These inmates are not going anywhere, why not treat

them while they are there.

Train and educate prison and law enforcement employees that

drug addicts and alcoholics are not to be treated as scum but as

people who have an affliction as they would anyone that suffers

from diabetes or heart failure. You can go to any county jail or anything and watch how one of these people is treated by the jailer

and you would see exactly what I am talking about.

Third, train the treatment community to identify those individuals addicted to alcohol and drugs to ask specifically about sexual

abuse especially in their childhoods. It has been my experience that

approximately 70 percent of all women who seek treatment and 50

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percent of the men suffered from some form of sexual abuse. However, I have no data to substantiate these figures. They are my best

guess from my experience. At the present time seven of our nine

female residents and 11 of the 24 men have sexual abuse issues.

Why this is important to know, most people who come to us state

that they have never been asked this question while in treatment

and those who do not address this issue are much more likely to

relapse. It also indicates a very large contributing problem to addiction beyond just low self esteem from other areas of alcoholism

in an addict’s life. These figures only speak to the numbers seeking

help from addiction, considering that that is largely believed to be

only 10 percent of all alcoholics and addicts ever seek help, how big

is the problem really?

Fourth, specifically fund research on the sexual abuse correlation

to alcohol and drug abuse. I believe if my figures are even remotely

accurate, and many think I am way low, this needs to be addressed.

And fifth, fund recovery-based programs such as ours to further

the recovery rate by enabling more people to be served. Alcoholics

Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous by tradition cannot take outside contributions; however, facilities such as

the one we operate is operated under the 12-step recovery principle. There are thousands of facilities like ours in every State of

the union and the recovery community will help if asked.

Sixth, offer a reward system for the person willing to locate,

identify and testify against those who would manufacture and/or

distribute illegal substances other than just the Crime Stoppers

programs. This program would be self sufficient if the fines levied

against offenders were directed toward the informants.

And seventh, increase the penalty for supplying minors with any

controlled substance including, but not limited to alcohol. Certainly

if you buy a keg of beer for a minor it is only a misdemeanor.

Eighth, increase the number of excise officers to regulate illegal

sales and fund police departments with more money to be dedicated to the investigation of meth labs and other illegal drug distribution points.

Ninth, most importantly, decrease the billions of dollars going

into research and redirect it to the aforementioned programs. If

you read the Doctor’s Opinion, page xxv, in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, which I have supplied you today, you will find

through all of the research that has been done we still do not know

much more about this disease—other than the chemical imbalance

and how it relates to the synapse—than Dr. Silkworth did in 1939

when the book was authored. Not a very good return on our dollars

spent. Further, I can state irrevocably that I have never met the

first alcoholic or addict that would take a pill offered to relieve his

addiction or to drink normally. That is not why we afflicted individuals drink; we drank or used to get drunk.

In summation, I would like to also say that I have attended the

past five CADCA conferences and while I sat through some wonderful, informative and outstanding workshops, specifically regarding methamphetamine, I regret to say that for the last 2 years not

a single recovery-based workshop has been offered. Moreover, much

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equate, misinformed factually and occasionally just plain wrong.

This is worth attention as there is a valuable resource that scientists, doctors, counseling professionals and the greater legal communities have left largely unmined and which your district in particular would benefit immeasurably from. Please believe me when

I say I do not discount what the scientific community believes to

be the best they can do, nor do I think they are short of passion

or dedication. However, I do believe unless they themselves have

walked in the boots of the alcoholic and/or addict they should give

serious consideration to including the recovery community in whatever they are investigating. This should not be about degrees and

how much smarter one is than the other, but what a community

of dedicated scientists, doctors, clergy and recovering people can do

to help one another understand each other and what is the best

way to serve the people, both addicts and victims of their actions.

I also want to acknowledge how grateful I am to you, Congressman Souder, for the work that you have done to eradicate the substance abuse problem in the United States. Through your leadership Congress is striving to do the right things, and my colleagues

are very, very grateful. I also thank all concerned for the opportunity to address this committee. It says to me that we little guys

do count.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Martin follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. I want to thank you each for your testimony. I am

trying to think, I think maybe I will go in a reverse way. I think

I will start with the law enforcement and kind of finish up some

of the law enforcement and then go to some of the interrelationships.

Mr. Enyeart, you said in your testimony that you believe more

money ought to be spent for education. In particular, I think you

are talking about education and prevention. Would you spend it

there rather than—in other words, one of the things that is not

happening here, there is not going to be a big pool of money. The

question is, should some of what we are spending in law enforcement move to prevention and treatment? It is a somewhat zero

sum game here.

Mr. ENYEART. From my perspective you need to do both. I understand when you only have so much money, just like the individual,

you have to decide what you are going to do and what you are not

going to do. In my specific case, if you take the money, the Byrne

drug money away from me, given the tremendous burden that has

been placed on my office—I am a five-prosecutor office, and we are

literally processing hundreds of these kinds of cases. That prosecutor that is paid for through that drug grant would not be there. Because in Cass County we have over a $1 million budget shortfall

this year and there is no way that my county council is going to

give me extra funds for another prosecutor. So that is the dilemma

I find myself in.

Mr. SOUDER. We are trying to struggle through it. What I am

trying to—it is a very difficult dilemma because the Cass County

budget shortfall is less per population than the Federal Government shortfall. The Indiana shortfall is less than the Federal shortfall. So what it means is, they do not want to raise taxes. The State

does not want to raise taxes and the Federal Government does not

want to raise taxes. I am a Republican and I do not like to raise

taxes and the people do not like me to raise taxes, so our constant

dilemma is how do we divide up the money. What really comes

down to a touchy question here is, if you do not get certain dollars

to prosecute then there is no point. In other words, if they do not

get enough dollars to arrest and make the case, then you do not

have anybody to prosecute, and if you prosecute and we do not

have anybody—if we do not have enough in the prisons that does

not do any good. What we are really saying is, if we take a dollar

out of that, where we know we have a person cooking meth and

we know we have a person who could be prosecuted and who could

be locked up, if we move that dollar over to prevention, are we as

confident that we will get an actual result for it because at least

you can see the tangible. On the other hand, if we never spent any

dollars over here, this pool keeps getting larger and we are chasing

it with fewer and fewer dollars. We just heard Noble County is

chasing it with fewer dollars, you are potentially chasing it with

fewer dollars. One of biggest dilemmas is how do we do that tradeoff, because we are under a tremendous amount of pressure right

now to convert more to the prevention and treatment side because

’’the law enforcement side is not working.’’ And when law enforcement says put more money in prevention and treatment it is comVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:21 Aug 26, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00125 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95267.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing out of your budget. That is the dilemma that we are facing in

Congress.

Mr. ENYEART. Right. And I would liken that, if you want a comparison, to domestic violence. You never know—every case that we

prosecute could save a life. We had a case in Cass County where

we prosecuted for domestic violence. That specific perpetrator later

killed the victim in that case. Not in my county. He followed her

to another county. How many hundreds of cases do we do in domestic violence where we are saving a person’s life? We will never

know that. The same thing with methamphetamine. Although, I

think it is even clearer, because I know people that I have prosecuted and put in prison, I have saved their lives, just that person,

not to mention the effect on their children and the community at

large. And while they are in prison, they are not out setting up

more clandestine methamphetamine labs and distributing more

meth. The problem that I see is for every person that I send to

prison, because of the financial benefit of doing this, there are

three more people that are willing to step up and take their place.

So from a cost effectiveness standpoint, if you have to choose one

or the other, prevention. That is my opinion, and that is a prosecutor who believes strongly that these people ought to be incarcerated. But I think if you have to choose which dollar goes where,

you have to start out with prevention first.

Mr. SOUDER. Or at least how you are dividing it. Let me ask in

a followup question to the prisons. At the Federal area we are looking—there is some increase in funding. The some increase in funding means we are looking at 4.1 percent and there is 2.2 percent

inflation, then that gets divided differently by different categories

and we are hoping that we can get additional in the narcotics area

because it is underneath a lot of crime and breakup of families and

all kinds of things. I did not mean to make it a hard zero sum, but

it is kind of a hard zero sum.

In the mix of things, the Federal Government has most jurisdiction over Federal prisons. We could, however, have money that

goes into State prisons or local prisons. Do you agree with the

premise that was stated? I think; I know Mr. Martin made the

statement. I think one of you two may have—did you say something similar to that, Barry? In other words—Mr. Humble—[laughter.]

It makes me feel like I am back in school or something. Do you

feel that the group—because you stated, and almost all of the law

enforcement people here have stated, that you lock them up and

sometimes they are on probation and right back out doing it again.

It is heavily addictive. Would that not be the logical first place as

opposed to necessarily in a school where, when you spend a dollar

in the school on prevention 98 percent of those kids were not necessarily at risk in the first place? So you have wasted 98. If you

get the person in the prison you are pretty much 100 percent sure.

Or the jail, that they are a problem. Would that not be the first

place to target prevention?

Mr. ENYEART. I disagree with that premise and here is why.

When I ran for prosector, one of the main reasons I did was because I think you can make the biggest difference with children,

and that is why our juvenile program in Cass County is extremely

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good in my opinion. If I have to choose where a dollar is going to

go, I will spend it on a juvenile delinquent every single time before

I will spend it on an adult offender, and the reason is recidivism.

Especially with methamphetamine, considering the highly addictive nature of it.

I guess I would also disagree with the fact—this girl that I told

you about that I was talking to in that high school class, when she

turned around and rolled her eyes that shocked me, because looking at her, I would not have ever thought she was an at-risk student. I think in a rural community like ours where you get some

marijuana use and these other drugs are out there, and then they

give you a little bit of meth to try. I think the risk is a lot higher

than maybe we recognize. I do not know. But I think the premise

of treating people who are already in the system versus younger

people who maybe you can avoid ever getting hooked on it in the

first place, I disagree.

Mr. SOUDER. Now you said juvenile offenders. Did you mean the

technical term juvenile offenders on probation or do you just mean

juveniles who are breaking drug laws who we may not have even

picked up?

Mr. ENYEART. Juvenile offenders who are in the system and

those who we do not know. I think that is why the prevention and

education is so important. So I disagree with that. I think it is——

Mr. SOUDER. Would you agree that prevention—the Drug Free

School’s money has shown no—I mean this is research. Has shown

absolutely no impact on drug use?

Mr. ENYEART. You can make statistics say anything you want to

in my opinion.

Mr. SOUDER. Well the fact is that one of our frustrations is as

we put this money into different counties, you can argue that, but

what we are hearing—for example in Indiana, we have spent a lot

of money on it and meth use has doubled. So what is the problem?

Mr. ENYEART. That is a good question. I do not know the answer

to that.

Mr. SOUDER. Well we are going to be zeroing on that, too. It is

a tough question for us because my assumption is, and I am not

arguing with your, I am arguing with your premise a little, but I

am probably trying to test your premise. Because what happens is,

when we take money from a hard program where it may not be as

successful as we would like and move it to a softer program where

we have no real track record at this point that it is at all effective,

it is; we are giving up kind of the bird-in-the-hand to chase two or

three in the bush. The game would be great if we can get the prevention programs to work, but it is slugging it out on the prevention programs.

Now there are some efforts that the Federal Government has

tried to do with this. One is the National Ad Campaign. And for

the last few years, despite criticism, marijuana use went down last

year by 10 percent. 10 percent in the last 2 years, which is the biggest drop in U.S. history in the short-term for marijuana use. So

the Ad Campaign, counter to the criticism, is working in a prevention way. So that is one where we see some substance. We have

really had to work on these community anti-drug groups. Noble

County was one of the first in the country to get one of the first

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50 grants through ONDCP and Allen County was in the second 50.

But it has been frustrating to be perfectly honest, and it is frustrating to the people in Noble County and in Allen County that we

have not seen more of a drop. It is sure not from effort because

they are out there, they have hundreds of kids involved. We are

doing programs in the school and maybe the fact is that drug use

is going up so much that we cannot hold prevention as accountable

because it would have gone up. It would have doubled and gone up

at a faster rate. It is very hard, because what we know is this: Violent crime has dropped dramatically in the United States because

we locked up the criminals. I mean all you have to do is look at

the murder rates in the United States, look at the rape rates in the

United States, and what we see is boy, it dropped. Now the problem is that is a short-term solution. Now they are all going to come

piling out like the reentry program in Allen County. They have not

recovered. They have not even been treated for the most part and

they are pouring out of the prisons back into the system and we

have not addressed it. But short-term, at least we lowered the

crime rate. That is the dilemma we are working through with that.

I just wanted to probe. I know you had the passion there and you

enunciated that passion and I wanted to make sure it was clarified

for the record, because in effect that is an important statement.

That a prosecutor in a small county believes that he would actually

take some risk in allowing some people to be on the street because

he cannot keep up is basically what you are saying.

Mr. HARP. To just address a little bit the Noble County drug free

school drug free money, and so on. The criticism that I hear a lot

from fellow officers and from, really from a lot of the school people,

is that the kids that participate are not the kids that we are worried about anyway. They do a lot of programs. They do a lot of

after-school things and the private program is fantastic. My daughter participates in that. But the kids that participate in those are

‘‘the good kids.’’ They are not the kids that typically the school is

having problems with or probation or law enforcement.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Humble, would you—we have talked about this

subject a number of times. First all, and I want to say for the

record, we all understand that all kids are at risk, but that simply

statistically is not equally true. As Mr. Martin pointed out, if you

have been sexually abused you are higher risk. If you have a single-parent family you are higher risk. If you are low income, it does

not mean that all—my son goes to Homestead High School which

is a higher income high school of a public school system in Allen

County. Nobody will disagree that it is also one of the higher drug

use schools that has a problem right now. So it is not just lower

income. But it does not take you too long to figure out that disorganized communities are terrorized by drug dealers and often those

people in the suburban schools are going down into those neighborhoods. There is a much higher risk. When I go into an inner city

school in Fort Wayne and ask this question; have you heard a gun

shot fired in anger at somebody else? I will get 90 percent in inner

city Fort Wayne and less than 5 percent almost anywhere else in

the district. Therefore, they are bearing the brunt of a lot of that,

and they are more exposed to a lot of it. If I asked, have you seen

a coke dealer or a marijuana dealer on the street outside your

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house, I am going to get a substantially different answer in some

neighborhoods than other neighborhoods. If I ask the question have

you seen somebody cooking methamphetamine, I am going to get

a different type of an answer. And the question is, are our prevention programs, because we do not want to be politically incorrect,

we do not want to prejudge, are we not targeting as efficiently or

designing, because that is one of the common complaints. The people who join the programs are the people who are not the highest

risk. It does not mean they are not risks, but they may be a 10 to

15 percent risk factor as opposed to the subgroups that are 80 percent.

Barry, you have taught in a small school. Mr. Humble, you have

taught in a small school, you have worked in Noble County, now

you are in Allen County which is a whole different type of

ballgame. So do you want to comment a little on this, because it

is the knottiest thorn in the prevention question.

Mr. HUMBLE. Definitely correct. I think the prosecutor hit the

nail on the head, because we actually do not know if we did not

do a program what the rates were going to be. So we are judging.

We are forced into judging by funders and other community activists to prove how effective that we are. I take this perspective from

working with young people. I still coach wrestling, so I still work

with kids. I agree that, I agree that there are children, young people, even adults that are a little more predisposed to the problem

because of the environmental setting, hereditary, all those other

kind of factors. But I am constantly amazed at the attitude that

a lot of adults promote that kids will be kids and they are going

to let them do this or they going to let them do that. We have tried

to direct a lot of our prevention program toward parents, stepping

up and being a parent instead of being a buddy. We have done billboard campaigns, media pamphlets, contacts. The prevention avenue is so widespread that it takes a lot of different things. So you

work with the parents, you work with the kids. You try. The community also has to step up. You know, a child can go out of a prevention program and walk down to the drugstore and all of a sudden see more than a thousand messages about alcohol, tobacco. I

mean you go to what I call your local stop and robs, the convenience stores, and you look on the counter and there is all these

kind of ephedrine products and rolling papers. Now I am not, I

guess I am not of this generation, but how many people actually

roll tobacco? Legitimate tobacco to smoke? Everybody knows that

they are rolling them for marijuana. So the community is sending

some messages that the community needs to be more involved in

the prevention message for their own neighborhood and community. So we are trying to work more at that. My last year that I

was working in Noble County, and it is a privilege to get to be with

Ben and Doug again because we worked on almost a daily basis,

but it is to work with the workplace. Because in the workplace you

have parents and you also have people that just live in the neighborhood or up there, other adults, to get them to understand the

significance that they can play. So I am frustrated. I wish we could

see greater results. I do know that Noble County has made some

significant strides when you compare, you know, the pen and pencil

survey results. It is still not what they would like it to be. We are

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frustrated in Allen County by the fact that even getting the schools

to do a survey to be able to acknowledge it, and that is based mostly because the school officials are afraid of what the community is

going to say when they really know what the deal is.

Mr. SOUDER. Yeah. And the same thing would happen in the

drug-free workplace. A few people did a test and all of a sudden

they find in Noble County, what, 15 or 20 percent of their employees, and they had denied that they had a drug problem.

Mr. HUMBLE. Right.

Mr. SOUDER. But it was amazing when they did a drug test what

actually happened.

Mr. HUMBLE. And the end result of that was that the places that

started having a program, they had greater production, better safety records and they actually rewarded their employees with the

money that they saved, so the employees made out like—really

well.

Mr. SOUDER. Well today has been very informative because clearly we have heard that Cass and Starke County have a different nature of a problem than Kosciusko and Elkhart and Noble and Allen

who are at the very edges of a meth outburst. It is hopping up, but

it is at the edges of that. Probably South Bend, similar as we

heard. So this question really applies more to the Elkhart, Kosciusko, Noble, DeKalb, Fort Wayne and probably South Bend, than

it does Starke and Cass. Looking at Noble County in particular,

Mr. Harp, tell me if there’s any error to this. I understand the testimony from those counties, including Noble, particularly, was we

have meth coming in through large Mexican organizations that

represents most of the meth. This is true for Fort Wayne, by the

way, too. That the second biggest cluster are cookers, where there

are more of them that are involving the local police department,

but the quantity they are picking up is smaller than when they get

a bigger bust. The two groups in Noble County that were most affected by that were the Mexican networks that are hiding inside

those who have come in to help try to keep our businesses going,

which we would not be able to function without, and they are hiding among them. And the second were biker gangs.

Now coming back to the question, is there a program, for example, in drug-free Noble County—because this is our challenge as we

look at prevention programs—the kids in the programs, are they

the people that are likely to be or are kids of the people who are

in the biker gangs or those networks? I know personally it is a

frustration that mostly they are not. And so we have a disconnect,

particularly when you take it down to meth, that our prevention

programs, how can we get them to reach the people who are at the

highest risk? I know there has been these kind of discussions, reading more Hispanic language things. Do we need more Hispanic

counselors who are working with it? If the kids who are most likely, whether it is for spiritual reasons or other wind up in control

of these clubs and they do certain events, does it become something

that those kind of kids often do not even feel welcome at just because they are uncomfortable socially? How do we work? This is a

huge challenge, and if we really are going to invest taxpayer dollars and then they are going to come back to us and say but you

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tion and it did not hit the target on the meth, it is gone. It will

not be there the next time or two. I mean we have to have some

kind of a plan, and what we are hearing today is it is a little bit

different in the rural counties. We know what the pattern of this

is, that the wealthy kids get it first. So probably in Allen County

it will hit the suburban schools first, then it will move to the middle and then the lower income. The information systems and the

prevention programs will hit the kids in the upper income families.

They will move to another drug and get off of it, like crack cocaine,

and it will be left in the poorest and they will become addicts. And

that is where most of the people who wind up going to prison and

dealing will be. We have seen this pattern with drug after drug

after drug after drug. So how can we get at the front end of this?

Is there a way? That is a challenge, and if anybody has any

thought or wants to add anything else.

Mr. CONNOR. You know, I would say we do know where those

kids who are at risk are. They are places like the Center for the

Homeless. They are the kids whose parents have been incarcerated

for drug use, for drug manufacturing. It is those kids with singleparent families that are suffering abuse. So being able to target

funds and programs specifically toward those groups is a very effective use of prevention dollars. I know a lot of the programs that

we offer for our kids. We have started a new teens program. That

is a huge focus of it, abstinence, you know, avoiding drugs. Getting

kids who are already in a system. We know their parents are

homeless. They are 50 percent more likely to be homeless just from

that fact alone. Add in the fact that they may never live in a decent

neighborhood that is not drug infested and that gets amplified. So

being able to provide prevention programs, but also making rehabilitation a part of the treatment. Going through a treatment program is one thing, but especially with methamphetamine where

there may be significant mental cognitive delays that do not return. You are talking about somebody who after they have used is

a different person than they were before. How do you rehabilitate

that person and get them where they can be successful, get them

into a decent job and a neighborhood where they are not going to

be exposed to drugs like they would where they are going to automatically go back to? You know, being able to identify kids where

their risk factors are very high, and I think those are well known.

I agree with you, a lot of the DARE programs and things like that

are not as effective because they are spread so thin. They are

spread across every single school. You are right, they are going—

the kids that are going to those activities are the ones that like

that social network. It is not the kid who is isolated, who has got

one parent who is working that cannot get him to an after-school

function who is probably the most at-risk kid in that whole school

or that whole class that has to be in that program. What happens

about that child?

Mr. SOUDER. I want to do a followup question with you and then

move to Mr. Martin on looking at this concept of recovery. The

Center for the Homeless in South Bend I visited years ago when

I worked for Congressman Coats. How long has it been in existence?

Mr. CONNOR. Since 1988.

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Mr. SOUDER. I must have been there in 1989.

Mr. CONNOR. It has changed.

Mr. SOUDER. Then I was up there again though a few years ago.

The concept was to try to have not just basically a flop house but

a place for people to have an integrated service provider system

that would then do a followup kind of what I think Mr. Martin is

describing as a recovery system. In other words, unless you can

get—if you do not—if you cannot read or write it is tough to hold

a job. It is pretty tough, even in those first stages, and if you are

doped out it is not clear you are going to show up for work it becomes a multiplicity and it is an attempt to do that. Now there are

a couple of things that are unusual. Is the South Bend Center still

tied in with Notre Dame?

Mr. CONNOR. Somewhat.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you get fundraising from them?

Mr. CONNOR. They are one of our founding partners. They own

one of our buildings still.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you get students coming through there?

Mr. CONNOR. A lot.

Mr. SOUDER. That type of model, when I worked for Dan Coats,

we held it up a lot. I think—did the President visit? I know that

he uses an example.

Mr. CONNOR. Jime Touwey came from the Faith Based Initiative’s Office.

Mr. SOUDER. And it is the type of thing that we need to be looking at because there needs to be a university component. I know

when I went to Notre Dame you had certain requirements and volunteer hours. Furthermore, one of the things that I have looked at

in social services that could be used in narcotics areas as well in

other types of that is that in business, as Mr. Connor well knows,

one of the things you could do is work with small business loans

to help them fill out forms and get them reorganized. Well why in

the social service departments of the different units cannot kids either be required or give volunteer work to do that? We are trying

to work with Americorps to try to tie this kind of thing in because

unless we can figure out in at least the highest—we know that it

fits the highest risk population because they have already been arrested. Obviously it is better to get them the first time than the

last time. By the time they are up to seven it is pretty big. If you

can get them. There are kids who are clearly higher risk and there

is a tier of risks here. We will be better off.

Now, Mr. Martin, could you describe in identifying further your

difference between recovery and treatment, if we can make this

very explicit, because you were pretty explicit. But you are defining

treatment as we would go into X-facility in Fort Wayne, we would

supposedly have research on what makes it effective. Presumably

the length of time they are allowed to serve is about half as long

as the research showed they would be——

Mr. MARTIN. Or as long as the insurance company will pay, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. So it is not even—what good does the research do

if you do not follow through? But basically they go into that treatment program and then they leave and then after a while they go

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gram. I have never met an addict who has not gone through lots.

I do not know whether you would agree with that.

Mr. MARTIN. Well, first of all, I am going to address a couple of

things in answering that. One is the prosecutor. When he is talking

about the kids, I was one of those kids. I never cared a darn about

any consequence, never thought about it, it was not going to happen to me. I was going to use what I was going to use because I

was having fun and I was impressing my friends and that is all

I cared about because I did not feel good about me. And until you

take that away from a child and make them feel good about themselves you have no chance. That is why I believe it is better to do

it the other way. Treatment comes from the scientific community.

It has evolved out of research and so forth and so on.

Recovery started in 1935 when Dr. Bob and Bill Dudley got together on a first call on Alcoholics Anonymous. It all started in

Akron, OH. Neither one of them knew it was going to work but it

did. Was the book divinely written? Probably. I think it had something to do with it. It has been successful with millions and millions and millions and now there are over 100 12-step programs

identifying everything, bipolar, narcotics, alcohol, cocaine, food. I

mean it goes on and on and on. What makes the AA and CA and

NA system stand apart is they also have the traditions that treatment has. They do not accept any outside contributions from anybody for anything. They take no political stance on anything. They

are not looking for anybody’s help, they are not looking for hand

outs, they are not looking to do anything but affect the person by

giving what I have been given, a way to someone else is the only

way I can keep it. That is the whole premise of recovery.

Why does it work? Because first of all, the person I talked to

when I came around knew what I was talking about because he

had been there. You know, you can study all the books you want

and you can get all the Ph.D.’s you want but if you have not been

there you will not understand it. I use a premise and people might

see it as something that is crude but it makes a point to the average person. I had an interview out here outside today by one of the

reporters and she said she understood there was such an addictive

drug, but, you know, certainly it is not like alcohol or cocaine because, you know, for those you can use willpower. I said willpower?

You cannot use willpower for those. She said well sure you can. I

said well look ma’am, what you maybe ought to do is go home and

take a box of Ex-Lax and then do not go to the bathroom and use

your willpower and you will find what compulsion and mental obsession is all about. Well that is what the alcoholic goes through,

and you wonder why they turn right around and go back out? Because if they did not get anything while they were in prison, they

are still the same person they were, only they are a little lower because they just served time in prison.

I heard a couple of them talk about people who offended, got out

and then 2 weeks later they were back in. I have watched that

happen the very same day. Well what is the difference, you know?

Well, they did not get anything, you know. And then I had somebody say well what you are asking is that we brainwash these

guys. Well, I needed my brain washed when I sobered up. You

know, that is what it took for me. You know, I am not just one guy.

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We are talking about millions of people who have sobered up and

gotten off drugs through this the first time. I have never been back

out since April 10, 1980. It does not make me better than anybody

that went back out five or six times, just their bottom was different

than mine. But the point I am making is, it can work the first time

if a person is willing and is hurt bad enough, and God knows I

hurt. You know, I was not allowed in my own parents’ home the

last 2 years of their life, and I came from a good home. My home

was not broken. I did not have parents who abused drugs, alcohol

or anything. They were loving parents. I was different though.

I was born with buck teeth and got to hear Bucky, Bucky Beaver

until I was blue in the face in 1958 when that toothpaste came out,

you know. That hurt. I went and told my mom about it—and this

is the other thing I want to talk about. Every alcoholic and addict

has a perception problem. We do not see the world like everybody

else sees it. You know, when my mamma put me on her lap and

said do not worry, honey, we are going to get that taken care of

when you are older, because she said when you are 12 we will get

braces. That is not what I heard. What I heard was her reinforce

that there was a problem with me, you know. And I grew up hearing four eyes my whole life, you know. Well the other thing about

addictive personalities is we are a little on the over-sensitive part.

Now whether that is a benefit today that I am overly sensitive because it plays into my life today and helps me do what I do, it sure

was not a benefit as a child because I did not know how to react

to other people. I only ended up getting to know two feelings, you

know. One of the feelings was anger and the other one was happy

and that is the only two I knew. If I was sad, I was really angry.

Why that is important is because that is the very thing that often

times you cannot even identify through treatment. This is a longterm deal.

When I talk about the sexual abuse, I mean I got to the point

where I came right out and started asking people. We had a young

lady come in yesterday. I caught her totally off guard. The thing

about catching them off guard, they usually tell you the truth. I

said any sexual abuse issues in your childhood? Well, yeah. How

did you know that? Well, I did not, that is why I am asking because it is something we need to identify and deal with. Am I

qualified to deal with her sexual abuse problems? Absolutely not,

but I know where to take her to get her some help. That is where

we go back to the treatment route again, because those are real,

they are serious.

We do not have an opportunity to cut the fat, you know, with the

Federal Government about this recovery thing, but seriously so

many institutions are facilities like we have. People are willing to

help, they are there but they are getting no funding, you know.

And what they have always shied away from, like the Mental

Health Association of Indiana would love to see us become licensed.

Why? So they can put an MSW in there. You know, I mean that

is insane to me. What we do, we do it very well. But the thing that

bothers me most is, when I was in Washington I heard two speeches that really upset me. One, I tried to get a copy of and have not

been able to, the NIDA speech. I believe her name was Dr.

Baughcall who is the new NIDA director. She got up and she

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talked about what they are doing in research in a prevention mode

and they were doing this with monkeys. She made the statement

I believe, so I would like to see it and read it. Maybe I have a perception problem and I did not perceive what she really said. But

what I thought I heard her to say was that they thought they could

eradicate this disease through the prevention mode because of

what she had discovered with a monkey’s brain and reaction to different tests they gave the monkey. What I wrote back to her and

told her was, well, that is great but maybe you ought to check with

some recovering people who felt what it feels like to have that drug

in them and why they started to begin with. And monkeys have

never had a problem with peer pressure nor have they ever been

sexually abused, you know. Those are factors. I mean you cannot

ignore the factors. Yet I believe the scientific community has all the

good intentions in the world. I mean, I applaud them for their enthusiasm, but I really believe they need to say, you know, maybe

we do not know so much. Maybe we ought to check with the people

that have been through it, done that and now are better.

Did I answer that question?

Mr. SOUDER. Yeah, that was really helpful.

Let me—I want to ask a couple of technical law enforcement

questions yet because I did not get a chance to do this. I want to

check from the first panel with Mr. Harp and Mr. Schnepp. What

did you think of the Indiana State Police. In other words, one of

the questions I know in Noble County is should there be somebody

from the Indiana State Police based in Noble County or is the current system working well? What was your reaction, Mr. Harp, to

the discussions you heard?

Mr. HARP. Obviously any manpower that, if I am hearing correctly, the manpower issue is one that really cripples us.

Mr. SOUDER. When you find a lab do you wait for them to come

out?

Mr. HARP. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And how long do you have officers there?

Mr. HARP. It can vary from—you know, if they are close and already out, but generally you are looking at—I would say a couple

or 3 hours.

Mr. SCHNEPP. At least.

Mr. SOUDER. Is that—yours come out of Peru?

Mr. SCHNEPP. Out of Peru. But if they are at another lab already, 3 hours, 5 hours, it depends. What I have been doing in the

last years, if it is not an active lab, if it is just like Wednesday

night we found a fire extinguisher full of hydrous pills and stuff

like that. I just called EMA out. Their director is certified and he

took care of the problem. That is what I have been doing. I called

the post and advised them of what I had and then the EMA director took care of the problem. We are talking about 15 or 20 minutes

instead of 2 or 3 hours. It was not an active lab, but it was still

a fire extinguisher, a plastic container with rags, ammonia,

Sudafed, all that stuff, but there was not any chemicals actually

brewing.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me ask one other question related to the types

of labs you are seeing when you are working with meth in particular. The people you are dealing with—we are talking about difVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:21 Aug 26, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00135 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95267.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ferent types of counties, different kinds of networks. Are they—how

is it different from what you have seen in other narcotics or do you

think if we get control of meth they will just move to something

else? Or is this kind of a different subgroup we are dealing with

in meth?

Mr. SCHNEPP. I am seeing all kinds. We had a plant manager that actually had a $200,000 home, they got into it and he was

stealing the anhydrous from his workplace. He had a 200-pound

tank out in his pool and he was cooking meth in his pool shed. And

we have the little guy out here in the mobile home making it. I do

not think you could really say it is one society. I am going to take

the heat off the Hispanics and say we were having pounds delivered by Vietnamese. It was coming from California to like a Hispanic gang type thing out of Fort Wayne, I believe.

Mr. HARP. Are you saying—I mean if we drastically reduced

methamphetamine are these people going to gravitate to something

else? Is that it? I am not real sure.

Mr. SOUDER. What I am trying to see is, we need to work on prevention, getting all drug use down. I’m trying to figure out if the

meth—it sounds to me—and maybe Mr. Martin or Mr. Humble can

just—it sounds to me that meth is more like crack.

Mr. HUMBLE. It is.

Mr. SOUDER. Than other types of drugs. You might start with

marijuana, start with alcohol, smoke cigarettes, move to other

types of things, but because of its instantaneous pop and highly addictive nature that it behaves differently than other types of narcotics.

Mr. HARP. I did not go verbatim on my written statement, but

one of the cases that I cited in there, one of the problems that I

have seen is we will have career pot smokers that have functioned,

you know, and went to work every day and provided for their family every day. I even cited a personal case of an acquaintance of

mine. Once they get involved in meth, they—you know, they are

done. They lose everything. They lose their job, they do not want

to work, they lose their family and their priorities are totally about

getting more meth.

Mr. SCHNEPP. They will not feed their children. They will send

their children out to buy and knowing that if the children get

caught stealing the pseudoephedrine or the ether cans or whatever,

they will not get in near as much trouble as the adults. They are

using their kids.

Mr. SOUDER. Well we have had a wide range of things. I really

appreciate your patience because it has been a long day. Do any

of you—I will just go down. Do any of you want to say anything?

Do any of you want to say anything in conclusion?

Mr. ENYEART. I think Mr. Martin’s comments are very valuable

but looking at my comments, I was not looking just at one way to

handle it. I think it is the drug court program that I talk about.

Mr. SOUDER. I understand.

Mr. ENYEART. The drug court program would be directed at people who are in the system. When I say low-level user, I mean someone who is addicted and doing it for their personal use. We ought

to be looking at putting them into programs so that they do recover

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cover. And a good way to do that I think in the adult, once the

adults are in the system, is through a drug court program where

the court maybe even on a weekly basis brings that person in. They

are tested for drugs. If they test positive they get a weekend or two

in jail. Say this is where you are going, and help them through the

treatment process. Maybe even some incarceration is part of the

treatment. Make them be in full recovery at some point.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you have anything, Mr. Schnepp?

Mr. SCHNEPP. No.

Mr. HUMBLE. I think I kind of like what the prosecutor had to

say when he said we need to win. We need to develop that mentality to win. The problem is all of this drug problem has been with

us long enough now through some generations and people want to

see the light at the end of the tunnel. I do not know where the

light at the end of the tunnel is, but I like that win idea.

The second thing is, in my line of work I have to work with treatment, justice and prevention. I agree very much with Ben that

while these people are in jail there is some neat opportunities

there. We have a wonderful program, a drug program that is

housed in the Allen County jail. There is assignments, there is information, there is things that they have to do. It is not a very expensive program, but that at least plants the seed. So that when

they do get out and they decide that they need a place to stay there

are places left like Ben has and other recovery houses, that they

have a chance. It is a big—it is a cooperative thing.

Mr. SOUDER. This sounds naive and it is always dangerous. But

we are doing a reentry program in Fort Wayne, and we have a

number of things with the prisons, but I think everybody agrees

first off that probation officers have far too many kids to begin to

track them.

Mr. HUMBLE. Exactly.

Mr. SOUDER. Have you seen any programs with the kids in probation? That seems like a step before.

Mr. MARTIN. My son runs one in Coldwater, MI. It is kind of like

a teenagers day care. If they are not in school then they have offended through Teen Corps, Drug Corps or whatever the particular

offense is, then they go there. If they are not at home with parents—if their parents are not home they are at this place or they

are in school. There is no exception. He has really—it is kind of a

model thing, but it is pretty impressive because it gives them control. You know, he can wash the brain a little bit.

Mr. SOUDER. Because that may be part of the targeting risk before they are into the heavy end of the criminal system.

Mr. HUMBLE. We are funding a program that is trying to be a

model where they are taking juveniles who are already in the system and putting them in. They get counseling and treatment that

is a part of that and they work their way through it. You know,

funding issues, again, how many can you work with? Well with this

group that we have, we have pretty good results, but that is only

a drop in the bucket compared to all of those that are on probation.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank you for your time. We all agree that to actually get somebody, there is two things. One, getting them off the

streets so they do not endanger other people and they do not blow

up the whole town of Burket, to use an example from earlier today.

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And the second thing is that on an individual basis in changing

their lives, unless an individual makes a commitment it is pretty

tough to run through the prevention treatment programs. The

problem we have is we do not quite know what triggers that moment. Sometimes it is purely voluntary when they hit bottom, other

times it is somebody from their family. I had one kid come up to

me at one school afterwards and said a friend of mine committed

suicide last night and I am afraid it is going to happen to me. So

all of a sudden he hit bottom because of something that happened

with his friend. It is hard to tell. If I can quote this, one of the

things I have used as an example a lot of times because it was really interesting because we had worked really hard in Noble County.

By the way, one thing I want to say for the record, part of the reason Noble County’s statistics may be a little different is because

Noble County knows they had a problem. They went after their

problem; therefore, their arrest rates, their testing rates, the measurement of kids shows a problem that other places in other counties—you know, hear no evil, see no evil type of stuff. So I did not

mean to pick on them.

One of the things that is really interesting after a number of

years of working, I was speaking to East Noble High School seniors

and raised the question, because I am a big advocate of drug testing, there should be drug testing. Immediately the student council

president started berating me, a civil liberties question, we do not

need to do this, etc. Another person jumped all over my case. One

student said that they had been in an athletic program where there

was testing required, they basically got caught, were forced to confront their parents and would have never gotten off drugs if somebody had not held them accountable because nobody seemed to

care. Then somebody else said yes but everybody should not have

to go through this, blah, blah, blah, and another kid raised their

hand and defended the concept of drug testing and we went back

and forth. The superintendent and the principal both got me in the

hall and said East Noble is going to start a drug testing program,

all of which is kind of suspended right now with the court decision.

We are going to start a drug testing program because every single

kid who raised their hand has either been counseled, arrested or

we suspected had a drug abuse problem and every kid who opposed

it has never been on any watch list. Backward from what people

say, which kind of I think gets to this question that some of them

are just out there looking to be held accountable and then others

just are not prepared. It is how to identify them and find them is

our challenge and prevention and treatment.

Meanwhile we thank not only those who are helping and working

with them, but those who are keeping the rest of us safe as we

work this through, not to mention their children and families. Yes,

we hope we can do more in prevention but meantime protect the

ones we can protect. We appreciate you taking the risks of walking

into homes not knowing what you are going to do, not knowing

what kind of retaliation the threats that every prosecutor gets into

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and the risks to your family and so on. We appreciate all that you

do in these kinds of things too.

With that, the subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2:06 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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