GR residence raided for meth still open

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - A raid on a Grand Rapids meth lab is raising fears among neighbors about contamination and questions about why raids are so rare around Grand Rapids.

On its website, the DEA keeps a list of illegal drug labs, complete with addresses, raided since early 2000. There have been 10 illegal drug lab busts in Kent County since 2004, the National Clandestine Laboratory Register shows. Five of those have been in Grand Rapids.

Soon, another bust will be added to the register -- the home raided Friday on Broadway Avenue in Grand Rapids. Two people were arrested in that raid.

Broken windows and an open door at that residence are still raising concern among neighbors.

"It's open. We don't know what kind of chemicals were in there. We're not really familiar with the meth industry so we don't know what a kind of danger could be posed to our children as well as ourselves," said one worried neighbor.

Three days after the raid, the cellar door was wide open, the windows were smashed out and latex gloves still littered the back porch. A sign warning of possible contamination was posted on the front door.

Neighbors said they weren't aware the house was open until 24 Hour News 8 pointed it out.

"Close it up, close it up completely," said a neighbor. "Just board the windows, board the doors, do whatever it takes so it's not open, so it's not exposed to the public, especially our children."

The owner lives next door to the raided home. She said she can't assure neighbors it's safe now.

"How can I ensure that? I didn't even know it was going on. I knew nothing about meth. How can I ensure that?" she said.

Another of the latest raids in Kent County was in August at a Comstock Park residence in a middle-class neighborhood off 10 Mile Road. The man who lives at that residence, who asked not to be identified, said his son was cooking meth in a basement bedroom.

"I was stupid. I was ignorant," he said. "My son's been a drug addict since he was 14, and he's 28."

Police knocked on his door in August, looking for his son's girlfriend.

"Then they saw the gun safe smoking and I said, 'Woah," the man recalled.

The smoke was coming from the gun safe in his son's basement bedroom. Inside the safe was 20 two-liter bottles of meth cooking.

That forced his family out of the home for more than two weeks to clean up contamination at a cost of $400.

"We just gutted the whole basement," he said.

He said he's relieved police caught his son.

"Are you kidding me? He could have blown me up," he said. "He'll never been in my house again; I'll guarantee you that."

The National Clandestine Laboratory Register shows that southwest Michigan is home to three-quarters of the state's 908 busted drugs labs in the last eight years. There were 318 busts in Kalamazoo County alone in that time period.

Experts say there are many reasons why southwest Michigan has so many more raided labs than the Grand Rapids area. For example, some agencies focus more on meth than others. Some might not be reporting all their numbers to the DEA.

Additionally, meth smells so bad that it's often cooked in rural areas, though police say the trend lately is to cook small batches in the inner city.

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Since 2004, there have been 908 clandestine meth labs in the state of Michigan, the DEA said. The top counties for meth labs in that time frame are:

Kalamazoo County: 318
St. Joseph: 97
Van Buren: 89
Allegan: 80
Branch: 40
Calhoun: 35
Berrien: 34
Cass: 30
Barry County: 26

Other West MI Counties:

Kent: 10
Ionia: 8
Montcalm: 5
Muskegon: 4
Newaygo: 2
Mecosta: 1
Ottawa: 1

Source: DEA