The cowboy way

He waits silently, confident they'll come. They always do.

Out in the brush and weeds, Aaron Harrison sits with calm patience under night skies. He hears their footsteps or smells their cigarettes and sweat before he sees them. They never see him until it is too late.

Then his 6-foot, 7-inch frame rises from his hiding place, and suddenly, the bad guys know they're going to jail.

In his five years as a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper, Harrison has nearly wiped out theft of the vital methamphetamine ingredient anhydrous ammonia in Cape Girardeau County and influenced many meth cooks to migrate south.

He says he works that hard because he loves children and wants to protect them from the horrors of meth.

"I've seen people who pawned their wives and their kids off for sex just to get some meth -- it's disgusting," he said. "They get to the point they'd sell their soul if they could to get some more."

In the last three years, Harrison has inhaled a cloud of toxic gas and twice thrown himself into moving vehicles to stop fleeing anhydrous thieves. He helped write legislation to strengthen Missouri's penalties for meth makers and saw the Missouri Supreme Court affirm the conviction of a felon who nearly killed him.

With Missouri first in the nation for meth manufacturing, those who work with Harrison say his style of law enforcement is vital in the state's drug war.

His injuries and intensity, scrutinized by the patrol, have put Harrison in the news more than any other trooper in the region and earned him a "cowboy" reputation.

"It's not like I wanted to do this alone," Harrison said. "I get angered by it, which I guess you could call 'cowboy-ish.' I'm from the country, and not many people are willing to sit in the weeds, getting eaten by bugs, to do this. But, I guess I am."

Past lessons

Aaron Harrison has taken a few risks. When apprehending anhydrous thieves, he literally has taken a beating.

In November 1999, he grabbed onto and swung himself inside a suspect's van that hit him near the Whitewater Farm Services Co-op. Investigators discovered later the driver, Troy Marlowe, had a bullet chambered in his gun. "I should have shot him," Marlowe told them, according to reports.

Harrison made a similar capture in October 2001 in Stoddard County. After inhaling a cloud of anhydrous ammonia from a tank tossed out of a speeding car, Harrison found himself facing another revving engine.

He fired shots to disable the car and jumped out of the way. The car stopped, and he reached inside to grab the driver, who suddenly shifted into reverse. Harrison was dragged through the mud, mangling his left knee.

Harrison fired four more shots at the car as it pulled away. They whizzed past harmlessly -- other troopers stopped the driver later.

"I thought, this is ridiculous," Harrison said. "The only thing going through my head was that I just knew that I had to stop him."

This action violated a patrol policy because no one was in mortal danger at the time. The patrol suspended him for a few hours after the incident, and Harrison said his supervisors were right to do so.

His current supervisor, Sgt. Blaine Adams, said he admires Harrison's persistence and credits him for his candor.

"He doesn't make any excuses for his mistakes," Adams said.

Harrison, however, isn't as forgiving of himself. He reflects on those incidents occasionally and tries to make better decisions.

Harrison's wife, Teresa, believes he will be more careful in the future. She saw him through the reconstructive surgery on his knee and tough rehabilitation.

"For him, that was a little bit of a wake-up call," she said. "He feels it's important to do the drug bust stuff, yet now he knows his family is the priority and that he needed to think more before he acted. I think his realizing that on his own, and then coming to tell me, really helped me to get through that."

'Human deer hunting'

Harrison is a hunter. He mostly works alone and understands the moves and motivations of his prey.

The thieves appear mostly at night, though some brave the daylight for the anhydrous ammonia they use in making methamphetamine. They typically get dropped off by a car a short distance away, cross a field or line of trees on foot to get to farm service co-ops lined with white, capsule-shaped tanks of anhydrous.

He has likened his job to "human deer hunting." He often positions himself within yards of suspects before arresting them, because close proximity makes for better testimony in court, he said. Harrison once buried himself under corn stalks as camouflage, but was nearly stepped on by a suspect and hasn't done it since.

He has stood in plain sight next to a tree, and still thieves have walked up to the lots and not seen him. They are as focused on their target as he is on them.

A few weeks ago, he hiked four miles at night looking for two meth cooks. He climbed over hills and sloshed through creeks in his blue uniform, all while peering through night-vision goggles. Fellow officers made two arrests that night.

He doesn't give up easily.

"As much as meth is addictive for them, busting them was addictive for me," he said.

Harrison regularly checks the farm co-op centers in the area, having made friends with many of those operating the lots and their neighbors. He examines the valves and hoses on the tanks for signs of tampering.

While looking for recent theft activity at the Whitewater co-op, Harrison picks up a bit of duct tape between his thumb and forefinger. The tape is evidence of a past theft -- thieves wrap it around the hose and valve to reduce leaking when they steal the anhydrous. The thieves are sloppy, he said.

Most of the region's co-ops took Harrison's advice to move their tanks closer to the front of their property, and some even added better lighting. One area co-op however, was reluctant to change anything until after the trooper issued a few strong words to the owner about taking accountability for the meth problem, Harrison said.

Since doing so, there have been fewer anhydrous thefts, and Harrison believes some cooks have moved south of his zone to the southern parts of Stoddard and Scott counties.

"The cooks learn about our busts and figure out which lots are being watched," Harrison said, tromping through a dry bean field. "It's kind of disappointing today because I was hoping to find at least one recent trail of evidence to a lab, but I guess that's a good thing because it shows what we're doing is working. But, there's always work to be done. If I stop, they'll come back."

A legal mind

Harrison is a thinking man. He knew that just fighting meth in the tank yards wouldn't keep the cooks out of the game for long. So, he set out to change Missouri's drug laws.

His efforts were realized last year with the passing of state legislation strengthening penalties for the possession of anhydrous ammonia. Harrison worked on the idea with Missouri Sen. Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau, and much of what he had written made it into the new laws.

"I think he's a remarkably committed trooper and an example of the finest we have in the highway patrol," Kinder said. "He was the spark plug we needed to address the changes in the law that were necessary to address solving the state's meth problem."

Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle also has high regard for Harrison's work and intelligence.

"He is an excellent officer," Swingle said. "He's the sort of officer who truly cares about his job and takes it a step further than just doing a fine job."

Criminal justice

Harrison grew up in Siloam Springs, Ark., and graduated high school there in 1990. He had scholarship offers to play basketball at a few colleges, but he chose to attend Missouri Southern State College in Joplin, Mo., where he could study criminal justice and law enforcement administration.

During those years, he was a paramedic for Joplin Emergency Medical Services. While on the job, he met his future wife, Teresa, who worked as a paramedic for Newton County Ambulance. She is now a nursing student at Southeast Missouri State University. The couple have two sons, Nathan, 9 months, and Matthew, 4.

In 1997, Harrison decided to pursue law enforcement and entered the patrol's academy. He was assigned five years ago to work in his current zone, which covers Cape Girardeau and Bollinger Counties and part of Scott County.

"He always said he wanted to be a police officer, ever since he was 5 years old," said Teresa Harrison. "I think he could do anything else he wanted to do, but he'd always have that little nagging voice in his head to do this and he wouldn't be as happy."

It was not easy for her to adjust to being a trooper's wife, she said.

"Those first few years I had to take a big breath every day he left, and I'd say a little prayer," she said. "It was really hard and nerve wracking for me when he came home and told me the stories about what happened. But, I've learned you can worry so much that it's detrimental to your household."

Her husband said he prays too -- once when he leaves for work and again when he gets home safely.

mwells@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160