Focus 580; Rural Crime

In this hour of the program we'll be talking about rural crime and we have two guests with us in the studio. Ralph Weiss situs professor of criminal justice at Illinois State University in normal and has written extensively on the subject of crime and law enforcement particularly on the subject of rural crime. Also with us is Richard Goff. He is the public defender for Dewitt County has been doing that for a number of years and then you go back a little ways he also was the state's attorney for Dewitt County. So he's argued both sides and he is also a graduate of Illinois State University. And I'm pleased to have both of them here on the program and as we talk of course as always questions are welcome people are invited to call. And the number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. Well thank you both very much for being here. Thank you and thank you. Something just to start out with I guess I'm interested in getting a kind of an of an overview of trends particularly about how things may be over the last decade or two have changed as I think that the perception is

you know if you ask people why would you want to live in a rural area rural area. They'll say well they probably have a list of things but chances are probably pretty good that public safety is going to be one of them. We have this perception that crime. In urban areas it's a much bigger problem and that is probably true. However it also seems that in more recent years the differences between urban crime and rural crime arced are shrinking and that in fact some of the numbers that I have seen suggest that overall in the United States crime levels have indeed dropped but that rural areas haven't actually enjoyed the same the same benefit. If you want to put it that way that urban areas have. So can you talk a little bit just about that about numbers and trends just to start. I don't think that's really true that I wrote rural crime is it increasing or that it has not dropped very much. What you find is that it runs on a

parallel path with urban crime urban crime goes up rural crime goes up. In the same way when it goes down but rural crime is so much less frequent that if you're talking percentage change it can't drop as much. You know I give an example in Illinois there are somewhere between 100 and a thousand homicides in Illinois each year. If you take the 65 counties that the state police count as rural counties there are only 44 homicides there. So two thirds of the counties in the state account for only 44 of the nearly 1000 homicides. So if you were to now have 50 homicides instead of 44 you'd have a substantial increase even though you've only gone up six. Right. So percentage wise would look like you had a big jump but if you increase the the rest of the state by six that would hardly show a blip in terms of percentage change. Well let me ask you ever to go off it now. You've had an opportunity to watch these kinds of things for a number of years both as a public defender and then also as a prosecutor. I mean I have it during the

time that you've been involved in law as an attorney. Have you seen things change or are there anything notable that you would point to as as a way of saying yes today that this is a this is a way in which crime in the rural area is different than it was you know 10 years 15 years 20 years ago. By having only been practicing now for 17 years I'm not going to go back to 20. But it seems to me to be remarkably stable. Will have a run of say property crimes where the Machine Shed the burglaries. That'll happen and then we'll have a run of now maybe drug delivery type crimes you know where people are or so on. You know drugs to their neighbors and their friends out there in the in the country a little bit of the methamphetamine came around a little while ago and but we haven't really seen that real big over and do it County. What we've seen is is your standard every

day thing and the bad checks the burglaries. It's all remains about constant. Well let me pick up on the idea of drugs simply because I think you know you might have the idea because it's getting a lot of attention in the media that somehow that there's been a very dramatic increase of activity involving illegal drugs narcotics particularly the manufacture of methamphetamines in rural areas. Is that true. Yes it although I should say it's not true in every rural area but certainly in farming communities and in pockets you know what'll happen is you'll have someone move into the area. I'm thinking of some particular counties in Illinois where someone was involved in drugs they had moved away or perhaps had gone to prison. And while they were gone they learned about making methamphetamine and then they moved back to the area and suddenly had this skill that was very marketable and they could teach other people who had been teach other people and suddenly you have this methane explosion. I had that first person that moved

back you probably wouldn't have a huge meth problem there. And so happenstance is a fairly important factor but we're seeing a lot of it meth is it's become such an issue that the spring edition of The Farm Bureau's newsletter had its cover story on methamphetamine. And certainly it wouldn't have gotten that kind of attention if it weren't a big issue for farmers and for the agriculture community. Well certainly one reason it would be an issue is because one of the constituents is a farm chemical. So absolutely it's out there and it's available and it ties into another fact of rural life is that you have a lot of land you don't have all that many people. So it's maybe in some sense easier to commit crime because there are not as many people who are around too. Two to monitor what's going on. That's partly true that rural areas have a curious phenomenon. You have more physical privacy in the sense that you could stand out in your backyard and be naked and

people probably wouldn't be around to see it. However you have less social privacy in that people tend to know your business. They tend they tend to know a lot about what's going on in families and other places. And I should also point out when I shouldn't have created the impression that there's not crime in rural areas because there are two areas of crime where rates in rural areas are comparable to urban areas. One of those is drug use and the other is domestic violence. Domestic violence is an enormous issue and the other problem that plagues rural areas is DUI. Because you've got to drive to get places. Well in the end you just pick up the point about domestic violence I guess that again goes back to this issue that that one thing one respect in which rulers for a different city is it has to do with population density and the fact that in rural areas people may well be much more isolated. And so that that's that's going to be a factor in something like that I think particularly in domestic violence.

You know him that well could be domestic violence cases are all over the place it's happening at the farm house it's happened at the trailer park it's happening in the apartments it's just right down the street and someone's in someone's residential area that's everywhere. There's a lot more I think attention paid to that problem than are you know has been in the past as a result. There's greater reporting. The aggressive nature of these support groups to get out to the to the victims speak to the victims make them aware of the social order of the services that are available and support is available I think encourages people to come in and report these sort of things more frequently as a result we see a lot more of it coming through the court house. There are there gotta be some respects in which crime say property crimes like theft are going to be maybe a little bit different in rural areas and in the sense that in Sydney

you're not going to have any cattle rustling because there are no cattle rustler or you know something that involves theft of farm chemicals or machinery theft or something like that that it's just that the object itself is going to be different because of the setting. But in terms of the crime itself and in terms of burglary or theft is there any real big difference between that and that what you see in a city and then what you see in the countryside. I don't think the crime itself is different but I think the the route to solving the crime is different you're more likely to have people notice if someone strange is outside someone's house you're more likely to have people recognize the person who is leaving the house says a member of the community. So the idea that people know each other a little more and have closer connections makes an impact makes a difference when you're talking about solving the crime and dealing with it in an urban area. Again you you don't have much physical privacy wherever you are people see you but they don't necessarily know you. They don't necessarily know anything about you you're just another body out there.

Well that I guess I can imagine though that that might be in again it in an urban area if the police are going around there trying to get some information about a crime and they're asking people what they know what they've seen. There is a certain level of anonymity in the rural area where everybody knows everybody else. Then that's that's gone. And I wonder does that make people any less likely to want to talk to the police and provide them information. When I say I don't I don't think that people are less likely to want to cooperate with the with law enforcement. That what we see out in the in the country as it were was there's just fewer people to see what's going on. If they see what's going on there they're very quick to alert authorities or give someone a phone call and say we've got a suspicious vehicle sit in this lane or or or I don't know who this guy is walking down the alley back here but. There's there's more opportunity to do it I think because you can just flat out be unobserved

if you're when you want to talk about what different kernel people have ever thought about what they told me about but it's available. I mean if people want to go out and steal they can go out and steal. And we see it. It's all over the place. Catching them is not not necessarily any easier. The pawnshops thank God that they're that they're toeing the line like they are because that's where we catch a lot of criminals was the pawnshops. They show up with those tools or with the stereos or whatever and they know what monsters want to blow it and they're great. They're really pretty. Well how do they your for example if you're in a situation like that and say you're working there and someone brings something into my heart. How do you know that it's not theirs that they came by it by less than legal means. I don't know how they do it. They have something worked out but these these folks at the at the pawn shop seem to be right have hardwired into the police stations because we've had a lot of people get getting busted at the at the pawn jobs

we still out of my classes and put it that way. Well I think just as a as a legal point if if they accept goods that are stolen. Is there some to some liability attached to that or is there for them as far as they're concerned. There it's not they're not responsible for determining where that thing came from they just take it at face value when the person comes in right right well. For theft if if you knowingly receive something that is stolen or if you receive something under conditions that would lead a reasonable person to believe that it was stolen then you're also guilty of theft but in that in the situation of the pawnshop NO NO would be normally take product down they pay out cash it's all on videotape and when the when the law enforcement people come around check and you know if you take it in this or this or this and they get serial numbers and it pops up it has to transaction and then they go right to the taping and there and there's the person who came in with the stuff and it's very straightforward. Their car stereos things like that they go straight from from thief to

consumer and bypass the pawn shops those things are real hard to chase down. You know we we have officers that spend days and days and days trying to track down you know car you know people that are burglarized in vehicles and things like that. And then the people who are stealing from one drug dealers dealer for another drug dealer. And that happens quite a bit and that stuff doesn't get reported a whole lot and they just kind of rolls around and they get in when they get him. Do people tend to people who are involved in criminal activity in the community do they tend to be people from the community and not people from outside. Yes yes yes. We were talking earlier before the show started about methamphetamine and some of the work I've been doing this summer is in a county that has two counties that actually have tremendously high arrest rates for methamphetamine. But it's almost entirely local. These are local people producing for themselves and for other locals not someone bringing it in from the outside not. There just are no external connections

to speak of. And it is that is it also produced for local. Yes. Is so pretty so produced for local It's local people producing it for local production. Well with methamphetamine you actually have two routes you can. You can have it brought in from California from the state of Washington or from Mexico and that does happen in some rural areas. But what happens in most cases is once people learn how to make it it is so much cheaper and easier to make it yourself than to try to get it through a distributor that they begin making it themselves and these are locals these if you're from an outside area there's not much of an occasion for you to have a lot of contacts or a lot of reason to come into an area to start cooking. So the cooks tend to be local and they tend to distribute to their buddies. The typical pattern is I'm going to make some. And if you want some way you can go steal the anhydrous I need in your other buddy over here conceal the pills I need in another one your friends can steal the batteries I need and then Will Sharon. And that's

and so what you find is a lot of meth and drug stuff in these rural areas is bartering and not necessarily cash transactions as you might see in a larger city. Is the reason that this particular drug we have started to see more and more of it is that simply that it's not all that hard to make it if you know how that the stuff that you need is not that difficult to get and actually doing it. I know it's potentially dangerous but it apparently it's not that hard. That's correct it's not that hard. You apparently are told I'm told this I've never actually looked it up but they tell me on the Internet you can go get any kind of recipe and step by step instructions rock'n'roll. Go for it. Unless last count I heard there was something on the order of eleven hundred sites that had met the recipes. But the reality is not many of the people I've been exposed to have gotten their recipes from the web they get them from friends so they could get in from the web but they tend not to

and they tend not to be rocket scientists. So so I'm not sure how how good a job they would do of following a written recipe they tend to follow the visual directions of the of the body they're working with. But some of these people when I say they're not rocket scientists there was one case in Edgar County where someone had apparently tried to use a cordless drill to drill through a nurse tank of anhydrous which if you know anything about an hydrous is just about the dumbest thing one could do. But again they're not rocket scientists and that in some ways makes it all the more frightening because they don't necessarily know what they're doing in terms of the chemistry of it all. And it is it is as it is it's dangerous you're dealing with hazardous materials and that's also why once you've located a meth lab and you decide that you have to clean that up that poses a real serious problem for whether it's law enforcement or you know you're whatever kind of first responders I guess end up that way. That being their job they've got to deal with it. That is potentially dangerous when you're dealing with hazardous material.

You know one of the one of the point that I think is really important I don't think enough people out there appreciate the size of the drop in crime. We have in the state of Illinois since and just since 1901 about two thirds as many serious crimes reported to the police what we call felony kinds of offenses. So there's been an enormous drop and perhaps Richard could address this but that's been a drop within the context of more and more things being made serious crimes so that things that one might have been misdemeanors 20 years ago are now felonies. And so that drop is is even greater than you might guess from just looking at the numbers. That's that's true. I like to think that our legislature over Springfield is doing just a wonderful job spending our money or stealing it as the case may be. And if there's probably any increase in crimes probably white collar crime has been prosecuted up to this point but. What we see as far as felony type crimes are

the felony deceptive practice forgery burglary. Those are the main things we're seeing property type crimes rarely are. Violent crime is way down. You know someone getting beat down. I mean to the point where they've suffered great bodily harm as an eye and aggravated battery of that kind is just almost off the table. We just don't get those attempt murders. I had a couple of over in to a county here and they happened within like 10 days of each other which was weird but you know you don't get that very often. We had the. That the incident at the lake here last year where the children died that you know that's an anomaly. I mean before that the the last murder that we've had in tuit County there was charges of murder it was when I was state's attorney and that was in 1900. So it's just something that just doesn't happen out there where people tend to treat each other pretty well as far as that goes. Now they might check.

Their neighbor's kid might come over in your garage and see if it helps off some of them but violent crime is way down. Forcible sexual cases are way down. That's which is thankfully way down I They're no fun to try. So how do you how do you account for that. There must be some some cluster of reasons. It's actually quite an interesting sport to go to meetings of criminologists who have spent their careers explaining why crime was going up and the world was coming to an end. And what you find is a series of explanations that just don't make any real sense. There was a recent meeting where a person went through this long list well we think it's because drug markets settle down within and it goes down a whole list of things and someone in the audience raise their hand and said Well you know all those things have happened in Canada and we've not seen a change in crime the way you have. And so that basically I have no idea and no one seems to really know it.

It is possible that crime is like fashion where you have cycles and trends and patterns that we simply can't explain very well. You know I would point out another interesting little bit of trivia here regarding rural crime. My colleagues and I have spent a lot of time looking at rural crime patterns and urban crime patterns. And if you look at homicide you look at violent crime and property crime and you look at it at the county level you can pretty much guess which counties are going to have high levels of crime by looking at characteristics of the county renter occupied housing divorce rates things of that sort in cities. None of those things seem to help us much in predicting crime in rural counties. You can't tell whether a rural county is going to have a high crime rate or not by looking at those factors that seem to explain it in cities. And we've quite frankly been scratching our heads trying to understand why it is there and can you draw any kind of line between economic prosperity that is how people are doing where the people have money in their pockets and crime rates. You would

think that that would certainly particularly if you thought talk about things like bouncing checks and Berg residential burglaries and things like you know although those sorts of things that there might be some relationship between that and just how how well people are doing it into a county we've lost. Two hundred three hundred jobs I suppose in the last three years four years with Rivera moving over to Indonesia and other things closing up it's you know it's been pretty rough economically for a lot of folks. But I haven't necessarily seen that they were the people committing any of these grand they were all working people that lost their jobs. Working people don't tend to be the kind that go out and and do crimes. Our printers and our computers have gotten very good. And as a result fake payroll checks and things of that nature which are forgeries tend to show

up at different stores that cashed payroll checks but people I noticed that were doing that weren't people that were working Anyhow that was their job was stealing. It's always support of themselves but I really didn't see a great you know I we really all of us were scratching our heads were watching at the courthouse. Oh my God what's going to happen now you know all these jobs are leaving town. What happened was people left town too and they went where the work was. But we did see a huge increase in crime. Well what about what about that what about out migration. I guess I mean I don't know what's been happening with population in rural areas where there has been any significant decrease in numbers. So you might say well maybe if there are fewer people there's there's going to be less crime. No. Well it's sort of a mixed picture what you find is that there was a period up into the mid to late 90s where people were moving out of rural areas in substantial numbers. Now you're finding they're moving back and they're moving back because of a whole host of reasons. Some can do

their jobs by telephone and computer program puter programmers for example don't have to be in a particular location. Also there are a number of what we would call rural areas where people commute into. Larger communities and that's becoming very appealing and you can see that. I don't know if you want to call Mohammed a rural area but you find more and more people moving out of places like Champaign Urbana to 20 30 miles away sometimes even further. And so some of these rural areas are actually picking up populations if they're on the fringes if they're really remote then then things can get kind of rough. But again the economic link is a pretty weak when I ask a police chief in West Virginia once they were about to build a large facility this was some years ago the FBI was going to build a large facility to store records and they're going to be employing lots of people in a very impoverished area. And I said well what do you think's going to happen to Crimea so it's going to go up. And I said why would it go up he says well people will now have

the CRC to steal. They will now have color TVs to steal. You know we're poor here we have nothing to steal. So ironically it with economic advances you actually saw improvements in the numbers of crimes if you want to use the word improvements. The other thing that does happen sometimes when you find rural areas growing rapidly that the crime rate will grow faster then the population grows. And again it kind of is counterintuitive in some ways because you think with population growth you have economic growth and things would get better. But in fact crime and population density go together the more people you have the higher the rate of crime it's not just that you have more crimes because there are more people the actual crime per hundred thousand goes up. Well we're beyond our midpoint here a little bit past me introduce Again our guest for this hour. The fellow you just heard speaking this is RALPH Y site He's professor of criminal justice at Illinois State University and hearing a lot about crime criminal justice issues law enforcement particularly in

rural areas all of those things and our other guest is Richard Goff. He is the public defender for Dewitt County and also has served as the state's attorney for Dewitt County and we're talking about rural crime. And we have a caller here would welcome others if you have questions. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. The first caller seen champagne 1 1 5 0 0 0. Yes I just tuned into this station but I have had several instances where. People have broken in and stolen certain items and inevitably they end up at the local pawn shops. And it's been a while since I checked the you know moco or state ordinances on pawn shops but it seemed to me that when I did the last check at it was something like if if they just buy it outright they

don't necessarily have to keep a record or or something with with you know their record keeping. But if they they pawn it and there is a holding period and that it seemed really contorted and I was I was rude when I was researching this and it was 5 or 8 or 10 years ago it seemed that some reform could be made especially with computers these days where everything that's part of the pawnshop would automatically go over to the police station and have some period of holding time so that things that are stolen could be identified and you know it just seems like there's such a resource for the thieves to go sell things at the pawn shop and on. I just for some reform of that it would seem. To be a real natural thing to just you know cut off that resource and you know give people some disincentive to to go on and steal things because they have a harder time

collecting on that. You know as you know earlier in the program Richard Gough was talking about the fact that at least from from his experiences where he lives and works the people who run the pawn shops are one of the law enforcement's greatest assets in recovering stuff stolen property because they seem to really keep an eye out for it but I don't know. Maybe you can talk about what what exactly the law says. But at the same time they also really benefit from all of the good that they can sell and make money on. I'm not going to speak to you know their profit motive but it would I believe if I'm if I'm not absolutely mistaken there's been changes and they have to record and keep record of every transaction that goes through there. And also what I've what I've learned is it's early from my observations in my county the cases that I've dealt with the individuals who are taking stolen property to

the pawn shops are less sophisticated than than perhaps others who are involved in in property crime. These are they tend to be younger they tend to be stupid. I'm just going to use that word because that's what I see they're just flat out stupid. They go in there there's a record made and usually within a week or two or three once the once the proper has been reported stolen then the. And the police have cast their net as it were. They're caught. The more sophisticated of the thieves and those that they have been in the business I guess if you want to call it that a little longer they tend to avoid the pawnshop because there is no record then of their transaction. You know I know that I ended up being the one that had to go find my stuff at all the pawn shops and tell the police and I I'm sure with as much stuff as this store one you could have a full time job at the police stations and keep track of the records from the pawn shop.

Unfortunately I think that's true. Yeah and I would think that the general process where the police go to the pawn shop is probably more efficient than having the pawn shop send everything to the police because what'll happen is the police will simply be buried in these transactions and will end up not looking at any of them because they'll just be buried in paperwork. You know the the number of transactions at pawnshops two is pretty substantial and certainly a good portion of them are legal and legitimate and don't cause any alarm or aren't a problem. And you know we really need to be careful with our police agencies that we don't overload them with stuff because it's similar to some of the controversy now over DNA analysis where you have you know something like 15000 rape kits in New York City that have never been tested because they just don't have time. So gathering information is wonderful but it's easy to overwhelm the department. But I would think that if. There was a database that could be shipped or even once a week.

Or you know if there was a holding period or for a law that said they can't sell anything for two weeks once they take it in and you know maybe it would be a local law or a state law or something like that. You know you go on each day you punch up anything and you get a whole list of what you want to search for and it's just right there. If somebody stole you know TVs they could you know punch up 1000 inch RCA TV and get a list of possibilities there and it really wouldn't take that loss. Once they know that somebody reported something stolen to see if it had been turned in in the last two weeks. I just you know it's something that's gotten in my craw over the years. I thought I would just throw it out there. Well it's something you can certainly suggested to represented in the legislature. It sounds like that would be the kind of thing if you're going to do that it would be it would make most sense for that to be a State and Illinois state law so that they would be a uniform requirement so that everybody would know what it was and everybody would have to follow it. OK well thanks for the call but I guess just going back

to what what Richard was saying it's as far as you know where where you live and practice the pawnshops are required to keep a record of everything or of everything that comes in and then do they also does the person who is bringing that do they have to somehow tell the person who they are give them some identification. Or does it just sort of the stuff that gets recorded. As I recall there are they're all identified and they're all on videotape. There's literally a camera looking right at him from the moment they walk in the door all the way through the transaction and they're signing papers and they're given given identification for everything that comes in. To be able to you know to send everything to the police I suppose would be wonderful if you had someone to to deal with it as Dr. White was saying. But you know the way they're doing it now as far as the police going out there and actually you know they're using a little shoe leather. It's a much more focused and I think much more efficient that way. If you go if you walk in the store with a list of items

and serial numbers. You know they can tell you right away you gotta go. How many pawn shops are there into would get it. None none none. One is a wonderful thing. But our people seem to find their way to Decatur Bloomington it's only a 20 minute trip in other directions so let's hope somebody need DNA. Lie Number four Hello hello. Two things where I'm from an Indiana rural crime basically is growing marijuana and having Well basically now I guess rolling Mobot mo bile crack or meth labs let me say that meth labs. That seems to be in pretty much a rural boys thing from what I've seen and the second question has to deal with this sort of general characteristics of being a public defender and a prosecutor. I probably not the same time by. What sort of situations arise where I don't know if your integrity or whatever you might

call it would be pushed one way or the other. If you can answer that. Thanks a lot. Well let me try to address a sysfs. I when I first got to law school I worked as an assistant state's attorney and then as a state's attorney into accounting then I got out of public office went into private practice for a few years and then became a public defender. There is really no crossing of the offices as it were as that goes. I hope that addressed your concern. Well I suppose suppose in a sense you know or what Ralph was talking earlier about the fact that one of the things that maybe makes this whole business of law enforcement and crime in a rural area different from the city is that everybody knows everybody else you know their small towns and I'm sure that it's in the same in local government. It's the case in law enforcement. It's the case. There aren't that many lawyers there aren't that many police officers. So everybody is going to

know everybody else. And here in the case of somebody like you you actually were. You were the state's attorney and now you're the public defender so the community of people is really small. So I don't know if that makes it easier to work together or if sometimes that makes it more difficult to work together. I suppose if somebody is in a position to exercise some influence you know I don't know if that again would make it harder easier to do something like that or whether it make it hard to do something like that without getting into the old stereotypes and the old judges. You know there's the old joke that a good lawyer knows law great lawyer knows the judge into a county. When I was distaste attorney there was a fellow it was named that was the public defender. Now he's the state's attorney and I'm the public defender. Just a role reversal it is a small county we have right now practicing into Wyck County. Six counting the current state's attorney

six people who have held the office of do it County state's attorney are currently practicing law. We went through a period where it was one term or one term or one term or you know and go through a lot of lawyers that way and we only got about 15 lawyers in the bar association. So. And there's another angle to this and that is that unlike a large city in a smaller community the police officer the prosecutor the defense attorney all of these people have a much better chance of knowing the accused of knowing the victims. So you've got these personal connections you know a police officer in a small community a judge in a small community there the judge and there the police officer whether they're on duty or not and they may be approached in grocery stores they may be approached when they try to go out to a movie or something. But the idea of a public life in a private life is being completely separate gets blended together in these smaller communities. And how do you in in terms of being either a defense attorney or a

prosecutor or whatever does does that fact does the fact that the world in which you operate is small and everybody knows everybody else and you even have instances here where we have people have been both defense attorneys and press and and argued for the prosecution. Does that make doing the job. Easier or harder What how does how does that affect the way trials are conducted. I could I think I could say that trials are conducted with the utmost integrity I mean we're exceedingly exceedingly careful to make sure that everybody's rights are being protected and zealously representing our client whether we're the prosecutor or the defense attorney. I don't know that it will because we know each other I suppose allows. How do I say it. There's a lot of personal respect for each other as as attorneys and as professionals because we do know what each other's tendencies are and we do know that I

know for a fact that this fellow over here is not going to lie to me about something and I'm not going to lie to him and for that reason there's a lot of good very good interaction. I don't have any problem going into another county and practicing there it's the same thing whether I know him or not. It's always the same. You know you just you know you're not going to change from place to place simply because they know you. On the other hand as you were saying you might have someone approach you to store at the ballgame or or something like that and have a bit of information or have a concern that they may pass along to you. That happens a lot. I tend not to go into a lot of social settings simply because of my current job as a public defender and I've been doing this since 96. You can't get away from it. You know if I want to go out and socialize I usually go out of town or out of county completely where people don't know who I am so I can sit and visit

and not be bombarded with. Well my cousin did this or you did that or you know I don't want to hear thank you when I'm off duty right now. I'm going back to the question that the caller raised about drugs we did talk a bit earlier about the fact that something we certainly have seen more and more in rural areas is that it's manufacture if methamphetamines. And that it was partly was because they were easy partly because it's not that hard to get the stuff. And I think what rough eyesight was talking about the fact that it tends to be involved groups of people who sort of know one another who know how to do it and one person teaches somebody else and they teach somebody else. And that that pretty much is. It's produced for local consumption. It's a sort of a local market. And I would assume that as the caller says that most of what we're talking about here is young people too. Is that true. Well actually in the case of meth it's a little different than some of the other drugs you find a wider age range with meth than you find with other drugs for for drugs in the past we were accustomed to in rural areas to them being primarily young

people. Now you're finding meth users really cross the whole range of ages. It's not limited to younger people and I'm talking about some people starting when they're 60. Because meth has another characteristic too to keep in mind it is something that some people get into. Originally not for recreational purposes but to help them stay awake because they're working double shifts or sometimes women get into it to help them lose weight because it does suppress the appetite and it bleeds over into an addiction from there. And so you can get people involved in it for all kinds of reasons and it's that the stereotype of a young male is not quite as as true with meth as it is with other drugs. You know I think also you have done some writing about marijuana production in rural areas. Is that something that you we continue to see it continues to happen you hear less about it than you did before because now we have new emergencies to worry about like methamphetamine and what you hear from rural police now is

but it makes me long for the old days when I just worried about marijuana and I thought that was evil. It marijuana still there it just doesn't get the attention it once just once did because resources are now focused on things like methamphetamine. Yeah I guess that the thing you think about is as in the middle of a cornfield somewhere someone staking out a little plot and growing something in a place where generally you're not going to be able to see it. It's not maybe readily accessible unless you know where it is and it's a way that you can do it and keep it hidden sort of hidden in plain sight. You can always tell the naive growers because they put it in the middle of a cornfield which is fine until say October when the corn turns brown and the marijuana remains green and which is like a beacon. Yeah. And marijuana doesn't tend to explode into the flame and burn houses down quite the way well you know meat it will explode into flame and it's going to require some external source to get it there. Yeah it's not a hazardous material in itself. Yeah

let's talk with someone else here Bana line 1. Hi. Well thank you. OK I've been wondering about something for a long time I'm hoping I can phrase it into a question that will make sense about the message that I mean this isn't talking about that a lot. You know there are legalized forms of meth that people use for medications. And you would know what I'm talking about and I've always. I wonder you know what's the difference between the forms that people are making illegally I mean I know it's much more powerful. They mean does it. Well what would be the reason for for being illegal. I mean I it's it's that as far as I know it's not a hallucinogenic it's I mean is it OK. So I'm just wondering I'm hoping I'm making a question that makes sense for you here. You know meth is an interesting substance because most people don't realize it is legally

manufactured under the name Guess oxen. And there are three legal uses for it believe it or not we give methamphetamines to children right who are attention deficit. Right. We give it to those rare cases of narcolepsy where people have trouble staying awake and we give it in unusual cases to people who are extremely obese as a weight loss tool. One of the curious things about meth is it is powerfully addictive and the cravings lasts for a very long time. For people who are heavy users it does appear however that when used in lower doses it is not particularly destructive or addicting. And that's something that you don't find discuss very much in the research and we don't really know very much about why that might be true. I might also point out that that amphetamines which are simply a slightly weaker version of methamphetamine are periodic only given by the military to help keep the troops awake.

And you may remember the case where the trial was held in Springfield the two pilots who mistakenly bombed the Canadians and their defense was that they were given these go pills and they had to take them and that they interfered with their ability to think properly and to make good judgments. So it is it is used in a number of settings for legal reasons why it is so powerfully addictive and destructive at high levels and not terribly addictive at lower levels. I don't know. I don't think anyone knows that well right. It is it just is more of a just easier to I mean I've had eyes. I've been prescribed it for the sleeping problems you know the inability to stay awake. But for example I stopped taking it in a number of times because it also has side effects and and for example if you have a cold even the last thing you can do is take

something that you know you can't you can't do that you have to stop taking it and it does have withdrawal effects but that IME I guess they're not. They can't be as anywhere near as. That is maybe the much more intense forms of it so I just I've just always wondered about that since it's legal in some situations. You know I mean it seems like it would end up taking. For example you know a fair amount of law. Enforcement time and energy to to control these illegal labs and I've just always wondered you know then why is it illegal in some situations and legal in other situations and I guess it's still not an absolutely clear kind of thing. Well then the illegal labs have other problems for example one of the things used in making meth is Lithium from lithium batteries and that is also a substance that psychiatrists give for people with many what we call manic depressive is now bipolar disorder. Right. But if you are not very careful about the levels of lithium that you're using when you cook your meth the meth can start doing strange things to your

mind. Oh I can understand why illegal labs would be bad. It may if it wasn't illegal I may and maybe there would still be illegal labs. If it wasn't illegal maybe that's where some of my logic falls apart. I don't know and those labs have you're right it's the labs that are a part of the problem and you also have the problem of course of toxic waste. You know the old thing about. Yeah every one pound of meth produces about 5 pounds of toxic materials. Well OK I didn't know that either. OK well that answers my question so thanks. Very interesting thanks for the go. Just one thing I want to talk about will be here we have a couple minutes left as law enforcement and in rural areas and particular challenges that they face and and one of them I'm sure is the fact that depart rural law and law enforcement their departments are small and that they may have to cover a lot of area geographically. But again because populations maybe are smaller in the rural areas I guess I'm I don't know if you would have a number like this but I'm interested in and per capita of the

relationship between number of police officers and populations whether in fact is it really is lower in rural areas or given the fact that you know in cities you have a very very large city. I would think that that in fact that the relation ratio would be a lot you know of people the police officers would be a lot higher actually. It is lower in rural areas in general of course you have exceptions like Los Angeles has a very low number of officers per population but also expenditures per officer are about half in rural areas what they are in larger cities so it's not unusual to find rural police working without benefits for example. And it's it is unusual to find them unionized for example that every almost every major city is unionized and perhaps the worst part about the rural experience of policing is that certainly a survey we did several years ago found that 60 percent of the agencies in rural areas said that they routinely sent

officers out to domestics as with one officer only. No major city would send respond to a domestic with only one officer it's a miracle if they respond with only one car. But they would never just send one officer but in a rural area you often have no choice you go by yourself or you don't go. And by the same token backup can be far away and that's a real problem for let's say officers really and particularly in the debate going into domestic situations this is for police officers very dangerous and the actual number of injuries to police in domestics is small because in most agencies they go in with a good amount of force have at least two officers. But the potential for harm is Syria is great and if you're going in with only one obvious like I said tension goes up dramatically. Yes right. And I'm sure that it also just makes it that much more difficult to try to end in any positive way to intervene in the situation. Absolutely if there's only if there's only one how do you how do you have one person keep two people apart.

It's difficult to say with it. In my experience above the last police shooting that we had into a county was at a domestic and it was an officer with like almost a hostage situation a fellow prisoner hold a knife to his wife's throat and when he made a movie officer shot him. That was the last time I believe in to a county that a police was far gone in anger. You're in the line of duty I should say. What about the the career of the police officer I mean in terms of the number of years people are police officers is that any big difference between rural and urban. I think you're more likely to find an urban officer going to an agency and staying there. Rural police tend to move around a lot. They shift from one agency to another in part because the pay is so bad it's hard to live on what they're getting paid off and if they have any kind of aspirations if you've got a three person department it's there's not much of a place to move up to and so you do find a lot of moving around if people stay it's because it's their home town and they don't want to leave it. But but moving is very common. They're looking they're looking to move up. You have those that are nesters. They come in and they're

staying and they're that's fine but we have a lot of people that we lose to champagne that we lose to Decatur that we lose to Bloomington. You know we work because pay is better and if you think someday you'd like to be the chief maybe that's now for make more more money. But mostly it's that it's pretty much about money. Well and even things like there are a lot of rural agencies that can't even afford to train their officers to do the required training so they look for people who've either paid for the training themselves or who worked in another agency previously. Well that and the big the big departments can make out like bandits by taking the guys that we've paid to send to get trained and get some experience. They don't have to do that. They hit the city. They give them a bonus to sign or going to have to stop because we've come to the end of the time just have enough time say thanks to our guests Richard Gough He's the public defender for Dewitt County. Thank him rough eyesight He's professor of criminal justice. Illinois State University and all. Thank you both thank you thank you.