Vancouver has 150,000 people. Clark County altogether has about 350,000. We want to involve the community as we do in other areas of law enforcement so that they are a part of coming up with the solution, because, again, in closing, to make any strategy work, it has to be a multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary approach, that includes prevention, that includes treatment, legislation and enforcement, and the community has to be a part of that strategy, or it is not going to work. It will not be safe for people to come and help us unless we have the leaders of the community, both formal and informal, speaking up and being part of the solution. So I thank you again for this opportunity. If there is anything else we can do, we would be glad to be part of it. Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. Sheriff Lucas. [The prepared statement of Mr. Martinek follows:] Clark County, Washington, a part of the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area, is designated as a county in the State of Washington with a 38% increase over the past decade. UCR records indicate that drug crimes are skyrocketing, with adult arrests for drugs in 2001 at 1,356, nearly double the number from 1998. Local police records show a 32% rise in reports of methamphetamine use over just the past 3 years and more offenders are booked while under the influence of meth than all other controlled substances combined. In the first half of 2003, nearly 9% of jail bookings in Clark County, Washington were for possession of/intent to deliver a controlled meth/heroin/cocaine, with steady increases of 1% each year for the past 4 years. Over 75% of the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney's felony drug caseload involves methamphetamine - last year alone, 860 felony drug cases were prosecuted and this number continues to grow substantially each year. Last year 1,310 clandestine meth labs were seized across Washington State, representing a serious health threat to the community and substantial cleanup cost. Reduced sentencing guidelines and cuts to Department of Corrections supervision for released drug offenders are likely to encourage further drug involvement in the State of Washington. Strategic Approaches The law and justice community places emphasis on those who manufacture, deliver, and use controlled substances in an effort to combat methamphetamine issues in our community by proactively addressing the problem at its root, and we are working with our community partners to end methamphetamine abuse in our region. We rely heavily on partnerships with federal, state, county, and city agencies as well as local business, nonprofits, and our community members. Continuing Support Needed Federal assistance enables us to respond more effectively to methamphetamine-related issues in our community. For example, last year the City of Vancouver received $222,222 in funding from the Department of Justice COPS office to design and implement proactive investigative, enforcement, and outreach strategies to address serious crime and neighborhood livability issues related to the manufacture, distribution, and use of meth in our region. HIDTA, Byrne, LLEBG, COPS, and other federal grant programs make it possible for us to proactively address methamphetamine and other public safety issues in our community. Conclusion We know the use of illegal substances results in crimes against people and property in our community. Research continues to indicate that successful completion of drug treatment programs reduces the likelihood of subsequent criminal behavior, and education and outreach efforts can prevent drug abuse and related crimes altogether. Federal support for local agencies through HR834 will provide opportunities for a multi-disciplinary approach to CLEANing-UP meth problems in our communities. Vancouver Police Department P.O. Box 1995. Vancouver, WA 98668-1995 ● (360) 696-8292 • Fax (360) 696-8176 Sheriff LUCAS. Chairman Souder, members of the committee, I am Garry Lucas. I am the sheriff of Clark County, beginning my fourth term and 36th year of law enforcement service with the county of Clark. Our methamphetamine problem began in the mid-1970's, so we have been wrestling with this issue for some time. In a recent series of four articles by the Vancouver Columbian on the methamphetamine problem in Clark County, one official described it as being of epidemic proportion. The abuse of methamphetamine is growing rapidly within our communities and across the country. If it is not a problem in your community now, it will be. Methamphetamine abuse is pernicious. It is extremely addictive, relatively easy to produce, gives an intense, long-lasting high, and is cheaper on the street than heroin or cocaine. The chemicals used to produce meth are poisonous, explosive and environmentally hazardous. Users coming down from this intense high suffer from delusions, depression and paranoia. They often react violently and unpredictably to those around them. Methamphetamine's effects slice across the fabric of our community. Individuals using meth suffer physical and mental dissipation, families disintegrate in its wake. We found toddlers sleeping and playing in direct proximity to toxic clandestine meth labs. Children in our grade schools have been caught with methamphetamine in their possession. Neighborhoods are alarmed by meth cooks, dealers and their customers. Our wilderness areas and campgrounds have been defaced by meth cooks dumping their toxic wastes. Rental owners have had their properties devalued by the results of meth labs in their units. Rental houses where meth labs have been producing have been demolished because it was simply too costly to renovate the property. Our community's quality of life has been degraded by methamphetamine production and use. The costs of dealing with the problem are immense. A Portland, OR, Police Bureau study revealed that 80 percent of their fraud, forgery and identity theft cases were related to the use and production of methamphetamine. Fraud, forgery and identify theft are our fastest growing crime category, costing tens of millions of dollars in our three-State region. Clark County government is spending millions of dollars in the criminal justice system, the social service system, the medical community, the mental health community and substance abuse treatment community that can be directly attributed to the production, sale and abuse of methamphetamine. Let me close with a thank you to our Federal Government. Inclusion of the southwest Washington and Northwest high intensity drug trafficking area is viewed by our law enforcement agencies as a ray of hope. COPS grants give us manpower that we would not otherwise have to be able to address this issue. Byrne grant dollars are the backbone of our Clark's Community Drug Task Force. We would not be able to continue our efforts at their current level without them. Byrne grant dollars have funded 60 percent of all drug prosecutions in Clark County. Your infusion of money in the form of meth initiative dollars has enabled us to support a multidisciplinary group of professionals across our State and in our com munity to combat the production and use of methamphetamine in innovative ways. The return of these dollars to our community has been essential. We have used them effectively to combat this growing and vexing plague on our community. I would end with a plea, and that is please keep our northwest HIDTA, Byrne grant, meth initiative and treatment dollars flowing to the law enforcement, education, prevention and mental health agencies in our local communities to help us address this problem. Mr. SOUDER. I thank you each for the long travel you have made to come here to give testimony. Generally speaking, we try to have a meth hearing at least probably, this is our second or third one in a period of 3 or 4 years. So you are rare but important participants in a process as we continue to gather information on how to approach the meth question. Let me ask each of you to respond. I am going to cluster a couple of questions together, and then-before I get into that, I have a couple of technical questions that I want to get on the record before I get into some policy records. You saw the chart earlier that showed the number of labs. In the Washington State number, it was 1,417. The number I believe you used, Chief, was 1,310. Do you know where that number comes from? Chief MARTINEK. The 1,350 is from 2001 and the DEA numbers are from 2002. Those are consistent with what we think the numbers would be. But the source of our numbers is from the Washington State Sheriffs and Chiefs Association. Mr. SOUDER. And do all of your labs go into EPIC and count, or if that was the previous year, you said you think it is consistent with. Do you think you could actually be up to 1,700? You heard us earlier talking about the difficulty of collecting at the local level. Chief MARTINEK. Yes, and that is a long time difficult process problem across the United States. I would say our numbers are probably pretty close to the DEA's, but I would also say there is no way that I think anyone knows of right now to make them absolutely consistent because of reporting errors. That has been a common traditional problem in law enforcement for my entire career, and my understanding from Sheriff Lucas, it goes beyond the start of my career. My guess and my information from being involved with the Western States Information Network and EPIC and some of the other narcotics enforcement intelligence sources is some of those numbers are underreported. I can tell you from personal experience that the Oregon numbers seem to be very much underreported that were indicated on the DEA board, and that is typical. I spent 14 years in law enforcement there, and they don't have the reporting systems up to speed with EPIC that Washington State does. So I think our numbers are accurate, but I can't answer you, because we had such short notice, as to whether they are exact. Mr. SOUDER. Captain Kelly, do you have any comment? Captain KELLY. I would agree, Congressman. We pay attention to the stats, we certainly do, but there is no universal reporting You saw some numbers that were posted up there by the DEA in 2002 with respect to Missouri. Missouri has seen a huge increase from about 900 reportable labs in 2000 to more than 2,100 in 2001. I was curious about this, so I went and did the research on this. What happened in the State of Missouri was they came up with a mandated reporting law. But what do they distinguish? Is it a box lab? Is it just flasks? Is it a super lab? Are they reporting just everything? Are they reporting the Beavis and-well, let me put it this way, the mom and pop one small lab, or are they reporting the super lab? So they are reporting everything. There is no universal system. That is good for the State of Missouri that they do that, because they can track it. I wish we all did that, but we don't. So, it would be nice to have a mandated reporting system with some definitive guidelines, and that way we could track the stats better. Mr. SOUDER. Pursuing that a little bit, Sheriff Lucas, getting into a broader question, mandatory reporting laws are one way that things would be different. When a county like Clark County becomes highly aware of their problem, how much of this do you think is an actual increase in meth usage versus now you are aware of it, you are tracking it closer, your officers have been trained to look for it? Another way to ask that is Part A. Part B is, is it as severe in the counties around Clark, and, if not, why not? Would it be they are not focused on it as much, or is it in fact as severe? Sheriff LUCAS. Well, we have been aware of the methamphetamine problem, as I pointed out, since the 1970's, so growth is not attributable to the fact all of a sudden we became aware and started counting. We have been counting for a long time and the numbers continue to go up. Second, we are in kind of a unique position, because we are the population center for southwest Washington, and the counties that surround us, Skamania County, for example, has a population of about 13,000, I want to say-15,000. Cowlitz County probably greater than that, probably in the 75,000 figure, and Wahkiakum County is similar. So, we are the population center located directly across the river from Portland. Mr. SOUDER. From what we heard earlier from Arkansas, and this is kind of different, and in my home area which would be similar, the city of Fort Wayne is bigger than the city of Vancouver, the county is roughly the same, but when you move out of Allen County you drop to counties of about 30,000, but meth labs are actually increasing as you move out from the city. Is that true, and why wouldn't it be moving into some of the rural areas? Sheriff LUCAS. Actually they become dumping grounds and manufacturing spots, because a less-populated county often has fewer officers to be able to deal with the problem, it is more difficult to discover their operation and dumping their toxic wastes is much easier. Mr. SOUDER. And following up with that, and then I want to do the same thing for Sacramento, one of the things that is fairly arbitrary, we have this problem a little bit as we looked at our Southwest border HIDTA, and we are trying to address that in the new |