Home invasions near Temple and Drexel linked to student drug-dealing

The two Drexel students were watching television on the second floor of their Baring Street home in West Philadelphia when two men materialized, handkerchiefs over their faces, one aiming a handgun at them.

The intruders bound the 22-year-old students' wrists with plastic ties. The gunman hit one in the back of the head with the weapon, demanding, "Where's the money?" and the two ransacked the house, took $800, and were gone.

One departed with a warning: "I shot two cops in Baltimore, and I'm not afraid to shoot you."

It didn't take long for police to guess why the Powelton Village building was targeted in May. In common rooms, officers found a digital scale and items associated with marijuana growing - items the six roommates claimed they knew nothing about.

Increasingly, police say, a violent home invasion is the price some pot-dealing university students pay for taking up a dangerous side job.

Students who deal drugs make up a tiny minority of Drexel and Temple students, and home invasions near those campuses are rare.

But when it happens, police say, it's almost always when the target has drawn the attention of neighborhood drug dealers by selling marijuana.

Since November, there have been at least seven home invasions around the Temple campus in which police believe drugs were a factor. There have been at least four such robberies of Drexel students since April 2010. Police could not recall one home invasion involving students that was not drug-related.

"These kids are cutting into the trade of the people who live in this neighborhood," said Philadelphia Lt. John Walker of the Southwest Detective Division. "To them, it's a few hundred dollars, but to someone else, that's their livelihood. . . . The students don't realize how they're affecting the economy."

The home invasion is the professional dealer's way of sending a message to the amateur: Knock it off.

"It puts the ultimate level of fear into them," Walker said.

To a local dealer, robbing a college student - the lowest rung on the drug-dealing ladder - is low-risk, high-reward. The student is likely to be unarmed and to offer little resistance but plenty of cash, laptops, and more. Students often get rid of drug evidence before calling police, a delay that can make it harder for police to catch the assailants.