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  • 2015-09-08 (xsd:date)
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  • Were Hotel Guests Sickened by a Coffee Pot Used to Cook Meth? (en)
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  • In September 2015, a message above about Omaha resort guests purportedly sickened by a coffee pot used to cook meth by previous guests was published by a user named Amber Richard to the Facebook page Kearney Area Exchange Group 2.0. (The message was visible only to members of the closed group, but members reproduced its text in separate Facebook status updates and forwarded screenshots to us.) Unsubstantiated rumors about individuals cooking meth in hotel coffee pots have circulated on the internet since at least 2007. A 2009 Associated Press article reported an uptick in arrests related to drug-making in hotels and motels and noted that the practice was probably fairly common, but it didn't mention the activity's causing any injuries to unwitting guests: In April 2013, a hospitality industry publication article addressed the liability meth labs present for properties. That piece cited one instance wherein a hotel room had to be rehabilitated after it was used as a meth lab, an onerous process which suggested significant palpable damage to the unit: However, we've been unable to locate any reports wherein any resort guests were sickened via a hotel coffee pot because they occupied a room once used as a meth lab. We contacted both the Omaha Police and the general manager of the Ramada hotel adjacent to the Omaha CoCo Key Water Resort to find out whether the incident described (or any like it) had occurred in recent months. Police quickly responded and answered that the department didn't have any reports of this here in Omaha, contradicting the poster's claim that the scenario was common and known to law enforcement in and around the Kearney-Omaha area. Moreover, the officer with whom we spoke was skeptical that the scenario presented was possible, let alone plausible: On 10 September 2015, the Omaha Police Department acknowledged the then-popular claim on their Facebook page and indicated that at that time, they had received no reports matching the rumor: Later that day, the department added a comment to the post: On 14 September 2015, original poster Amber Richard spoke to a local news outlet about her husband's claim: To date, police in Omaha have released no further information about the case. (en)
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