The California Multi-Jurisdictional Methamphetamine Enforcement Team, which for eight years included Sacramento sheriff's detectives, officially disbanded Dec. 10, a casualty of California's projected $40 billion deficit. The task force, known by the acronym CAL-MMET, was funded by a $19.5 million grant from the California Emergency Management Agency, then available to all counties, said spokeswoman Lori Newquist. The grant helped law enforcement agencies band together to fight meth trafficking. Locally, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department oversaw officers from the county Probation Department and the Citrus Heights Police Department.
Newquist said the CAL– MMET grant is one of 10 to be phased out by the end of the fiscal year. Others target gangs and high-tech crimes, she said. The decision didn't sit well with Sheriff John McGinness, who said meth is the "most destructive physical substance known to the human race." "To turn a blind eye" to meth, he said, "I think it's a huge mistake." Lengthy investigations are too complicated to be done without a specialized team, and his department can't afford to fund the team alone, the sheriff said. Like the state, Sacramento County faces a budget deficit that is expected to grow in the coming year.
The department can't match "any of the good work that can be done by a unit such as CAL-MMET with local resources in a down economy," McGinness said. "All we can do is scratch the surface." CAL-MMET may not be the only specialized unit to go, he said. If the county budget deficit grows, "it's not unreasonable that any and all specialized units in the Sheriff's Department might be in peril." With the loss of the meth task force, McGinness said he'll shift resources to the department's existing narcotics suppression unit, which goes after street-level drug sales. In addition, the federally funded Sacramento High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force will continue to track meth dealers. It has detectives from local agencies in Sacramento County, working with federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents.
The names Isidro and Yolanda Vasquez will go down in the history books, at the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department. The two were picked up in the early hours of Jan. 6, the last of seven suspects arrested in an investigation of a major meth ring, detectives said. With the Vasquezes in handcuffs, the lights officially went dark on a 10-person team that battled meth traffickers in Sacramento County.Last October, Rogers and fellow detectives began tracking Isidro and Yolanda Vasquez and their alleged accomplices in Folsom. For months, the team followed the alleged meth ring across California and into Nevada as the defendants took turns buying as many pseudoephedrine products as they could at various stores, an activity known in the drug world as "smurfing." Pseudoephedrine, meth's basic building block, is a common ingredient in over-the-counter decongestants.
Federal law restricts how any of the pills can be purchased at one time to make it harder to make meth, which requires a lot of the chemical. "We estimate they got about a quarter-pound (of pseudoephedrine) per person per week," Rogers said. Serving a search warrant about a month ago in Stockton, Rogers said his team found a half-pound of processed meth, two pounds of marijuana and four firearms – two of them stolen. The team also came across five children living in houses where drugs were distributed, he said.
These Sacramento area meth labs were shut down by local law enforcement and reported to the Drug Enforcement Agency since 2005.
| < Prev |
|---|