The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Meth arrests on the rise in city, county

By Justin Berton

Officers who went inside a Sunnyvale apartment two weeks ago searching for a hit-and-run suspect were surprised when they stumbled upon measuring scales in the rear bedroom loaded up with white mounds of powder methamphetamines.

They made four arrests and confiscated the scales, glass vials for storing the drug and 13.9 grams of the illegal substance that was stashed in an oven mitt.

The bust was certainly no Miami Vice- style haul-in, but the find indicates a growing problem: Methamphetamine use is on the rise in Sunnyvale and Santa Clara County. Methamphetamines are a more potent form of the pharmaceutical amphetamines that are found in cold capsules and other pain relievers.

Police arrested a man on Tasman Drive on Friday after finding a boxed-up meth lab disassembled in the trunk of his 1968 Plymouth, bringing the number of methamphetamine arrests in Sunnyvale since Jan. 1 to 50. Last year's total was 132.

In 1996, police made 68 arrests related to methamphetamines; the year before, that number was 114. Pigott said officers made more arrests in 1995 than 1996 because the narcotics unit was fully staffed that year.

"We haven't seen a dramatic increase, but it is a cheap drug, and [use] is readily increasing," Capt. Steve Pigott of the Sunnyvale Public Safety Department said, adding that the narcotics department is currently fully staffed, which could also account for the increase in arrests.

Countywide, however, there has been a notable increase: Since 1991, methamphetamine-related arrests have gone up 300 percent, Pigott said.

Late last year a consortium of several federal, state and local agencies, including the Sunnyvale Public Safety Department, created The South Bay Amphetamine Task Force to curb the growing popularity of the drug.

"Several investigations have brought us into Sunnyvale," task force commander Dave Dresson said.

While Dresson noted the large production labs the task force shuts down are usually found in orchards on the outskirts of town or in rarely patrolled warehouse areas--oftentimes outside county lines--the owners of the labs are mainly South Bay residents.

Though Sunnyvale has not been the scene of any busts on large scale meth labs to date, the easy-to-assemble small-size lab is becoming a more familiar sight.

Rennie Irizarry, Sunnyvale's representative on the new task force, said an arrest warrant is out for a suspect who fled a Sunnyvale motel room moments before a bust went down in late February. Officers seized small amounts of chemicals and an apparatus for cooking up what would have turned into an ounce of powdered methamphetamines.

"The large-scale labs aren't being manufactured inside Sunnyvale," Irizarry said, "but the end result is that it's getting to the streets of Sunnyvale."

Dresson said officers in the Bay Area first noticed an increase in methamphetamines five years ago, when large drug cartels from foreign countries began producing the drug, driving prices of one pound down from $10,000 to as low as $4,500.

The street user, who Dresson identifies as "anyone from the guy driving the truck on the freeway to the mother dropping off her kids," has not seen a decrease in price.

A gram of crank can go for anywhere from $50 to $100 and gives the user a false adrenaline rush, Dresson said.

The Bay Area is one of three areas in the state that qualify for federal funds that help finance the task force, holding the distinction of being a High Intensity Drug Traffic Area, or HIDTA.

The task force was needed, Dresson said, "because officials finally recognized that [use of] the drug [has been] increasing for some time."

From October 1997 to January 1998, Dresson said, the task force arrested 42 people and seized more than 40 pounds from labs within or on the edges of county lines.

More importantly, Dresson said, officers confiscated 647 gallons of liquid methamphetamine in that three-month period, before it could be processed into powder.

Dresson said each gallon of the liquid meth represents 4 pounds of powder once the drug is cooked and processed. That equals a potential 2,588 pounds of the drug.

Lt. David DiBari of the San Jose Police Department narcotics division said methamphetamines has become more popular in recent years since the recipe for the illegal drug has become well-known, and the tools needed to set up a lab are cheap to purchase and easy to find.

The SJPD two weeks ago seized more than 19 pounds of the drug, with a street value of $380,000.

DiBari said county statistics show that eight of every 10 arrests made for narcotics in the county are for methamphetamines.

"We used to make busts in maybe the ounces; now we're ending up with pounds," DiBari said.

The popularity of powder methamphetamines is being driven by the low price, officers said, adding that a quarter gram can go for as little as $20.

"It's a supply-and-demand thing right now," Irizarry said, "and there's a lot of both."

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, April 29, 1998.
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