Local meth labs not lone threats

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, May 28, 2005

For much of the past five years, the people fighting drug trafficking in Snohomish County have focused their attentions on a four-letter word: meth.

Across Washington, police are focusing on closing down meth labs and locking up those who make the drug.

But Washington’s drug problem is much more complex. Court records show that most cocaine, heroin and potent “B.C. bud” marijuana from Canada is being smuggled here by drug traffickers with ties to Mexico and Colombia.

The same international traffickers are starting to dominate the meth trade.

“We are seeing an increase in the purity,” said Rodney Benson, special agent in charge at the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s regional office in Seattle.

The meth increasingly available in the Northwest – some of it pure crystals the size of chicken eggs – comes from “superlabs” hidden in Mexico and the southwestern United States. The labs are run by Latin American drug organizations that have long controlled the cocaine and heroin trades.

The state’s focus has been on tackling smaller meth labs. Methamphetamine is the addictive stimulant that can be brewed by mixing volatile chemicals with everyday items, including cold medicines.

International dealers are benefiting from the crackdown on local meth cooks, in a classic example of market forces at play.

“Our goal is to drive down the number of labs in the state. We all know that as we succeed in that, the meth users will simply shift to the traffickers,” state Attorney General Rob McKenna said.

One prong of McKenna’s new meth-fighting strategy is using racketeering laws to target those who profit most.

Snohomish County Sheriff Rick Bart, one of the community’s biggest proponents for fighting local meth cooks, said he sometimes worries that the sharp focus misses the bigger picture.

Snohomish County, and much of the rest of Washington, has a “poly-substance problem – more than one drug,” Bart said.

Just 90 minutes’ drive along I-5 from the U.S.-Canada border, and 30 miles north of Seattle, Snohomish County is a well-established stop on drug pipelines that stretch from South America to Guatemala, Canada, Los Angeles, New York and beyond.

Large quantities of cocaine are being trafficked and consumed here, the sheriff said.

A 2003 study of inmates being booked into the county jail in Everett found that nearly as many tested positive for using cocaine as for methamphetamine (18.7 percent compared with 19.5 percent).

Among participants in Snohomish County’s 6-year-old drug court program, 21 percent said cocaine was their primary drug, compared with 35 percent for meth, and 14 percent for heroin and other opiates.

“Have you ever been under the power lines and heard that constant hum? That’s coke,” Bart said. “The meth is the snap you hear from time to time.”

February brought what is believed to be the largest cocaine bust in county history. Douglas Bryan Spink, 34, is now awaiting a July 11 trial on a federal drug trafficking charge. He was arrested driving along U.S. 2 in Monroe with five suitcases that federal prosecutors say were stuffed with 372 pounds of cocaine.

Spink is a bankrupt Oregon businessman who was living in Canada. Federal investigators say they watched him pick up the coke at an Everett rendezvous, and they suspect he was planning to smuggle the drugs into Canada.

Investigators know there is a brisk cross-border trade in cocaine and high-grade Canadian pot, said Jeffrey Eig, a Seattle-based DEA agent.

The drugs are bartered, “pound for pound. A pound of coke for a pound of weed,” Eig said.

Top-level drug dealers let profits and demand drive their business decisions, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Whalley, who heads a group of federal prosecutors in Seattle targeting the region’s most organized drug traffickers.

“Cocaine and heroin haven’t changed as far as the sources,” Whalley said. The new wrinkles are that the Latin American dealers now are trafficking in Canadian marijuana and meth.

It’s all about preserving market share, said Everett police Lt. Mark St. Clair, who serves on the Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force.

The dealers responded to meth’s popularity by producing better drugs than can be cooked up in local labs, St. Clair said. “They came up with a strategy and a product that would sell.”

Federal prosecutors have helped local task force detectives dismantle several drug organizations with ties to California, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, New York, Texas and Missouri.

One of the cases, still playing out in the federal courts, was dubbed “Operation High Octane.” It became public after indictments were brought in late 2002. Nearly three dozen people in Washington and the Midwest have since been accused of involvement in a group trafficking in cocaine, meth and heroin.

Among those caught was an Everett woman, 26, who in January 2004 was carrying 2 ounces of cocaine, an ounce of heroin and a half-ounce of high-grade meth “ice” crystals.

Already awaiting sentencing for meth trafficking, she cooperated with drug detectives and placed a phone call to an Everett man who brought her a half-pound of high-quality meth. He was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Last week, Alfonso Allan Brooks, 33, was sentenced in Seattle to 25 years in federal prison. A Colombian national who had been living near Seattle, a jury found Brooks guilty of running a drug organization that traded in heroin, cocaine and meth.

Brooks’ case, dubbed “Operation Slam Dunk,” became public in 2003 and involved arrests in Medellin, Colombia; New York; Marysville; Mountlake Terrace; and Seattle.

Part of the case involved Brooks’ former wife, a south Snohomish County woman who was caught at the border driving into Canada in a car with heroin in a hidden compartment.

She was sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to a lesser offense. In the words of her public defenders, she was “a small fish in a very large pond – a pond that stretched from Seattle all the way to New York City.”

Drug trafficking links far-flung communities in ways that aren’t always apparent or well understood, said Pat Slack, commander of the regional drug task force.

The way he looks at it, drug smugglers aren’t just moving kilograms of dope, they are trafficking in trouble.

“How many people committed felonies before the person who sold that kilo to an undercover cop?” Slack asked. “How many people’s lives were changed – or ended?”

What drugs do to communities and countries is “not the untold story,” Slack said. “To me, it is the unheard story.”

Reporter Scott North: 425-339-3431 or north@heraldnet.com.