In the first quarter of Fiscal Year 1998, DEA has made 111 arrests, with 74 for methamphetamine offenses. A recent Cedar Rapids investigation involved a Mexican distribution organization transporting multi-pound quantities of methamphetamine from California to Iowa, from where it was distributed throughout the Midwest. This investigation culminated in a 37 pound seizure of methamphetamine and numerous Federal arrests. One of the defendants was armed and a primary suspect in a drive-by shooting at a Muscatine, Iowa police officer's home. Follow-up investigations linked this seizure to a criminal organization in Southern California with direct ties to Michoacan, Mexico.
Violence is attendant to all levels of the methamphetamine trade.
Innocent victims all too often are caught in the fray. In Iowa, methamphetamine is cited as a contributing factor in an estimated 80 percent of domestic violence cases. Clandestine laboratories are so dangerous that many are not found by law enforcement, but by fire and rescue units after the laboratories have caught fire or exploded. In April 1997, a clandestine methamphetamine laboratory in New Mexico exploded, destroying a house trailer and killing the laboratory operator. The explosion was so severe that it blew out the windows in adjacent trailers.