Law enforcement seeks retailers’ help in spotting lab supply purchases

By Molly Miron

Pioneer Editor

      There are two basic ways to cook up a batch of methamphetamine, and about 50 Bemidji community members and managers of retail outlets learned the methods Thursday night.

      “You can all walk out of here tonight and cook meth if you want to,” Bemidji Police Officer Chad Museus told the gathering at the Hampton Inn.

      Museus and Paul Bunyan Drug Task Force Agent Mike Diekmann presented a meth awareness seminar to help retailers and convenience store employees recognize customers buying the chemicals needed for a meth lab. The common ingredient in all meth is pseudoephedrine, the ingredient in Sudafed and other decongestants. But the process requires many more components that are common products with legitimate uses.

      Museus suggested clerks check IDs, aim surveillance cameras at the cold medicine aisle, and note vehicle descriptions and license plates for anyone with a suspicious meth appearance (skeletal thinness, for example) who comes in and only buys Sudafed, toluene solvent, lithium batteries, Red Devil lye or Heet gas line de-icer.

      “Meth cooks are meth users,” he said. “We’re not here to advocate how you run your stores. We’re here to ask you for help. That’s why you’re here, those of you who want to help your community.”

      To make a one-ounce batch of meth, Museus said the cooker needs 1,000 pseudoephedrine pills.

      “That sounds like a lot,” said Ralph Schneider, who manages Orton’s gas station and convenience store at the corner of Paul Bunyan Drive and 15th Street Northwest. But, he said, someone who buys two 48-pill packs from him can make the same purchase going from store to store and quickly meet the quota.

      “By the time they get to Wal-Mart, they’ve got 1,000 pills,” he said.

      Looking at the information poster, he said he counted at a glance about 15 ingredients sold at his store for legitimate purposes that meth cookers need to make their drug.

      Julie LaValley of 15th Street Conoco said she has served people who look as if they might be using meth, but they have never bought excessive quantities of pseudoephedrine or other potential meth ingredients.

      “We kind of know what to watch for,” she said.

      Museus said when he joined the drug task force in 2000 he was doing mostly marijuana busts, with the occasional cocaine arrest.

      “By the time I finished with the task force, all we were doing was methamphetamine,” he said.

      At the beginning of 2002, he said he predicted one lab raid per month for that year. They made 34, he said.

      Besides being totally addictive and dangerous to the users, Diekmann said meth is also a poison to the environment. The waste products themselves are poisonous.

      “It’s time for people to stand up and get a little bit angry about it because it affects everyone,” said Diekmann, asking the retailers to be eyes and ears for law enforcement.

      Museus said a single detail called in by a convenience store clerk who is suspicious of a customer could mean solving a case. On the other hand, he asked the group to keep from becoming discouraged if a case takes months to develop.

      “The more information we have, the better we are able to put these things together,” he said.