Vigilantism Stirs in Desert Haven for Illicit Drug Labs : Law enforcement: Newberry Springs residents arm themselves as crime rate soars amid influx of outsiders.

By TOM GORMAN

Dec. 24, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEWBERRY SPRINGS, Calif. — Out here in this desert valley, where the spirit of the Old West sidles up to historic Route 66, the townsfolk sound like they’re getting itchy trigger fingers.

With the murders, the break-ins and the robberies, they are talking about taking the law into their own hands, and even the lawman 25 miles west of here in Barstow is a little concerned about what he’s hearing.

“We all have guns. I sleep with one next to my bed and I’ve got another one in the living room next to the coffee table,” Jim Ellison, a truck driver turned local newspaper publisher, said unabashedly.

These independent-styled residents of this unincorporated desert community of 4,000 residents are still talking about how one of their neighbors scared some people off his property the other day with a mighty blast of his shotgun. Hell, everyone does it. But now they’re wondering if straight-shooting vigilantes are next. No names, mind you. No one says he’ll be the first to ride shotgun through the community. But they’re talking about it.

The target of their anger: illicit drug manufacturers who hide in the expanse of this huge desert region to cook up their batches of methamphetamine. Some are mom and pop bathtub operations. At least one family up here, the locals say, concocts enough of the white powder to supply pushers in Las Vegas. Everyone knows who it is, they say.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which patrols the area, wonders whether folks are exaggerating the situation. Still, they acknowledge that there is a drug problem.

“The desert, because of its openness, provides some unique opportunities for those who want to do other than the legal thing,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Hugh Gonthier, who commands the Barstow substation. “The desert is more susceptible as a place for people to set up (illicit operations). They can see us coming from a long way off.”

San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies already have raided about 10 drug labs around Newberry Springs this year, and have served more than 20 search warrants in their ongoing drug investigations.

In one incident, authorities looking for a parolee stumbled across a methamphetamine lab in his camper. In January, a drug task force swept five locations, seizing methamphetamine manufacturing equipment and, at one spot, uncovering a lab capable of producing 2 1/2 pounds of the drug at a time. Officers confiscated a quarter-pound of the drug, which had a street value of $13,000. In May, investigators looking for another parolee tracked him down in someone’s trailer, where they discovered a working meth lab capable of making up to four-ounce batches at a time.

By comparison, there were only two drug busts in Newberry Springs in all of 1991, department figures show.

Of the growing crime and drug problem, Ellison’s wife, Sue, said, “It’s gotten out of control. It used to be they were just killing each other and we didn’t care. But now they’re killing good people.”

Earlier this month, four people broke into Lee Ray and Peggy Williams’ home in Yermo, 12 miles across Silver Valley. Three men and a woman--all under the age of 21--robbed the couple, stole their vehicles, drove their victims out into the desert and shot them execution-style.

Lee Ray Williams was killed. His wife, who works for the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office, played dead after being shot twice in the face. She managed to walk a mile for help. A sheriff’s spokesman said that the investigation into the Williams murder is continuing and that authorities have not yet determined whether the attack was drug-related.

There’s been other crime, too--the kind of stuff you’d expect “down below,” the local euphemism for city life and all its evils. That’s why we moved up here, they say, amid the alfalfa fields and the apricot and pistachio orchards, where miners and old chicken ranchers hunker down over burgers at the A-frame Bagdad Cafe or hoist a cold one at The Barn, and for maybe the only real excitement, take in the competitive water-ski racing tournaments that even draw ESPN-TV crews each summer.

But now everyone’s talking about crime. The local hardware store owner sells acetone, which is essential to making methamphetamine, because no law restricts its sale. Max Rieger, who owns Last Chance Hardware, said his supplier is amazed by the demand for the stuff in the High Desert.

With his well-stocked shelves, Rieger figures he’s got the most lucrative bait for thieves in the valley. “That’s why I never leave my place without having someone here full time to watch out,” he said.

Bagdad Cafe owner Dick Devlin said, “I’m about as far removed as you can get from drugs and even I can tell you about the problem we’ve got.” After his meat locker was broken into the other day, Devlin says he’s ready to sell his business.

At the only bar in town, owner Virginia Omstead puts it this way: “I’m afraid we’ve gotten, how do you say this, some lowlife from down below. We’ve got a lot of drugs out here. I know some of the people, but there’s no way I can prove it, if you know what I’m saying.”

The Sheriff’s Department knows it too.

“Newberry has received a lot of our attention,” Gonthier of the Barstow substation said. His 26 patrol officers and supervisors cover a 10,000-square-mile region that he thinks may well be the largest beat of any law enforcement outfit except for federal or state agencies.

Not all the crime out here is drug-related, Gonthier said. But the residents are convinced that the burglaries, robberies and break-ins are caused by druggies needing some quick, easy cash. And they’re getting tired of it.

A Sheriff’s Department audit of crime in Newberry Springs during the first half of 1992 showed 13 grand thefts, 47 burglaries, seven assaults, seven acts of brandishing a weapon, three robberies and 11 auto thefts, along with a slew of lesser crimes ranging from vandalism to petty theft to prowling. More than 220 police reports, in all.

This year’s pace is ahead of 1991’s, when deputies tallied 339 reports for the entire year, including 81 burglaries, 11 assaults, two acts of brandishing a weapon, two robberies, nine auto thefts and one murder.

What’s a small town to do?

One answer is to install a resident sheriff’s deputy, a lawman who will be on call virtually 24 hours a day, say the Ellisons, who publish the monthly Silver Valley Sentinel.

Jim Ellison complained that not only does it take 25 minutes for authorities from Barstow to reach town, some deputies don’t know the local streets--and cannot spot criminals--once they get here. “The roads aren’t marked and it’s pitch dark at night. I heard one deputy on the scanner who, once he got here, spent another 45 minutes finding the right road,” he said.

A resident deputy would spend his time exclusively in the 117 square miles of Newberry Springs, getting to know the local characters, the roads and the problems, said Vicki Morris, who heads the only form of local government in Newberry Springs.

It’s a community services district, which snags a small piece of the local property taxes to fund the volunteer Fire Department, run the recreation hall, maintain some local roads and pay for the six street lights.

Last year the service district received $135,000 in property tax revenue; this year, it received $85,000. It was barely enough to maintain the 10 hand-me-down firetrucks, buy uniforms and stock up on medical supplies needed to tend to traffic accidents along I-40, as well as Route 66, which serves as little more than a frontage road.

The cost of a resident deputy would exceed $120,000 a year, said Gonthier--stripping the coffers of the local service district. The county can’t afford it either, nor can it simply reassign a deputy here full time because that would short another patrol beat. If Newberry Springs wants a resident deputy, it will have to pick up the tab.

“I’m afraid that for us to pay for a resident deputy is out of the question,” said Omstead, who runs The Barn. “Most everyone out here is on a fixed income.”

Still, local activists are trying to spark some action. They have written a letter to President Bush and Gov. Pete Wilson asking for help. They have met with county officials and they have held community meetings, attracting hundreds after distributing a flyer that proclaimed: “Let’s Take Our Community Back From Druggies and Thugs!”

Donna Brown, who started a Neighborhood Watch program, was behind that one.

“I’ve flipped out,” she said. “My teen-agers tell me the horrible things going on with the drug activity. I moved out here because I thought it would be a safe haven for kids. Now all the bums are coming out here. I won’t even let my kids walk the three miles to the store.”

Not that Newberry Springs hasn’t tried something. The community services district is soliciting residents to participate in Citizens on Patrol, a Sheriff’s Department-sponsored program in which volunteers cruise through the community in a patrol car marked with the sheriff’s emblem on the door. Drivers are instructed to serve as eyes and ears, and to use the radio to report suspicious activity to the dispatcher.

“But we haven’t had enough volunteers to drive,” Brown said. Besides, most of the suspicious activities occur at night, when the patrol doesn’t operate.

Some residents say they are hesitant to snitch on drug suspects for fear of retaliation. Gonthier says they shouldn’t worry about that. “The reality is, when the ne’er-do-wells find out that a community will stand up and point fingers, they’ll get the hell out of the community,” he said.

Others are taking a grin-and-bear-it philosophy. George Parker, who manages industrial real estate “down below,” said that someone cut through his fences and took load after pickup load of stuff from his house--office equipment and home electronics, amounting to thousands of dollars.

“I’m sure it was someone local because if it was a stranger’s car driving up and down my street, someone would have noticed,” he said. “It was a vehicle that didn’t draw anyone’s attention.”

So what’s he going to do about it? “I’d prefer not to know who ripped me off because if I did then I might make, uh, some mistake and then I would be the bad guy.”

Rieger, the hardware store owner, said he has a loaded shotgun and a .38-caliber pistol ready. He chuckled.

The Ellisons say they’ve been told “by a source who knows what’s going on” to “watch out” and not make too much of the crime problem. “Now, we are scared,” Jim Ellison said. Thus, the shotgun by his pillow, the shotgun by his coffee table.

“This is like the Old West,” he said. His wife added, “Well, not quite. If it was, then we could do something for ourselves.”

Drug Woes

An increase in illicit drug operations near Newberry Springs has residents up in arms.