Items seized by Baker City Police serving a search warrant on a Baker City home during a meth-trafficking investigation. (Baker City Police/Contributed Photo)

An ongoing investigation involving the Baker City Police and two regional drug task forces led to a warrant search of a Baker City home recently that turned up about 4 pounds of methamphetamine along with cash and other items typically associated with trafficking in the drug.

Baker City Police Chief Ty Duby said the focus of the investigation, and the owner of the home searched, is William Donald Hansen, 71.

“Mr. Hansen is well known to Baker City detectives and is considered to be one of the most prolific methamphetamine traffickers in the area,” according to a Monday, June 16, press release from Duby.

Hansen has not been arrested.

Duby said police will forward information to the district attorney’s office for “appropriate charges,” according to the press release.

The warrant search was done on May 15 at Hansen’s home at 419 Second St. in Baker City. Members of the High Desert Drug Task Force, based in Ontario, and the Blue Mountain Narcotics Team from the Pendleton/Hermiston area joined Baker City Police officers in the search, Duby said.

He said police had been receiving information about potential drug trafficking based at Hansen’s home.

“We’ve known about him for some time,” Duby said in an interview Monday morning.

Duby said investigators believe all of the methamphetamine sold in the region, including in the Ontario and Pendleton/Hermiston areas, comes from cartels operating in Mexico.

Laws passed years ago to restrict the sales of ingredients used to make the drug have essentially eliminated local production of meth, Duby said.

Duby said that although fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid responsible for most overdose deaths in Oregon the past few years, remains widespread, he believes that meth has become more common, and fentanyl less so, over the past year or so.

Hansen pleaded guilty in June 2013 to delivery of meth within 1,000 feet of a school, and manufacture of marijuana, in Baker City.

He was sentenced to 25 months in state prison.