METH LABS INFILTRATE THE VALLEY.

Byline: Jason Kandel Staff Writer

The discovery last week of two methamphetamine factories in the San Fernando Valley has signaled a new trend: small laboratories in Los Angeles neighborhoods are replacing larger ones in rural areas, police said.

With increasing pressure on drug makers in desert and mountain communities, Los Angeles police said the drug now increasingly is being made in the Valley and other densely populated areas.

This also is being driven largely by new chemicals that don't generate as much smell and the greater availability of ingredients and information on the Internet, authorities said.

``More people are aware of how simple it is to make, and they're venturing out and making their own dope,'' said Detective Richard Gutierrez of the Los Angeles Police Department's clandestine lab unit.

``We're seeing more labs with smaller batches. The chemicals and apparatus and solvents can be purchased or stolen or obtained from anywhere.''

From January through September of this year, police raided 40 methamphetamine labs across the city, up from 34 in 1999, according to the latest LAPD statistics.

Sixty percent of the clandestine lab unit's call-outs are to the Valley.

Despite the increase in raids, investigators have found they are not confiscating as much of the drug, in part because the labs are smaller than in the past, police said.

But the eight-person squad, down from 10 members two years ago, also has felt the effect of the Police Department's shortage of officers.

``We're on the pager 24 hours, seven days,'' Gutierrez said.

From January to September, police confiscated 626 pounds of the drug, an estimated street value at $18 million. Authorities confiscated 1,012 pounds, at an estimated street value of $48.8 million, for all of 1999.

The Valley is an ideal setting for a meth factory, a place somewhere between the wide open spaces of the deserts where police now know to look, and the rest of Los Angeles, where the telltale smell of drug production would draw attention.

``A lot of the areas out in the Valley are just so open,'' Gutierrez said.

New methods have given meth makers less worry about the smell.

Ari Kalechstein, an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, said meth lab operators are using substances called precursors that are used in making meth and have a less noxious odor.

``The odors are less noticeable,'' he said. ``Now you can make it in places where there are more people around, like in garages, motel rooms or vans.''

Not always, though.

Investigators received a tip from a resident last week that foul smells were coming from an apartment in the 7040 block of Haskell Avenue in Van Nuys.

When police arrived, they discovered a meth lab and arrested three people.

A tip about a gun led police to another lab, on Parthenia Street in Northridge.

Patrol officers, investigating a report of a gun on a fence, happened upon the lab when they noticed a door had been broken into at the site in the 18800 block of Parthenia. Clandestine lab detectives were called in, and seized meth-making chemicals and glassware, but found no suspects.

Business owners working next to the meth lab didn't know what was happening just a door away. But police said the danger is enormous because labs generate harmful fumes and sometimes explode.

``When they're cooking, they're heating this denatured alcohol, and chemicals and fumes work their way down toward the burner. It's highly flammable and can suddenly blow up,'' said Lt. Rich Dyer, in charge of the clandestine lab squad.

CAPTION(S):

chart

Chart: METH LABS

Authorities are finding more small ``user'' type labs that can manufacture batches of $10,000 worth of the drug at a time.

Source: Daily News research