Denver narcotics officers serving a warrant at an apartment above commercial shops on South Broadway discovered the “extensive makings” of a methamphetamine lab Saturday night.
“This could have been real dangerous,” said Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson.
As firefighters wearing masks and oxygen tanks stood grappling a fire hose at the door to the upstairs Broadway Apartments at 1761 S. Broadway, white-suited hazardous materials crews scoured an apartment where two men and two women were suspected of cooking meth.
Although the stove wasn’t on, Jackson said, police did find “extensive makings” of a meth brewery and called the Denver Fire Department’s hazmat team.
The team inflated an orange decontamination tent on Broadway and ran a fire hose into the tent. After hazmat officers were scoured of any possible meth residue, the suspects entered the tent in cuffs and street clothes and emerged minutes later dampened and shivering in head-to-toe white suits.
One cuffed suspect in a dark, hooded sweat shirt leaned weak-kneed on the front windows of a shop as he awaited the chilly shower beneath the Broadway Apartments’ shingle, declaring “family owned since 1962.”
Five fire engines and dozens of firefighters and cops swarmed the scene, parking their rigs on the sidewalk and pavement in front of an antique auction house and business information technology store. The Inferno Tattoo store beneath the apartments hosted an apparently giddy crew of employees while upstairs, blue- gloved hands struggled to open old windows through dingy blinds.
Broadway between Colorado Avenue and Mexico Avenue hosted the flashing-light decontamination, with neighbors strolling out to see the hubbub, which focused on the exterior and southernmost apartment in the upstairs complex. Since the apartments were heated with radiators and hot water — and not a shared ventilation system — the entire apartment complex did not need to be evacuated, Jackson said.
Denver Fire spokesman Alex Paez said decontaminating meth cookeries was “not a very common” call for Denver firefighters.
“But it’s becoming the norm,” Jackson said. “Meth labs are always dangerous, especially in a metro area.”
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com
