Royce Swayze

Clarion-Ledger Correspondent

OXFORD — Despite its controversial use of college students as confidential informants, the Lafayette County Metro Narcotics Unit still has support from faculty members and students at the University of Mississippi.

The unit, which receives $100,000 annually from Ole Miss, Oxford and Lafayette County each, made national headlines last year for pressuring local college students to participate in potentially dangerous undercover drug investigations. Students who are caught with drugs by the metro narcotics team are offered the option to work as informants to bust drug dealers in order to keep a clean record.

The confidential informant program raised concern from many in the community and prompted the Libertarian Party of Lafayette County to call for a cease of the unit’s funding.

Faculty members were concerned as well, which led the faculty senate to conduct an investigation of the school’s relationship with the unit.

Travis King, who serves as a professor in Ole Miss’ pharmacy department, led the faculty senate’s investigation and said he found no reason why the relationship should not continue.

In addressing the faculty senate, King said that actually an extremely small amount of Ole Miss students were involved in the unit’s program. According to the school’s office of student affairs, the probability that college students will be confidential informants for the unit’s program is 1 in 1000 and is not limited solely to students from Ole Miss but also community colleges in the surrounding area.

And while acknowledging news reports of how college students were dangerously used in the past by the unit, King said the unit has done a lot of good for the community in attempts to keep it drug free.

“It’s very, very hard to extrapolate how a singular case operates and if that singular case is reflected of every case that’s done,” King said.

Rod Bridges, who is president of the university’s student government body, believes that the media’s glimpse into the confidential informants program has not captured the entire picture of the metro narcotics unit fairly.

“It’s hard to make a sound assumption on what should be done especially because this hasn’t been a topic of conversation that’s been equally represented in the media,” said Bridges, who believes the university’s relationship with the unit has been beneficial. “The overall picture of what metro narcotics does for this community shouldn’t be understated. A lot of things that they do — the stings, the drug busts — it’s something that should be commended.”

However, Bridges also recognizes that there is a need for transparency in the unit. He has spoken with the Student Voice Commission, an organization that hosts forums for students to express concerns, and has tried to arrange a town hall that would open the conversation about student involvement with the confidential informant program and explore whether action should be taken.

“We all have specific boundaries, specific guidelines for which to follow, for which to stand, and if any group is overstepping that unjustly, then it needs to be addressed.”

And the unit has taken steps to be more transparent. After director Keith Davis resigned last year, the new director, Rodney Waller, an Ole Miss graduate who served 25 years with the U.S Drug Enforcement Administration, was recently hired and is conducting an extensive review of all the unit’s procedures, policies and practices, including the confidential informant program. Waller, who was unavailable for comment, will include his review and suggestions for improvement within the unit in a report to be delivered on July 1.

Contact Royce Swayze at rswayze23@gmail.com. Follow @royce__swayze on Twitter.