{"id":29639,"date":"2015-12-08T19:16:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T00:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=29639"},"modified":"2015-12-09T11:05:49","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T16:05:49","slug":"city-officials-respond-to-controversial-informant-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/city-officials-respond-to-controversial-informant-program\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Oxford, Mississippi Officials Respond To Controversial Confedential Informant Program After 60 Minutes Expos\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oxford, Mississippi (TLV) \u2013 <\/span>Mayor Patterson<\/b>, Chief of Police <\/span>Joey East<\/b> and Ward 2 Alderman <\/span>Robyn Tannehill<\/b> met with members of the press Tuesday afternoon at City Hall to discuss <\/span>recent coverage of the <\/span>Metro Narcotics Unit<\/b><\/a> confidential informant program by <\/span>60 Minutes<\/i><\/b>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are here because drugs are being used and sold on our streets,\u201d said Alderman Tannehill. \u201cWe are here because keeping the streets and our children safe is worth fighting for.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The methods of recruiting informants have been on the forefront since <\/span>Buzzfeed<\/span><\/i> initially reported on the story<\/span><\/a>. The unit\u2019s grant funding is based on its performance.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not quantity but quality of the cases,\u201d said Chief East. \u201cIt\u2019s not our problem to catch somebody that\u2019s a stoner or smokes a bud every now and then. That is not what we want…these people never become informants.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The communities reaction to the aggressive and coercive nature of <\/span>Keith Davis<\/b>, former Commander of the Metro narcotics Unit, as seen in video evidence led to his resignation.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to lose the trust of the community,\u201d said Chief East.<\/span><\/p>\n

Concerns have been raised in regards to the extent of the informants and how safe the program is. When asked what steps were taken to protect the informants, Chief East described the process.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou gotta be careful who you talk to. You\u2019re in a world where a lot of people do drugs. The more people you tell, the more chance you have of someone finding out what you\u2019re doing,\u201d said Chief East.<\/span><\/p>\n

The informants go through a checklist of dos and don\u2019ts. They are also told to not use or buy drugs while involved in the process as well to avoid any previous activities that would be considered illicit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have certain tools and those are what we use,\u201d said Chief East. \u201cWe do everything possible that we know…maybe there\u2019s more things we can do, but I think we\u2019ve been pretty successful from good police work and by the grace of God no one\u2019s been hurt doing this. Drugs is a bad life…it ruins lives on every end of it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To close out the discussion, Mayor Patterson pulled out a photo of a Narcotics bust from Monday showing approximately 7 pounds of marijuana, $2600 in cash and a firearm. When asked if the person involved was a student, they confirmed he was but not where he attended.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t buy drugs, don\u2019t use drugs, don\u2019t sell drugs and you\u2019ll never hear from Metro Narcotics,\u201d said Mayor Patterson. \u201cIt\u2019s that simple.\u201d\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oxford, Mississippi (TLV) \u2013 Mayor Patterson, Chief of Police Joey East and Ward 2 Alderman Robyn Tannehill met<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":29654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[7456,7457,1399,4,3],"class_list":["post-29639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-ci","tag-informant","tag-mayor","tag-oxford","tag-the-local-voice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/City-officials-120815-mayor-patterson.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}