New manufacturing methods are allowing more methamphetamine labs to crop up in cities and suburbs than in the past.
“In the past, it was in the outlying areas, but now you see meth in the inner cities of Hamilton County,” said Lt. Van Hinton, head of narcotics for the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office.
Lt. Hinton said new meth-making methods — known as one-pot — make the business “very fluid” and mobile. Previously, meth cooks needed rural areas and more space to make the drug, but retailers, police and residents learned what to spot, so the cooks now set up in cities, where residents may not be familiar with how meth is produced.
Tommy Farmer, director of the Tennessee Meth Task Force, said the move into cities coincided with the one-pot method, in which meth cooks don’t need a heat source or elaborate laboratories to make the drug. The method began to show up in East Tennessee about three years ago, he said.
With one-pot, “anywhere you can put a gym bag, you can manufacture meth,” he said.
Signs of possible methamphetamine labs:* Discarded, modified bottles; may have rubber tubing or duct tape wrapped around them; bottles may contain a flaky, white substance* Chemical smell* Empty battery packs, blister packs* Large quantities of sodium hydroxide or ammonium nitrate* Sporadic activity at a house, especially frequent, short visits at odd hours* Neighbors who have access to trash service burning trash out of sight and at nighttimeSource: Tennessee Meth Task ForceRecent area meth lab busts* Jan. 25 — Michael Burchfield and Chasity McDonald are arrested by East Ridge police for initiation of methamphetamine manufacture after police are called to a Belvoir Avenue home on a complaint of someone stealing electricity.* March 4 — Five people are arrested on charges of initiation of meth manufacture, possession of meth for resale and possession of drug paraphernalia after Chattanooga police bust a meth lab at 5216 Tanner Ave. Those arrested include Jarod Green, Scott Wilkey, John Roach, Thomas McKeehan and Jodi Graham.* March 16 — Police say a meth lab inside a home at 5714 Taggart Drive in Hixson may have contributed to a house fire that caused six people, including three children, to flee the structure.* March 17 — Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office investigators find a meth cooking site inside a home at 2302 19th St., saying it is among the “top three cleanups” on record in the county. Police find chemical waste that required 21 hours of disposal and had been used by an estimated 100 cooks. Timothy Johnson is charged with initiation of meth manufacture, manufacturing meth, conspiracy to manufacture meth, precursor chemical purchase felony possession of drug paraphernalia.Source: Newspaper archives
Lt. Hinton said residents are used to seeing different types of drug crimes, including people standing on corners or shootings over territory. But the chemical smell and signs of a meth lab don’t draw the same attention because they’re new to the neighborhood.
Multi-drug use has created a bartering market in which a drug user might approach a dealer and request crack cocaine, meth and prescription drugs.
Red Bank police narcotics investigator Shane Dockery said there’s been an increase in meth labs in his city over the last year and a half.
And the changing nature of mobile labs requires more manpower and more time to bust, he said. Meth precursor laws make it harder to purchase the necessary ingredients, but those same laws then draw in more people — known as “smurfers” — to the process.
Smurfers purchase the legal ingredients — mainly pseudoephedrine in cold medications — that are then used to make meth. They often will travel from city to city, buying small amounts of the materials, then bring those back to the meth cook, he said.
Police must track down these smurfers, sometimes as many as 10 individuals involved in one lab, before they find the cook, he said.
Overall, lab seizures across Tennessee in 2009 increased 45 percent, rising from 831 in 2008 to 1,205. But the amount of actual meth produced isn’t as large, since the one-pot method yields less meth than other techniques, he said.
The peak of 889 labs busted in 2004, before the Meth-Free Tennessee Act, is a lower total number, but those types of labs made more meth, he said.