The Mobile County Commission will receive $450,000 from the U.S. Department of Justice to combat methamphetamine, part of a federal push to slow a drug that had spread rapidly through rural and suburban Alabama in the mid-2000s.
U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science, announced the award, which comes through the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services — the Justice Department office known as COPS.
A national problem with local consequences
The money was awarded under the COPS Methamphetamine Training and Technical Assistance program, which funds projects aimed at increasing community awareness of meth use and abuse. Grants went to projects judged most capable of having a national impact, with the expectation that lessons learned would benefit agencies well beyond the ones receiving funds.
“Unfortunately, methamphetamine usage is on the rise nationwide,” Shelby said. “This drug knows no boundaries of age, gender, class or race and has wreaked havoc on our nation. It is important that we continue to dedicate necessary resources to eliminate this dangerous drug.”
Methamphetamine had become a particular burden for county sheriffs across the region. Small clandestine labs, often assembled from household chemicals and cold medicine, turned up in homes, motel rooms and vehicles, leaving behind contaminated properties and hazardous cleanup costs that fell to local government.
Three parts to the county’s plan
Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran said his office worked with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in applying for the grant and would spend the money over roughly two years.
“We worked with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in seeking this grant and applied with the Justice’s office of COPS,” Cochran said. “As I understand it, we receive the money to utilize over a two-year period.”
According to Cochran, the program would have three primary components:
- An awareness campaign to educate the public about methamphetamine use and its effects.
- Data collection and analysis to measure the impact of both the awareness effort and enforcement activity.
- Enforcement, focused on precursor compliance — the tracking and regulation of the ingredients used to manufacture meth — as well as investigations of meth production itself.
The emphasis on precursor compliance reflected the strategy then gaining ground nationally. Rather than relying solely on arrests after labs were discovered, law enforcement agencies worked with pharmacies and retailers to monitor and limit sales of the pseudoephedrine and related chemicals used to cook the drug. Alabama and other states had begun tightening those rules, and federal law had moved cold medicine behind the counter.
Measuring what works
The data component was notable in its own right. County agencies rarely had money set aside to determine whether a public awareness campaign or an enforcement surge actually changed behavior. Building analysis into the grant meant the county would be expected to show results rather than simply count arrests.
For Mobile County, with its mix of urban neighborhoods, suburban subdivisions and large stretches of rural land in the north and south of the county, the grant offered a chance to combine those approaches across very different communities. The awareness campaign would be aimed at residents; the enforcement piece at the supply chain that made small-scale manufacture possible.
The award was one of several COPS initiatives targeting methamphetamine nationwide during that period, and it arrived as sheriff’s offices throughout south Alabama were reporting a rise in lab seizures and in the burden of investigating them.