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BY the end of first season of Breaking Bad, we see that Walter and Jesse steal a barrel of methaphamine from a secured warehouse. At this point, Hank knows that there is some new player in town dealing in meth. But a figure named Heisenberg or Blue Meth as a product is not established. Thus, Hank stil doesn't have the specific Heisenberg case under him.

A robbery at warehouse should be concerned case for local APD and not DEA until and unless some actual drug is stolen in mass. So why are Hank and Gomez specifically sent with the robbery clip of an chemical? Yeah, it is a major ingredient of Meth, but the point is chemical was stolen and not a finished product of a drug.

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    Because metylamine is widely known as a vital ingredient for meth. When someone steals a barrel of this, he's obviously upto some serious drug business and not just a little junkie using pseudoephedrine from cough pills.
    – Napoleon Wilson ♦
    Jun 29, 2015 at 9:29
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    Agree with Napoleon Wilson. It could have been as simple as DEA being informed by APD about the stealing. It's also possible that DEA monitors crimes, looking for cases involving not only stealing large amount of drugs (as you mentioned), but also large amount of known drug ingredients. Either way DEA ended up having the footage.
    – Chanandler Bong
    Jun 29, 2015 at 11:06

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Being that metylamine is an important part of the production of Meth, any theft that large would have to be sent to the DEA as a precaution. Law enforcement isn't stupid, there are no Keystone Kops in real life, they preemptively put 1 + 1 together often. Should large quantities of Meth start appearing on the streets, the video would already be in the hands of the DEA and they could have a jump on the case instead of building it from scratch.

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If I were to acquire plutonium or uranium somewhere, I'm pretty sure people would be interested in whether I'm building a bomb or not.

Same applies here, but it's drug-related. The behavior shown by the criminals is clearly indicative of intent to cook meth, so it's investigated.

Also, how lucky would police have to be to only investigate things that will be relevant? A lot of reports or possibilities don't pan out, but they can't know that for sure until they investigate.

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