It's the first of its kind, an eastern Kentucky sheriff's office has formed its own meth lab response team.

Its focus will be dismantling labs and prosecuting people who cook meth.

The Laurel County Sheriff's Department has come up with a new program that would help streamline meth lab clean-up and help prosecute those manufacturing it.

The idea for the new program came out of necessity, after the company that helped clean-up meth labs in Laurel and surrounding counties quit providing the service.

“We had to take action it could have set us back and like I say we wanted to continue our war on drugs,” Laurel County Sheriff John Root said.

While it means extra work for the department it will save time and make the prosecution of a meth manufacturing crime easier.

Since the program is fairly new, the department hasn't had to call on the response team yet, but Sheriff Root says they are ready.

“We got all the equipment to do it, the men is ready to go, and I guess we’re just waiting on a meth lab,” Sheriff Root said.

Just another weapon the department plans to use in their war on drugs.

Sheriff Root says if all goes well with the new meth lab response team, he hopes surrounding departments will consider doing the same.
The sheriff says the new group will also help speed up the office's response time.

Last year his staff found close to 400 meth labs.