Narcotics investigations often center on a suspicious level of foot traffic in and out of a house or a hotel room. Investigators conduct surveillance of the location, follow dealers and use informants to make controlled and documented drug buys.
Photo illustration by Jason Rearick / The Citizen
Evidence photos provided by Cayuga County Sheriff's Office and New York State Police.
Evidence photos provided by Cayuga County Sheriff's Office and New York State Police.
But the standard tools used to investigate crack and powder cocaine dealers don't apply to the upstate New York manufacturers and users of the manmade stimulant methamphetamine.
While meth is trafficked by drug rings that sell other kinds of drugs in New York City and other parts of the United States, in upstate New York meth is most often made by small groups of friends and acquaintances for their personal use, authorities say.
“The fact they manufacture it themselves makes it a difficult area to investigate,” Cayuga County Sheriff Detective Lt. Joseph Weeks said. “It's not like a crack deal with hordes of traffic in and out of the house.”
New York State Police Investigator Pat DiPirro also said it takes many more officer hours to “produce information or intelligence” on a meth lab than it takes for cocaine trafficking. But when a solid tip comes in on meth, “it's a drop and go,” he said.
It's necessary to respond immediately because a cook session can be over quickly and the evidence scattered. He is a narcotic investigator and team leader for the Contaminated Crime Scene Emergency Response Team responsible for the Route 81 corridor. Cayuga County's first exposure to meth came from Pennsylvania residents who came to southern Cayuga County farms to steal the nitrogen-based anhydrous ammonia, which is used for corn farming and can be used along with other common chemicals to make meth. Some area law enforcement officials are reporting a shift in meth activity from anhydrous ammonia thefts by out-of-area strangers to locals who cook the drug themselves.
The prevalence of methamphetamine in New York is still very low in comparison to many other drugs. Less than 1 percent of people seeking substance abuse treatment in the state are using or abusing meth, according to the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services.
But in 2002, 14 states reported there were more admissions resulting from meth use than from heroin and cocaine use combined, according to the University of California, Los Angeles#, Integrated Substance Abuse Programs. An estimated 10.4 million people over the age of 12 have tried meth at least once, according to the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
DiPirro sees more of the manmade stimulant methamphetamine being brought into upstate New York by drug trafficking, including networks that supply drugs, than he sees being cooked in makeshift, home-based labs. But in comparison to Midwestern and western states, “here they're making it and sharing it more,” DiPirro said. “It's more friend to
friend.“
The numbers of clandestine labs are tiny in New York in comparison to the nation's leader for methamphetamine labs. Missouri had 1,288 meth labs reported in 2006 and 2,788 labs in 2004. There were 82 clandestine meth labs found in New York in 2004, but only nine have been discovered so far this year, according to DiPirro.
Six years ago, people with Pennsylvania plates used to be found by police officers on back roads with an igloo container ready to hold stolen anhydrous ammonia, Chief Assistant District Attorney Jon Budelmann said. The first larceny of anhydrous ammonia in Cayuga County was recorded by the sheriff's office in 2000.
Then Pennsylvania cooks started to pay people in Cayuga County who were familiar with the area to steal anhydrous ammonia; but that was an expensive proposition, so they started to pay people with a portion of meth they'd cook in exchange for the runners obtaining anhydrous ammonia, Budelmann said. “That made an addicted population here,” Budelmann said, that starting cooking a drug that is also called chalk, crystal, glass, ice and speed to support their habits themselves, Budelmann said. Budelmann predicts the meth-using population will just expand as the area's initial cooks teach others.
“That's where our problems start,” Budelmann said.
In 2005, Auburn's Confidential Help for Alcohol and Drugs saw its first clients who had used meth as part of a spectrum of other drugs. That number has increased from six to eight clients to about 15 client now, said Kevin Hares, executive director of CHAD.
“We're seeing a slow increase in those numbers, and it just tells us it usually gets used in the community for a while before it shows up in the treatment process,” Hares said.
Auburn Memorial Hospital's emergency room hasn't seen many cases of meth users, said Dr. James Ciaccio, AMH's emergency department director. Cocaine users with “nervous stimulation, rapid heart rates” are more common than meth users with similar problems. “Far and away the drug that causes the most problems is alcohol,” Ciaccio said.
Lon Fricano, head of the TLC Emergency Medical Services in Auburn, says most overdose calls involve poly-drug overdoses.
“We've not had a lot of obvious methamphetamine use, but we know it's out there,” Fricano said.
None ofCHAD's clients have methamphetamine as their exclusive drug addiction. Instead, meth is being explored as an alternative to cocaine by some users, and some people who would not use cocaine are using meth because of its association with the legally prescribed sister drug amphetamine, Hares said.
“People think it's just a drug that enhances their ability to stay awake to get their work done,” Hares said.
He compares the entry of meth into Cayuga County's farming community to the way cocaine entered the Wall Street world: it was considered a way to stay up and on focus.
Meth's been called the “poor man's cocaine” because it can be cooked at home instead of purchased, like cocaine, from dealers.
Cocaine users are exploring meth as an intensive stimulant just like heroine users explored the prescription drug oxycodone as a heroin alternative, Hares said.
“When drug users see a new drug it's like a magnet to steel. It just goes,” Hares said.
Counseling and recovery support groups with the goal of behavioral intervention is the most effective way to treat meth addiction. Unlike with heroin, there are no pharmacological treatments available that lessen the impact of stopping the use of meth. But some drugs that might be able to do so are being studied in clinical trials.
Meth's high releases high levels of dopamine, the brain chemical messenger that involves pleasure. Blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate and body temperature are increased. Users can become anxious, aggressive, paranoid, sleep-deprived and hallucinate.
It takes more and more meth use to recreate the same high, which exacerbate the paranoia-inducing, insomnia-inducing and brain-damaging tendencies of meth. The brain stops producing pleasurable feelings independent of taking meth. The drug involves so many toxic household chemicals that people can lose a lot of weight or rot their teeth.
DiPirro has interviewed many people whose bodies are dramatically aging. Their rib cages are hurting. They've been “ripping their bodies inside out,” he said.
“I think the drug's very powerful,” Hares said. “Getting away from it isn't as easy as some of the other drugs. The nature of a speed-type drug, it pretty much starts to take over all your sensory perceptions. It takes over your need to sleep, eat, work.”
DiPirro believes New York authorities learned the lesson from other states and enacted laws to preempt a meth crisis to the level that Missouri and other states are experiencing.
“In New York, we're proactive instead of reactive,” DiPirro said.
He said proactive efforts have included state laws that criminalized the possession of the ingredients to cook meth even without the drug and made the theft of anhydrous ammonia a felony.
“The big reason it's going down: Sudafed; they're controlling it more ... What people do is go store to store. If they're not buying it, they're stealing it,” DiPirro said.
Weeks said the number of reports of anhydrous ammonia thefts have dropped “way down,” but “we have information there are a few potential labs operating in the southern end of the county (with people) who are obtaining anhydrous ammonia,” Weeks said.
Investigators don't know if anhydrous ammonia thefts have decreased or not, but users are stealing it or obtaining it from someone who can lawfully possess the fertilizer, Weeks said.
Skip Jensen, the Cayuga County field advisor for New York Farm Bureau, said farmers have tightened controls over
their anhydrous ammonia tanks, especially because the fertilizer can be fatal if it is exposed to human tissue.
“I know farmers are more vigilant about where they leave tanks and securing the ones that they have as storage tanks. It continues to be a problem from time to time,” Jensen said.
It does not appear labs are operating in the northern end of Cayuga County, Weeks said. Auburn Police Department Detective Paul Casper said he is not aware of any meth activity in the city of Auburn.
In the past month, Jonathan Hollister, Chad Ramey, and Edward Wilber, all of Montrose, Pa., pleaded guilty in Cayuga County Court to stealing anhydrous ammonia from Willet Dairy in Genoa.
In the past year, Moravia residents Jan Ripley and Michael Hagin admitted in Cayuga County Court to manufacturing meth at Ripley's residence. Kenneth Denman, of Scipio Center, was sentenced in federal court to restitution, community service and five years supervised release for possessing 140 marijuana plants and a meth lab. Courtney Tyrrell, of Genoa, was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for growing more than 100 marijuana plants and possessing firearms; a meth lab also was found at his home. Michael Zirbel of Genoa, was sentenced to one year in state prison for possessing several ingredients used to make meth.
The drug has spread from the west coast to the Midwest - where use has skyrocketed in comparison to much of the rest of the country - and onto eastern states.
But even the small presence of methamphetamine in rural New York presents “huge safety issues,” Weeks said. DiPirro's clean lab team is called in because they are trained to take apart a meth lab safely to collect evidence while wearing the proper safety equipment of respirators, suits and gloves amid the concerns of exposure to poisons
and to explosive anhydrous ammonia. The Drug Enforcement Administration is also is often called to meth labs being handled by local law enforcement agencies.
In the case of Ripley and Hagin, it cost $7,000 to remove the materials and pay overtime for law enforcement officers who set up a perimeter, Weeks said. Officers stayed overnight until private equipment could be brought in to haul an anhydrous ammonia tank out of a creek. The state police clan lab team collected evidence, and a private company, Environmental Products and Services of Vermont Inc., conducted the clean-up of the lab.
Cooks in bordering Onondaga and Seneca counties typically use the red phosphorus method, but Cayuga County meth cooks use the anhydrous ammonia method, DiPirro said. Anhydrous ammonia seeks water and rapidly evaporates, so it can cause severe injury to body tissue or death due to its freeze-drying process. The red phosphorus method can result in
phosphine gas, which can result in more moderate symptoms like vomiting and pain in the diaphragm and the more extreme symptoms like convulsions, bronchitis or death.
A January 2003 study by the National Jewish Medical and Research center found that 52-percent of first responders to meth labs reported have at least one symptom after exposure to a lab, including dizziness, headaches, coughs, sore throats or eye irritation. Meth levels at labs were found to be 10 to 1,000 times over the recommended standard, showing that meth becomes airborne and that meth lab responders must be decontaminated. Phosphine gas was measured up to three times above the recommended short-term exposure and 10 times over the recommended eight-hour per day limit.
Bob Clarke, environmental manager for Environmental Products and Services, said his company's job is to complete the clean-up of a meth lab after investigators have taken the evidence they need. He usually responds to meth labs in the middle of the night. His team is the last one to leave, except for officers securing the lab perimeter.
They must screen the chemicals in the field and package the chemicals by hazard-class to safely ship for disposal. Absorbent material is put around each container. All byproducts and unknown products must be field-tested.
All the products are brought to EPS' Syracuse facility and added to a larger container of the same product until the multi-gallon drums are ready for disposal. Some of the products are used in a fuel blend and burned for energy at cement kiln. Anhydrous ammonia containers are bubbled off inside a container full of water; the water creates a vacuum inside the cylinder and the fertilizer can then be shipped as a nonregulated liquid with a neutral pH.
EPS takes the chemicals and the meth lab beakers and containers so they're not still available when meth suspects get out of jail following a bust, Clarke said.
“Most of these chemicals, they are household chemicals, so it doesn't mean that hazards are involved. It's more of a risk to the guy cooking it. For us, cleaning it up is not as much of a risk,” Clarke said.
While meth is trafficked by drug rings that sell other kinds of drugs in New York City and other parts of the United States, in upstate New York meth is most often made by small groups of friends and acquaintances for their personal use, authorities say.
“The fact they manufacture it themselves makes it a difficult area to investigate,” Cayuga County Sheriff Detective Lt. Joseph Weeks said. “It's not like a crack deal with hordes of traffic in and out of the house.”
New York State Police Investigator Pat DiPirro also said it takes many more officer hours to “produce information or intelligence” on a meth lab than it takes for cocaine trafficking. But when a solid tip comes in on meth, “it's a drop and go,” he said.
It's necessary to respond immediately because a cook session can be over quickly and the evidence scattered. He is a narcotic investigator and team leader for the Contaminated Crime Scene Emergency Response Team responsible for the Route 81 corridor. Cayuga County's first exposure to meth came from Pennsylvania residents who came to southern Cayuga County farms to steal the nitrogen-based anhydrous ammonia, which is used for corn farming and can be used along with other common chemicals to make meth. Some area law enforcement officials are reporting a shift in meth activity from anhydrous ammonia thefts by out-of-area strangers to locals who cook the drug themselves.
The prevalence of methamphetamine in New York is still very low in comparison to many other drugs. Less than 1 percent of people seeking substance abuse treatment in the state are using or abusing meth, according to the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services.
But in 2002, 14 states reported there were more admissions resulting from meth use than from heroin and cocaine use combined, according to the University of California, Los Angeles#, Integrated Substance Abuse Programs. An estimated 10.4 million people over the age of 12 have tried meth at least once, according to the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
DiPirro sees more of the manmade stimulant methamphetamine being brought into upstate New York by drug trafficking, including networks that supply drugs, than he sees being cooked in makeshift, home-based labs. But in comparison to Midwestern and western states, “here they're making it and sharing it more,” DiPirro said. “It's more friend to
friend.“
The numbers of clandestine labs are tiny in New York in comparison to the nation's leader for methamphetamine labs. Missouri had 1,288 meth labs reported in 2006 and 2,788 labs in 2004. There were 82 clandestine meth labs found in New York in 2004, but only nine have been discovered so far this year, according to DiPirro.
Six years ago, people with Pennsylvania plates used to be found by police officers on back roads with an igloo container ready to hold stolen anhydrous ammonia, Chief Assistant District Attorney Jon Budelmann said. The first larceny of anhydrous ammonia in Cayuga County was recorded by the sheriff's office in 2000.
Then Pennsylvania cooks started to pay people in Cayuga County who were familiar with the area to steal anhydrous ammonia; but that was an expensive proposition, so they started to pay people with a portion of meth they'd cook in exchange for the runners obtaining anhydrous ammonia, Budelmann said. “That made an addicted population here,” Budelmann said, that starting cooking a drug that is also called chalk, crystal, glass, ice and speed to support their habits themselves, Budelmann said. Budelmann predicts the meth-using population will just expand as the area's initial cooks teach others.
“That's where our problems start,” Budelmann said.
In 2005, Auburn's Confidential Help for Alcohol and Drugs saw its first clients who had used meth as part of a spectrum of other drugs. That number has increased from six to eight clients to about 15 client now, said Kevin Hares, executive director of CHAD.
“We're seeing a slow increase in those numbers, and it just tells us it usually gets used in the community for a while before it shows up in the treatment process,” Hares said.
Auburn Memorial Hospital's emergency room hasn't seen many cases of meth users, said Dr. James Ciaccio, AMH's emergency department director. Cocaine users with “nervous stimulation, rapid heart rates” are more common than meth users with similar problems. “Far and away the drug that causes the most problems is alcohol,” Ciaccio said.
Lon Fricano, head of the TLC Emergency Medical Services in Auburn, says most overdose calls involve poly-drug overdoses.
“We've not had a lot of obvious methamphetamine use, but we know it's out there,” Fricano said.
None ofCHAD's clients have methamphetamine as their exclusive drug addiction. Instead, meth is being explored as an alternative to cocaine by some users, and some people who would not use cocaine are using meth because of its association with the legally prescribed sister drug amphetamine, Hares said.
“People think it's just a drug that enhances their ability to stay awake to get their work done,” Hares said.
He compares the entry of meth into Cayuga County's farming community to the way cocaine entered the Wall Street world: it was considered a way to stay up and on focus.
Meth's been called the “poor man's cocaine” because it can be cooked at home instead of purchased, like cocaine, from dealers.
Cocaine users are exploring meth as an intensive stimulant just like heroine users explored the prescription drug oxycodone as a heroin alternative, Hares said.
“When drug users see a new drug it's like a magnet to steel. It just goes,” Hares said.
Counseling and recovery support groups with the goal of behavioral intervention is the most effective way to treat meth addiction. Unlike with heroin, there are no pharmacological treatments available that lessen the impact of stopping the use of meth. But some drugs that might be able to do so are being studied in clinical trials.
Meth's high releases high levels of dopamine, the brain chemical messenger that involves pleasure. Blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate and body temperature are increased. Users can become anxious, aggressive, paranoid, sleep-deprived and hallucinate.
It takes more and more meth use to recreate the same high, which exacerbate the paranoia-inducing, insomnia-inducing and brain-damaging tendencies of meth. The brain stops producing pleasurable feelings independent of taking meth. The drug involves so many toxic household chemicals that people can lose a lot of weight or rot their teeth.
DiPirro has interviewed many people whose bodies are dramatically aging. Their rib cages are hurting. They've been “ripping their bodies inside out,” he said.
“I think the drug's very powerful,” Hares said. “Getting away from it isn't as easy as some of the other drugs. The nature of a speed-type drug, it pretty much starts to take over all your sensory perceptions. It takes over your need to sleep, eat, work.”
DiPirro believes New York authorities learned the lesson from other states and enacted laws to preempt a meth crisis to the level that Missouri and other states are experiencing.
“In New York, we're proactive instead of reactive,” DiPirro said.
He said proactive efforts have included state laws that criminalized the possession of the ingredients to cook meth even without the drug and made the theft of anhydrous ammonia a felony.
“The big reason it's going down: Sudafed; they're controlling it more ... What people do is go store to store. If they're not buying it, they're stealing it,” DiPirro said.
Weeks said the number of reports of anhydrous ammonia thefts have dropped “way down,” but “we have information there are a few potential labs operating in the southern end of the county (with people) who are obtaining anhydrous ammonia,” Weeks said.
Investigators don't know if anhydrous ammonia thefts have decreased or not, but users are stealing it or obtaining it from someone who can lawfully possess the fertilizer, Weeks said.
Skip Jensen, the Cayuga County field advisor for New York Farm Bureau, said farmers have tightened controls over
their anhydrous ammonia tanks, especially because the fertilizer can be fatal if it is exposed to human tissue.
“I know farmers are more vigilant about where they leave tanks and securing the ones that they have as storage tanks. It continues to be a problem from time to time,” Jensen said.
It does not appear labs are operating in the northern end of Cayuga County, Weeks said. Auburn Police Department Detective Paul Casper said he is not aware of any meth activity in the city of Auburn.
In the past month, Jonathan Hollister, Chad Ramey, and Edward Wilber, all of Montrose, Pa., pleaded guilty in Cayuga County Court to stealing anhydrous ammonia from Willet Dairy in Genoa.
In the past year, Moravia residents Jan Ripley and Michael Hagin admitted in Cayuga County Court to manufacturing meth at Ripley's residence. Kenneth Denman, of Scipio Center, was sentenced in federal court to restitution, community service and five years supervised release for possessing 140 marijuana plants and a meth lab. Courtney Tyrrell, of Genoa, was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for growing more than 100 marijuana plants and possessing firearms; a meth lab also was found at his home. Michael Zirbel of Genoa, was sentenced to one year in state prison for possessing several ingredients used to make meth.
The drug has spread from the west coast to the Midwest - where use has skyrocketed in comparison to much of the rest of the country - and onto eastern states.
But even the small presence of methamphetamine in rural New York presents “huge safety issues,” Weeks said. DiPirro's clean lab team is called in because they are trained to take apart a meth lab safely to collect evidence while wearing the proper safety equipment of respirators, suits and gloves amid the concerns of exposure to poisons
and to explosive anhydrous ammonia. The Drug Enforcement Administration is also is often called to meth labs being handled by local law enforcement agencies.
In the case of Ripley and Hagin, it cost $7,000 to remove the materials and pay overtime for law enforcement officers who set up a perimeter, Weeks said. Officers stayed overnight until private equipment could be brought in to haul an anhydrous ammonia tank out of a creek. The state police clan lab team collected evidence, and a private company, Environmental Products and Services of Vermont Inc., conducted the clean-up of the lab.
Cooks in bordering Onondaga and Seneca counties typically use the red phosphorus method, but Cayuga County meth cooks use the anhydrous ammonia method, DiPirro said. Anhydrous ammonia seeks water and rapidly evaporates, so it can cause severe injury to body tissue or death due to its freeze-drying process. The red phosphorus method can result in
phosphine gas, which can result in more moderate symptoms like vomiting and pain in the diaphragm and the more extreme symptoms like convulsions, bronchitis or death.
A January 2003 study by the National Jewish Medical and Research center found that 52-percent of first responders to meth labs reported have at least one symptom after exposure to a lab, including dizziness, headaches, coughs, sore throats or eye irritation. Meth levels at labs were found to be 10 to 1,000 times over the recommended standard, showing that meth becomes airborne and that meth lab responders must be decontaminated. Phosphine gas was measured up to three times above the recommended short-term exposure and 10 times over the recommended eight-hour per day limit.
Bob Clarke, environmental manager for Environmental Products and Services, said his company's job is to complete the clean-up of a meth lab after investigators have taken the evidence they need. He usually responds to meth labs in the middle of the night. His team is the last one to leave, except for officers securing the lab perimeter.
They must screen the chemicals in the field and package the chemicals by hazard-class to safely ship for disposal. Absorbent material is put around each container. All byproducts and unknown products must be field-tested.
All the products are brought to EPS' Syracuse facility and added to a larger container of the same product until the multi-gallon drums are ready for disposal. Some of the products are used in a fuel blend and burned for energy at cement kiln. Anhydrous ammonia containers are bubbled off inside a container full of water; the water creates a vacuum inside the cylinder and the fertilizer can then be shipped as a nonregulated liquid with a neutral pH.
EPS takes the chemicals and the meth lab beakers and containers so they're not still available when meth suspects get out of jail following a bust, Clarke said.
“Most of these chemicals, they are household chemicals, so it doesn't mean that hazards are involved. It's more of a risk to the guy cooking it. For us, cleaning it up is not as much of a risk,” Clarke said.
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Turbozirb wrote on Aug 6, 2007 11:35 AM: