Crystal methamphetamine use is on the rise in Ames, but alcohol is still the number one drug of choice, according to seven-year veteran Ames police officer Shawn Phipps.

“Ninety-five percent of all offenses are alcohol related,” she said. When speaking about methamphetamines though, Phipps said, “We’re seeing a big increase in Ames.”

Phipps is in her second year with Ames’ Special Operations Unit and said Iowa plays a large role in the production of methamphetamines, an illegal drug also known as crank, meth, ice and crystal.

Phipps described Des Moines as “the meth capital of the world.”

She said the city is considered “very marketable.” Meth dealers there come from bigger cities and the coasts, set up and distribute the drug. After this they build a local market to support their operation, she said.

For Story County, she estimated a 10 to 20 percent increase in methamphetamine-related arrests each year.

“We’re seeing a lot of people really sinking to rock bottom on this stuff,” she said.

Methamphetamines are a synthetic form of cocaine. Phipps said this makes it easier for meth producers and sellers to avoid importation and the law enforcement that goes along with trafficking cocaine.

Meth is easy to make, she said, and all the ingredients may be purchased at nearly any grocery store. The high lasts longer than cocaine — from one to three hours — and is cheaper to purchase.

Phipps said people often take more meth when they come down from a high and continue to do so each time they use the drug until the body simply shuts down.

“People become paranoid — hallucinating. They think people are coming after them. Before getting cured they have to hit rock bottom,” she said. “Everybody thinks it won’t happen to them.”

As a member of the Special Operations Unit, Phipps also walks the bars of Ames performing alcohol enforcement duties, which involve looking for under age drinking, public intoxication and drunken driving.

“Not a weekend goes by that we don’t have two to four OWI arrests,” Phipps said.

When ISU students get arrested for public intoxication, some will complain to the police about being arrested for walking in an intoxicated condition, when they were responsible enough to know better than to drive.

Phipps’ response? She said she is glad they did not drive, but “most of the time we stop someone for public intox, they draw attention to themselves.”

“We wish you would not drink so much as to lose control of your faculties,” she said.

Concerning the March 29 arrest of ISU football player Angelo Provenza Jr. after a brawl outside Campustown bar Tazzles, 126 Welch Ave., Phipps said the police investigation showed alcohol had been consumed that evening.

“At least one, if not both, parties had been drinking,” she said.

According to an Ames city ordinance, those under 21 must pay a $90 fine if they are caught in any bar. Phipps said one girl who received her second offense said she had gone into the bar for “just a minute” and was fined $155.

“That was an expensive minute,” Phipps said.

Does she feel her job helps deter underage people from drinking or going to the bar? “You bet I do,” she said.

As a woman in a male-dominated profession, some people might think she feels she has to work harder to compete. She said she does not.

“Initially, I think that I thought that,” she said, but now she said she is a part of the community of Ames and fits in with her police department.

“Ames is the type of well-educated community who is open to having a female officer,” she said.

“I can count on one hand all of the physical conflicts I’ve been in,” Phipps said. “You can talk a person to jail better than fighting a person to jail.”

Phipps graduated from ISU in May with a degree in political science and a journalism-public relations minor. She has had offers to leave the Ames Police Department for other cities, including Des Moines, but has chosen to remain in Ames.