Oxford officials respond to ‘60 Minutes’ segment which claimed Drug Unit coerced students to become
By Errol Castens
Oxford Citizen
OXFORD – After a segment of CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday this week focused on the use of confidential informants by Lafayette County Metro Narcotics officers, Oxford and Lafayette County officials responded Tuesday.
The unit is a collaboration of law enforcement agencies from the city, the county and the University of Mississippi.
Mayor George “Pat” Patterson, Police Chief Joey East and Alderman Robyn Tannehill offered statements to media representatives, and Lafayette County Sheriff Department’s Chief Deputy Scott Mills joined them in answering questions afterward. Ole Miss was not represented at the press conference.
The “60 Minutes” program, which pursued a path blazed some three months ago by the news website buzzfeed.com, emphasized the practice of coercing college students facing possible felony drug charges as confidential informants to record drug buys to gather evidence for Lafayette County Metro Narcotics as well as for units in other states. Criticisms in the story included that the practice places naïve young adults in danger and that such agencies are funded in such a way that they have a perverse incentive to turn misdemeanor-level drug possessors into felons by instigating small purchases assumed to be on a friend-to-friend basis.
Tannehill noted the TV news magazine story was only one reason for the press conference.
“We are here because drugs are being used and sold and purchased in Oxford, Mississippi. If they were not, there would be no reason to have a Metro Narcotics agency, and there would be no story for ‘60 Minutes’ to tell,” she said.
Tannehill noted that “60 Minutes” referred glowingly to Oxford as a charming college town.
“They did not say, ‘Now we take you to Oxford, Mississippi, a small town known for its high crime rate and unsafe streets. Now we take you to a town whose downtown area has disintegrated, and all its windows are covered with boards,’” she said. “They did not say, ‘Let us take you to a town where gangs have infiltrated the high schools and where drugs are being sold on the corner.’
“There’s a reason for that, and that is because the City of Oxford and Lafayette County and the University of Mississippi have decided our community’s worth fighting for.”
Patterson said he was, however, concerned with how the 60 Minutes segment portrayed the Metro Narcotics unit and how that reflects on the community.
“It’s unfortunate, in my opinion, that we even have to have a Metro Narcotics unit, but in this day and time it just does not seem to be optional,” he said. “The DEA and the MBN do not have the resources to operate on a local level, and if that unit did not exist, we’d have nickel-and-dime drug dealers on every corner, trying to sell drugs to our kids.”
Patterson noted retired DEA agent Rod Waller was recently brought in to lead the Lafayette County Metro Narcotics unit.
“We’re going to take a hard look at everything we do from top to bottom and make certain that it’s legal, ethical and, beyond that, the right thing to do,” Patterson said.
Getting it right, wrong
East spoke for most of the press conference, offering a brief overview of the agency that started in 1988 when the federal government began funding such agencies nationwide.
“Metro Narcotics has been successful. We’ve not done everything right; we’ve made some mistakes; but we continue to be successful,” he said.
Disputing some impressions left by the “60 Minutes” segment, East said, “They made a reference that we actively seek young people (as confidential informants). We don’t actively seek; we investigate, and where our investigation takes us, we look.”
He insisted that those people always have the right to have an attorney present or to call their parents.
Noting one of the more visible mistakes in Metro Narcotics’ recent history, East acknowledged a tape shown on the broadcast and weeks earlier on buzzfeed.com was one direct reason for the resignation of Keith Davis as commander of Metro Narcotics in September. Davis now works as a deputy for the Lafayette County Sheriff Department.
The tape shows Davis threatening a man who was reported to have threatened an agent’s family, East said, after charges were filed against the man’s pregnant girlfriend. East said Davis instead should have called in a different agency, but said Davis was “handling it” informally to avoid having both of the parents-to-be brought under charges.
“No excuses are to be made; we didn’t handle it the way we should have. We should have followed up on it, filed charges or called in (Mississippi Bureau of Investigation) or someone like that,” East said. “They did what they thought was right at the time; they talked to the young man; they were trying to let him know that this couldn’t go forward. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen in the manner we’d like it done as professionals.”
East referred a reporter who asked about the Metro Narcotics finances to Oxford City Clerk Lisa Carwyle, but denied that the agency imposes its own fines or costs.
“We arrest people. The district attorney and the judges set fines and penalties. The narcotics unit doesn’t do that. We don’t have the ability to send people to jail; we don’t have that ability to say three years or five years,” East said. “A lot of people think that whoever runs the narcotics unit says, ‘Hey, we’ll let you go for $500.’ That’s not how that works.”
East acknowledged, however, portions of fines against those convicted of drug crimes are set aside to help fund Metro Narcotics.
“That’s set by a court, not by an agent,” he said.
East said Davis’ resignation was a mutual agreement.
“It was not going in a direction that we felt it should go in,” he said.
He acknowledged the recording of Davis threatening the apparent suspect was a factor.
“We heard a tape … that brought to light that did not represent what we wanted our unit to look like or how we wanted to act,” he said.
Davis is now employed as a deputy in the Lafayette County Sheriff Department. Mills, the department’s second in command, declined to comment on any misbehavior on Davis’ part.
“It was that we needed to go in a different direction, leadership-wise,” Mills said. “It was time to place a new way of thinking in leadership.”
Another question raised by reporters concerned the intimidation of confidential informants. Sunday’s TV report indicated suspects are often told not to contact a lawyer or their parents.
“There’s a lot of ways you handle informant processes. If you catch someone that is selling or has an amount on them, you have the choice to lock them up, if it’s a felony amount, or to give them an opportunity to become an informant. It’s their choice on what to do after that,” East said. “They are allowed to call an attorney. They are allowed to call parents.”
He added law enforcement agencies dealing with college students are often criticized for not calling their parents, but he said for anyone age 18 or above, police cannot involve parents, lawyers or other third parties except at the request of suspects.
errol.castens@journalinc.com
Twitter: @oxfordcitizenec