www.newsweek.com/id/136441
They came with a search warrant--and a battering ram they used to crash through the door. It was the culmination of a five-month sting that netted 4 pounds of cocaine, 350 Ecstasy pills, 50 pounds of marijuana, 30 vials of hash oil, $60,000 in cash and two guns, one of them taped to a bed frame. It ranked among the biggest college drug busts in US history, with police making 128 arrests, including 95 San Diego State students. The raid, which included crackdowns on several fraternities, came a year to the day after the overdose death of Jenny Poliakoff, a 19-year-old student at San Diego State. It was the tragedy that triggered the undercover drug operation. The college student had gone to a party and a sorority dance the night before; In February, during the course of the investigation (called Operation Sudden Fall), a student from nearby Mesa College died of a drug-and-alcohol overdose after attending a San Diego State frat party. In still another case, a student at a San Diego State fraternity reportedly lapsed into a drug induced mania and was shot with a Taser gun by friends in an effort to subdue him.
Damon Mosler, chief of the narcotics division of the San Diego County District Attorney's Office. "There was high-level dealing going on, and that is shown by the fact that students were dying," Mosler tells NEWSWEEK. At the Theta Chi house, agents discovered a rough draft of a handwritten business plan for selling drugs. "It talks about what percentage they would mark up the drugs," says Mosler. The authorities say Kenneth Ciaccio is the suspected leader of the Theta Chi cell; Investigators claim the student sent a mass text message to "faithful customers" promoting a coming "sale" on cocaine. Undercover work was conducted at fraternity houses, in student housing and in front of dormitories. Some authorities say the behavior of some suspected drug dealers revealed an odd mix of arrogance and naivet. Ralph Partridge, the special agent in charge of the DEA in San Diego, says that one suspect, a criminal-justice major, inquired after being charged "whether or not his arrest and incarceration would have an effect on him becoming a federal law-enforcement officer." Also arrested on drug charges was Michael Montoya, a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity member, who worked as a community-service officer on campus and would have earned a master's degree in homeland security next month.
Stephen Weber, the president of the 36,000-student university, was kept out of the loop during much of the investigation, says Mosler. "Everyone in law enforcement felt that if the administrators knew about it, they would have put the kibosh on the whole thing," the prosecutor says. Mosler says college officials typically dread the PR nightmare that comes with news about drugs or other crime on campus. Weber tells NEWSWEEK he was made aware last May that "a general investigation regarding drugs on campus" was going on, and that he was told on April 21 that arrests were imminent.
A Convention Quandary Michael Isikoff John McCain's choice to manage the GOP convention this summer is lobbyist Doug Goodyear, whose firm once represented Burma's repressive regime.
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