Buzzfeed Reports Resignation of Head of Metro Narcotics Unit

Screenshot by Callie Daniels Bryant (2015)

Today at the regular meeting, the Oxford Board of Alderman might vote to approve the resignation of the head of Lafayette County Metro Narcotics, Captain Keith Davis.

Davis has told the reporter with Buzzfeed News, Albert Samaha, that his last day with the unit was September 30, and said that his decision to resign was personal. Since April, Samaha has reported extensively on Lafayette County Metro Narcotics’ questionable use of college-aged locals as confidential informants.

Samaha reports that a “local source with ties to the law enforcement community” has fingered University of Mississippi for pressuring Captain Davis into resignation. Here is a part of the article:

Davis, who has been a member of the unit since 2006 and its captain since 2010, said the timing was a coincidence and that the stories had nothing to do with his resignation. “It’s been an ongoing thing for a while,” he said, calling his resignation a personal decision. “Nine years was enough.”

But according to one local source with ties to the law enforcement community, the University of Mississippi had pressured Davis to step down in response to an April BuzzFeed News investigation that revealed the drug unit’s tactics in pressuring college students to turn informant. The university provides $100,000 of the unit’s $425,000 annual budget.

“His quotes in there had this cavalier attitude that caused a response from the university and the university wanted to see some change in the way they have done things in the past,” the source said. “He didn’t care about that and so they were going to allow him to move jobs and try to get somebody in there who is more open to changing the way they have done things in the past. His resignation was just fallout from somebody calling them out on what they were doing.”

Davis has reportedly accepted a job as a deputy with the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Office and began working with the office last week.

Callie Daniels Bryant is the senior managing editor at HottyToddy.com. She can be reached at callie.daniels@hottytoddy.com.

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