Tom Salisbury has seen children stripped naked in their frontyards, hosed down to cleanse them of dangerous chemicals, swaddled in towels and held in squad cars to wait as their parents were led away in handcuffs.
An investigator with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, Salisbury knows firsthand how traumatic busting a home-based methamphetamine lab can be on the children who happen to live there.
That's why he, in partnership with Perris businessman John Barnes, began an effort to create a fleet of four county-owned recreational vehicles specially outfitted to provide a refuge for the children caught in the middle of the Inland Empire's meth trade.
"I just wanted to provide a safe haven for them," said Barnes, who helped raise $30,000 to buy the county's first such vehicle.
Filled with new clothes, toys, snacks, videos and DVDs, the "community resource vehicles" will offer children privacy and distraction during the investigation and decontamination process following the arrest of parents or other relatives. One vehicle has just been unveiled; the others are being prepared.
Salisbury, who has witnessed between 1,000 and 2,000 meth lab raids involving children in the last seven years, said he "wanted to come up with a way to reduce the trauma inflicted on those children." While Inland Empire meth busts have decreased in recent years, authorities say the area remains a center of production, with nearly 200 labs raided in Riverside and San Bernardino counties last year.
In many cases, kids at home labs live in squalor among toxic and highly explosive meth byproducts, feces-stained blankets and kitchens filled with rotting food and maggots, Salisbury said, recalling some of the worst conditions he has seen. Some accidentally ingest toxic substances, like the water-bottle full of meth-laced fluid one 7-year-old boy drank, Salisbury said. After three gulps, he vomited and was eventually fine.
"Most places, we didn't even want to be inside, yet these kids were living there for extended periods," he said.
A camping trip with his three children inspired Salisbury's RV idea. It can take as long as 12 hours for children to be re-housed and provided with medical care after a meth bust, Salisbury said. Often, all of their chemically tainted toys, clothes and other possessions must be destroyed.
"These children are all victims of the poor choices that were made by their parents," said Riverside County Supervisor Marion Ashley, who helped Barnes with the fundraising. "They shouldn't have to pay for it."
