A rising tide: Meth use is soaring among Utahns

It's 4 a.m., and the narcotics team is entering a home in the Salt Lake Valley looking for a meth lab.

It's a surprise raid, so officers don't knock. Instead, they bust through windows and kick down doors in the night. One officer comes through a window, showering glass over a child sleeping on a couch.

The element of surprise is paramount. Meth cooks are typically violent, often have weapons, and officers had heard residents in this trailer were cooking and selling. Part of the lab is in the kitchen. There is a Pyrex pitcher and meth residue in a pot. There's a protective mask nearby and a glass meth pipe on the floor.

Down the hall, the officer finds more evidence as he rounds a corner.

His eerie breathing, recorded on the videotape, comes through a mask that protects him from the toxic fumes and chemicals. Behind that breathing sound, the camera finds glassware, tubing, syringes and iodine pellets in a back bedroom.

All the makings of a meth lab, the officer explains.

There's a baby's crib in this room, too.

When they entered the room moments earlier, officers found a baby asleep in the crib. Now the camera pans up in the dark and finds hot burners with meth in full production. The operation is hooked into venting and cooling systems, inches from the child's sleeping area.

This is the scene narcotics officers throughout the state face night after night — and the wear-and-tear of balancing police safety with factors like children's well-being in the endless tide of methamphetamine traffic clearly takes its toll.

"I used to be optimistic, but I'm not anymore," said Salt Lake Police Sgt. Ray Atack, who leads a team of narcotics officers.

"A drug war? It's really isn't a drug war. It's drug containment. That's what it is."

This year, the narcotics enforcement squad, affiliated with the Salt Lake Meth Initiative, has served 115 search warrants looking for meth caches or labs. Officers removed 49 children from these homes.

For each one the team shuts down, another seems to take its place. The trend means officers now see the second- and third-generation meth users when they enter a home. Officers also notice toughened, hardened children losing sensitivity about law enforcement and about the dangerous circumstances in which they live.

Consider the following examples:

• An undercover officer mills around an old motel near 900 West and 1000 North looking to make a meth buy. An 11-year-old approaches. "Do you want to get hooked up?" the boy asks. The child is selling for his parents.