Toronto, Canada Delta Kappa Epsilon Drug Raid Reported
 

The June 28, 2008 Globe and Mail story is on its web site:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl....wfratraid0628

Brief excerpts:

Toronto police officers seized more than $126,000 in illegal drugs and charged two men with trafficking during a raid on a fraternity house near the University of Toronto late Friday.

Uniform and plainclothes officers had to force their way into the Delta Kappa Epsilon . . . house when the occupants refused to answer the door, police said. Some tried to escape out a back door but were nabbed by officers waiting outside.

Police seized more than $126,000-worth of Ketamine and cocaine as well as . . . psilocybin . . . .

The Toronto Sun has a similar but not identical story:

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Toron...8/6015586.html

Well... they were having fun on their way out. Shrooms and cat tranquilizers are relatively cheap, so that was f***-ton of blow they had.

A kilo is probably somewhere between $20-30k. 4 or 5 kilos of coke at a fraternity house, damn.

I'm pretty sure Ketamine is horse tranquilizers.

I don't know, never messed with the stuff.

I could say something about a certain famous DKE with a former drug problem who is now POTUS, however.. instead I'll ask the question... Do we know if these guys are even DKEs? It says one was a 29 y/o alumni and it just says the other is a current U of T president. I know that a lot of chapters rent out space during the summer term and sometimes don't have any members living in the house.

This isn't the first time DKE at U of T has had issues.

Doesn't change the fact that it's 4 kilos of coke. Just damn.

Impressive, to be true.

First off it isn't a current DKE president, they're just mentioning the alums of DKE.

"Uniform and plainclothes officers had to force their way into the Delta Kappa Epsilon . . . house when the occupants refused to answer the door, police said. Some tried to escape out a back door but were nabbed by officers waiting outside."

That is definitely an exaggeration of what happened.

Question: Some newspapers are including DKE's chapter designation in their reports. In the Toronto Star, for example, they're calling it Delta Kappa Epsilon Alpha Phi, not Delta Kappa Epsilon, Alpha Phi chapter.

How is that a question?

Meant to ask if it is proper DKE procedure.

First of all let me clarify a couple of things: The raid was a cocaine trafficking raid with an unknown amount of cocaine being found(supposedly 125,000 worth, which I think is ridiculous because no one knew about the cocaine and if no one knew about the cocaine why would anyone carry enough to make 100 grand with no one interested in buying it). The amounts of Ketamine and Mushrooms were minuscule and only for personal use. One explanation is that the under cover police baited one of the arrested individuals into producing as much cocaine as he could for a transaction and then the raid went down. Then all of the sudden this large amount of cocaine became a piece of stationary in the house and the individual responsible for the transaction became the owner of that massive amount of coke. The article has an inaccuracy. The police did not knock, they charged the front door, even though they need to knock and ask for access showing the search warrant. I guess they must have assumed that armed fraternity gunmen were holding millions of dollars worth of cocaine were going to barricade themselves and take hostages....not. There were witnesses standing directly outside of the main entrance when the raid happened and their testimony directly contradicts the media reports of a lawful entrance. but...they had plain clothes officers inside the building at the time of the raid and knew by name exactly who they wanted to arrest. But then again there was no arrest warrant, only a search warrant for the main floor of the building. The raid was also performed illegally on the residences of the second and third floor of the building. Some of the victims were in their rooms when police stormed their rooms told them to get on the floor and handcuffed them. Everyone in the building was gathered in a room on the main floor under a thing called investigative detention, where everyone was I.D.ed and asked questions for about an hour. A witness described the experience as shocking, "having police barge into your room and being told to lay on the floor while being handcuffed is not my idea of an ideal Friday night." Many of the residents, who are students are shocked and in disbelief that there was any cocaine dealing in the house. Which I personally find agreeable since I frequent the house quite often and share a couple of beers with my DKE friend. I'm not a fan of hippie stuff like police brutality and media lies but the shit that went down in the DKE house and the media reports thereafter are a bunch of bullshit meant to justify the raid and portray Delta Kappa Epsilon and the fellow fraternities and sororities as the stereotypical uneducated drunkards. Hope this stuff doesn't bring you guys down, you rock!

Another news story,

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Crime/20...19256-sun.html

includes quotes from a resident of the house. Excerpt:

"Everybody was hanging out at the house -- we get together to watch TV and party a little bit -- and there was a big bang at the door," Andrew Weiner, a resident of the house, said.

"One of the guys goes out, looks down the hallway and comes back and says 'there's a man pointing a gun to our house,' " he said. "Next thing we know there's plainclothes guys everywhere, people are on the floor."

Those who ran out the back door were arrested . . . . "They went through the entire house and took a bunch of us down (for questioning at the police station)," said Weiner, who was released without charges.

Easy casey jones...

You must have made off with some quality stuff from there.

Well, they'd like to get some sleep before they travel, but if you've got a warrant, I guess you're gonna come in.

Now they're busted, down on St. George Street, set up like a bowling pin.

AGDee, good question. If I'm reading things correctly, according to a follow-up story on the Globe and Mail's site, a person from Deke international HQ said the men arrested are in Deke's database. The same story reports that some people at the house in Toronto indicated that the people arrested aren't in DKE.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...ional/Ontario/

Personally I heart ambiguity and lack of agreement, up to a point.

Excerpts:

. . . Mr. Easlick [identified as the executive director of Deke] confirmed the two accused are members of Delta Kappa Epsilon, saying they are in the fraternity's database. . . .

Outside the . . . Delta Kappa Epsilon mansion . . . two young men moved chairs and swept the stairs. The men, who would not give their names, said the two accused aren't members of the fraternal society.

I thought this was going to be a slap on the wrists for the DKE's and it would just fade away but this is turning into day 3 that its been making news! This whole situation makes me really shiver as the thought of loosing my chapter something I care deeply about because of a few fuck ups is pretty disturbing. My thoughts and condolences to the brothers at this house who had absolutely nothing to do with this but are being catapulted into the situation.

My concern now is the greek system in Toronto. As a member of a fraternity on campus I'm fearing that this is turning into an issue against us and that not only will students completely avoid us but that in an environment that we're already not really accepted in ,that we're going to be clamped down upon .

I agree with Firefruze. The Greek image at U of T isn't that great to begin with and an issue like this making news will make all GLOs on campus look bad. Greeks at UotT need to work 100 times harder to break the social stereotype of a typical "frat" life. I'm sure that not all Dekes at the UofT campus are drug traffickers. Just sucks that a few rotten apples spoils the bunch. In this case, the bunch being not only Dekes but all Greeks on campus.

Being the only ethnic fraternity on campus it will even make it more difficult for us to rush, recruit and retain members. FSC should definitely try to incorporate some sort of awareness program in the next school year. Just a thought.

I don't see the "innocent individuals are being punished" side of this as being legitimate.

At most chapters you know when guys in the house are even doing coke and what guys it is, how can you "not know" that $125,000 worth of cocaine (at least 4 kilos) is in your house. Hell, that's 4,000 grams. You can go to schools that are known for having drugs in their greek life and not find that much in all of the fraternities combined.

I mean it sucks that everyone is going to be hurt by this, but with that amount it seems like it would be the worst kept secret around.

first of all, one thing you should all know is that the police put the highest street sale price into use when they calculate the amounts of narcotics in a drug raid. There's no way it was 4 kilos.

Second, it is never easy confronting one of your Brothers, especially if you dont know exactly what is going on. Approaching an alumni is probably even harder. No one but the Dekes know the situation in their house, how close they are with each other and who knows what about who. They are a pretty big chapter so the chance that they didn't all know what was going on is probably the case.

You can't blame a house of 50+ members for the mistakes of one alumni and one active. Sure you have a responsibility to know whats going on and keep your house clean but at the end of the day, this was not a Deke mistake, it is the mistake of 2 individuals who thought they could get away with something stupid. The law is really good at catching these people, however long it takes.

I am a U of T Greek and it is really shitty that we are going to be seen in an even worse light than before. Fraternities and sororities have a really rich history at our school and have not been recognized by the University since the 80's. The University for the most part does not speak out against fraternal life and is not ANTI-GREEK, they just don't say anything at all. More of the problem comes from newspapers on campus sometimes, but not for a really long time. However, this has not given ammunition and fueled the fire, and now there is no chance of any recognition or anything like that, if there was a small chance in the future. It is also going to make recruitment and formal recruitment more difficult. Just as the stereotypes seemed to be faded...they are back and even worse now because the media is making this a huge issue that is on the news and in newspapers. Both students and parents will have this in their minds when rush comes around.

I agree that the FSC along with Panhellenic and possibly a committee formed with members of all fraternities needs to come together and work really hard this September to clean up the mess....which is not Dekes mess, it is the mess of 2 guys that is going to affect an entire community.

At the end of the day, Greek life has made it through a lot in Toronto, it'll make it through this too. It's just a shame that 2 people can cast such a bad light on such an important part of U of T life.

Lets call it normal street price of $50/gram, it's still over 2.5 kilos. I'm not faulting the organization as a whole and certainly not Toronto greek life, but to claim that people living in the house didn't know something was going on is absurd. Heck, I think drug enforcement is overdone in the first place, I'm not trying to make a big deal of it, I'm just pointing out that it is an absurd amount of blow.

There are rumors of cocaine buffets down in Auburn back in the day...I'm pretty sure a few kilos will suffice for one of those buffets.

Very well said EE825, I agree. I think as individual chapters we also need to fall back to our risk management policies themselves. Ensuring that there aren't further incidents which could expose us to more media scrutiny and demonstrating that we hold ourselves to a higher standard than even many university students we can hopefully demonstrate at a campus level that we play a positive part of the University.

I was surprised to learn that DKE got busted for something like that, in fact I am shocked. I read somewhere that the drugs weren't even secluded, like underneath some brother's bed, in the far right room typa thing, the whole stash was out in the open for the police to come in and find.
What I can say is, they should be more careful when rushing their brothers because not every Greek has their frat's best intentions at heart, and not everyone realizes that once they get involved in their scams in the house, they get their entire frat involved as well. Do what you gotta do, but do it off the frat property.
Asides from that, they truly are a good group of guys and it's a shame that their rep (along with the reps of other Greeks) is now in jeopardy. I've read some really negative feedback from the non-Greek community on campus in other forums, where they really put down fratland, saying how they're "just like any other frat" and comments such as "what did you expect, I'm not surprised" were made. So it is a shame that the event strengthened the negative stereotype. Does anyone know whether the DKE, Alpha Phi chapter is most likely to get shut down after this, or what?

u know what else sucks....if this happened in a residence, they would say "student caught with cocaine"...but because its fraternity its "frat busted for drugs"....its not fair, its almost like the portrayal of different minorities who find themselves in the same situation as a majority but are painted differently by the media.

because its a fraternity the whole community is demonized...well guess what, they are U of T students, one a graduate and one currently working towards a degree...so why not project this onto all of U of T as well?

Has a DKE rep spoken w/ the media yet? We don't seem to be hearing DKE's side of the story.

Yeah, it is a shame that the frat along with the entire greek system gets blamed for the actions of two people, but do you honestly think that nobody else knew about it? Yeah, it's a large house altogether, but people talk, the other brothers must have been aware of the situation, no?

Yes someone has :

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/sto...raternity.html

I personally don't think the statements made were very strong, and I think that's why we haven't heard anything further. I think at this moment DKE is going to investigate the issue and give out punishment where its due, and hope ( like the rest of us) that this issue is just going to fade away......