TORONTO POLICE RAID BARRIE HOME

Local News - A Barrie woman received the shock of her life before daybreak
yesterday, when 12 police officers wearing bulletproof vests raided her
east-end home and handcuffed her lying in bed.

"I was scared, because you don't know whether it's police or criminals,"
said Andrea Butcher, who lives on Steel Street. "The police started asking
about gangs and street names. I had no idea what they were talking about."

The 5 a.m. raid was part of a sweeping "guns and gangs" bust orchestrated
by Toronto police.

Officers, both OPP and Toronto, acted on 71 search warrants at 59
residences, businesses, storage locations and detention facilities in
Toronto, Barrie and Durham, Peel and York regions yesterday.

More than 500 criminal charges were laid, including participating in a
criminal organization, conspiracy to import prohibited firearms, possession
of prohibited weapons for trafficking purposes, conspiracy to traffic in
cocaine and possession of proceeds of crime.

Sixty-five individuals, all in their 20s, were charged.

No one was charged at the Butcher residence and nothing was found, Butcher
said from her home last night.

She said police were looking for her father, 62-year-old John Butcher, who
had lived in the house previously, or evidence connecting him with certain
criminal offences. She said police seized a few of her father's documents.

The Barrie Police Service had no comment on the raid. Const. Janet Schefter
said the operation had nothing to do with Barrie police.

Toronto officers could not release any details about the incident in
Barrie, saying the volume of raids conducted and charges laid is slowing
the rate at which information comes out.

More information is expected to be released today.

Butcher said her father is currently in custody in Windsor after being
arrested March 22, for trying to smuggle firearms across the U.S. border.

She said after his arrest, she was expecting police to search her home, but
she hadn't anticipated they'd do it in such a violent manner.

"I was ready to open the front door, but they never asked," she said. "I
was ready, willing and able to co-operate."

Butcher said she's disappointed in her father, whose arrest six weeks ago
shocked, saddened and angered her.

"I'd be angry at my father for putting us through this," she said, adding
she isn't upset with the police and she understands they were acting on a
search warrant. "My father says he's innocent."

Butcher said police searched her home for four hours while she, her husband
and another resident, were confined to the living room couch.

She pointed the officers in the direction of a few boxes she packed that
contained her father's possessions.

"I didn't want anything of his associated with mine," she said, adding she
refuses to post bail for her father, a financial adviser for 30 years.

Police recovered 28 firearms and drugs, including large quantities of
ecstasy, marijuana, cocaine and hashish, from many of the raided locations
throughout Ontario.

The raids were the culmination of 14 months of work by Toronto and regional
police, as well as provincial police, RCMP and Canada Customs in an
operation known as Project Impact.

"The problem of street gangs is so serious, their malignant impact so
damaging to the communities they seek to destroy, we felt we had no choice
but to adopt a new intelligence-led enforcement approach, and one
integrated with our partners in law enforcement," Toronto police Chief
Julian Fantino said. Fantino said it's one of the first times police have
used new legislation directed at organized crime.