The year isn’t over yet and already 33 felony charges of meth production have been filed in Knox County. That compares to eight charges filed in the entirety of last year, a difference of more than 400 percent.
Those figures come from a WGIL investigation into Knox County Courthouse records.
Chris Howard is captain at the Galesburg Police Department.
“When meth started way back when, it was full blown huge labs. And now it’s down to where you can make it in a plastic, two-liter pop bottle,” Howard says, “which has proven time and time again to be extremely dangerous. When they blow up, people get hurt, people die, people burn.”
Howard says a possible contributing factor to the increase in meth charges could be the gaining popularity of a “shake and bake” method of cooking the drug that is both more mobile and easier to do.
From 1997 to 2000, Howard worked with the Peoria Multi-County Narcotics Enforcement Group. During that time, meth was something of a non issue.
“I don’t recall working any meth cases at all,” Howard says, “be that in Galesburg or the other jurisdictions. I just don’t remember any. It was mostly cannabis, cocaine, a little bit of heroin here and there.”
He adds that meth cases in the area started to crop up in the mid- to late-2000s.
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