Editorial: State has duty to revive task force
Staff
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 2:51 PM CDT
When Mississippi’s Department of Public Safety was doling out a shrinking pot of federal funds for drug enforcement last year, it cut off the state’s oldest narcotics task force in large part because of alleged mismanagement of previous funds.
Now that a federal investigation has shown the allegation to be false, the state has an obligation to put the North Central Narcotics Task Force back on its feet.
Steve Simpson, the new public safety commissioner, seems to understand that the North Central task force got a raw deal from his predecessor, George Phillips. Phillips is now in a federal management job that has nothing to do with law enforcement.
During Phillips’ reign, allegations surfaced that there were some shenanigans going on with the money used to make undercover drug buys in Leflore and the other eight counties served by the North Central Narcotics Task Force.
An audit by the U.S. Department of Justice, however, turned up no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. It found the task force had been guilty of nothing more than sloppy paperwork. All the funds could be properly accounted for.
Certainly, the task force should have done a better job of recordkeeping, but that problem could have been addressed without taking the drastic step of putting it out of business.
Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks and other lawmen say the task force has been instrumental in catching those who traffic in illicit drugs. In its last year of operation, according to the task force’s records, it made 605 drug arrests and got 181 convictions, half on charges of selling drugs. Lawmen fear that without a task force presence, drug dealers will become even more brazen in their work.
It’s unclear how or when the state could come up with the grant money to resuscitate the task force. It has a duty, though, to figure it out.
- From the Greenwood Comonwealth
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