WSNIA - The Educator

INFORMATION ♦ EDUCATION ♦ ENFORCEMENT

THE EDUCATOR - Fall 2000

How Do We Protect the Kids?

By Jim Chamberlain, Captain, Thurston County Narcotics Task Force

As of February 1 7 2000, a bill sponsored by Representa tive Mary Lou Dickerson, at the request of our task force, to create two new crimes of Exposing a Child to Methamphet amine Manufacturing 1St and 2 degree is apparently dying in the House Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee. This effort to hold the meth cooks and dope dealers we encounter every day more accountable, was one of several attempts by our task force to deal with the perplexing issue of trying to pro tect the children involved in the narcotics cases we work.

Note: a separate bill in the Senate eventually passed the legislature and was signed by the Governor creating a two-year Sentence Enhancement for exposing a child to meth manufacture.

The issue began after several of my detectives attended a presentation at the 1998 W.S.I.N. conference. The presenta tion on Endangered Children in Meth Labs was put on by repre sentatives from the Butte County Narcotics unit. Those of you who attended the conference might remember this interesting and thought-provoking presentation. I know it made an impres sion on me and my investigators. We began to ask ourselves why we weren’t referring endangerment charges against the cook(s) and or the parent(s) in our lab cases when we found that children were living in these environments. The answer was apparent. We were concentrating on arresting the dopers for dope, collecting the evidence, and referring the narcotics case. If children weren’t present when we raided the location, we really didn’t think about it. We might have sent a report to C.P.S. but not much more was done about the kids. We made a commitment that we would attempt to file child endangerment charges in future cases we encountered.

The opportunity presented itself with two investigations that occurred in late 1998.

The first occurred at the Falls Pointe Apartments in the city of Tumwater on October 23, 1998. A red phosphorous laboratory was found in the master bedroom of the two-bedroom apartment.

Two young boys, ages five and nine years old, slept in the second bedroom. The second case occurred on November 1 3 1998 at a mobile home in a private development just outside of Yelm, Wa. in the unincorporated area of Thurston County. This was an ephedrine extraction laboratory in which the suspect was using an electric frying pan to heat his concoction. A seven-year-old-boy was living with his mother in the same mobile home.

Both mothers were charged with Criminal Mistreatment of a Child in the Second Degree, along with Unlawful Manufac turing of a Controlled Substance. We brought in Child Protective Services to care for the children. We also had them medically examined with blood and urine samples taken. None of the children had obvious injuries or signs of contamination and their tests came back negative for methamphetamine or other chemical contaminants. So we had a dilemma. How were we going to prove child endangerment without any injuries?

Under the statute you must prove that a person recklessly created an imminent and substantial risk of death or great bodily harm under the section that applies to our case. Well, our Deputy Prosecutor David Soukup is not only dedicated but creative. He was able to convince one jury that just by exposing her child to methamphetamine manufacturing and its inherent dangers as well as not caring for her child due to her drug use that one mother, Dorothy Bennett, was guilty of Child Endangerment 2 degree, a Class C felony. Mrs. Bennett got 81 months on all charges. The other woman, Kimberly Hoage, pled guilty to her charges and got 33 months. In both cases we felt we had ac complished our goal but it was not a smooth process.

What we found was that most of the people and entities we called upon for support were not educated about methamphet amine and its manufacturing processes or its dangers. Hospital staff weren’t sure what tests to run and neither were we. We came to the conclusion that if we were going to make success ful cases, we needed to educate and involve the other public and private entities we worked with, as to our needs. We also needed to understand what they could and could not do for us. The method we chose was to organize a forum on the issue. We were able to get some funds from the Northwest HIDTA to pay for the location and to bring in instructors, through their initiative process. We then began to solicit support from the various stakeholders we felt needed to be involved to develop a model protocol on dealing with endangered children and meth amphetamine laboratories.

We found both great interest as well as support in the local community. Dr. Yu, our local Health department director, was already working on procedures that would help us with the medi cal community and with contaminated locations. Child Protec tive Services was very interested and sent two supervisory so cial workers to our forum. Both local hospitals as well as the major local law enforcement agencies all sent representatives. Our prosecutor’s office sent two additional Deputy Prosecu tors. We even had Representative Brian Baird give the opening remarks. Additional support from the State Dept. of Health and the W.S.P. S.I.R.T. team rounded out the group.

The forum was held on December 15 1999 at Cavannaugh’s in Olympia. Sgt. Wes Rethwill coordinated for our task force and did an excellent job. We had presentations from S.I.R.T., Dept. of Health, Child Protective Services, State Toxicology, and our own case study from the Dorothy Bennett case men tioned earlier, as well as speakers from Butte County, California on their program. The result was that now we had a core groupof local professionals familiar with methamphetamine issues that we could call upon for support in our investigations. The discussion at the close of the Forum focused on how we could work together and we found we all shared the same goals and while we didn’t need a formal protocol to tell us how to work together, we did need a common information base to under stand each other’s needs and capabilities.

While this was going on, we kept having other cases where our drug dealers were bringing their children to drug deals. We almost couldn’t believe these people. In one case, a nine-pound marijuana deal, the suspect had his one-year-old grandson in a car seat right next to him when he was taken down. Another guy brought his two kids ages eight months and four years old, to a methamphetamine buy. Not to be outdone, a women brought her five-year-old son to another transaction (a reverse buy) and decided to “smoke a bowl” to test the quality of the product she was going to buy, right in front of her kid. We were really frustrated because there was no statute or enhancement that specifically covered this type of idiotic behavior. In addition, the Child Endangerment statute re ally was not intended to be used for this type of behavior. The penalties even if convicted were not great. (Dorothy B-month sentence).

That led us up to our effort to change or improve the current statutes in these areas.

Luckily one of our detectives had a friend who knew how to draft and garner support for new legislation. We discussed our desires and went ahead and tried to get a two-year sentencing enhancement for bringing or exposing a child to a controlled substance transaction as well as trying to create two new stat utes to deal with the children exposed to methamphetamine manufacturing. The new crimes would be Class B felonies with a seriousness level of 10 (equal to meth manufacturing). The bill made it to the House Criminal Justice and Corrections com mittee. We even went to the hearing in which our bill as well as three others were discussed. Unfortunately, ours didn’t survive but we learned some lessons for our next attempt. Hopefully through these efforts combined with those of WSNIA and other concerned law en forcement entities we can get better laws to help us protect the children.

We have seen a definite improvement in two of our most recent investigations in March. In both cases, detectives evaluated the evidence, C.P.S. responded promptly and arranged for the medical tests, the health department took samples from the home, and the prosecutor filed charges. The process was smoother and the various entities handled their responsibilities well and in concert with our efforts. I was extremely gratified. We will continue to try and refine and improve this cooperative effort. Hopefully some of the lessons we have learned will benefit those of you who are trying to prevent some of these children from becoming the next generation of “cooks” and “addicts.”

Now my detectives are asked to follow the following procedure when considering a Child Endangerment prosecution. Also C.P.S. has assigned a social worker to respond with us to methamphetamine lab locations involving children.

1. Examine the crime scene for evidence of children being present, photograph and document.

2. Notify C.P.S. and place the child(ren) into protective custody if possible.

3. Request a medical examination to include blood and urine samples for examination by the State Toxicologist (hair and fingernail samples can also be obtained if nec essary).

4. Conduct an interview of the child(ren) concerning their living environment and drug usage or manufactur ing.

5. Obtain a copy of the local health department’s sam pling tests on the living environment.

6. Interview neighbors, relatives, school officials about the child. Check for a school or school bus stop within 1,000 ft. of the residence. Your local school district should be able to help. This is worth a two-year enhancement on the sentence if it is within that distance.

7. Consult with the Deputy Prosecutor on additional evidence needed. Share the results with CPS.