Investigation taught value of shared intel and pooled resources

Lest we forget, when we get around to calculating how much the Tellis trial cost us, that Panola County benefited from the investigation of the murder of Jessica Chambers even though it ended Monday in a mistrial.
In December, 2015, one year after Chambers’ death and after months of investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies, authorities had developed enough spinoff information to began arrests in “Operation Bite Back.” A combined effort by city, county, state and federal officers led to arrests of seventeen people who were charged with state and federal offenses.
“Many cities across the country have success pooling resources with Federal and State agencies to fight and control gangs and gang-related violence,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Donald Alway said at the time. “It’s our intent that this operation will be the start of that here in Panola and surrounding counties.”
Sheriff Dennis Darby had been telling us for months that the investigation into the Chambers case had turned up information leading to other criminal activity in the county. The strength of the intelligence network became apparent as the task force formed for the murder investigation also brought in information unrelated about unrelated criminal activity. What had begun as a small investigation by the special operations unit of the Batesville Police Department became linked to the larger Chambers investigation as officials began to connect the dots to form a larger and larger picture.
On the day of the initial arrests in Operation Bite Back, participating agencies included, in addition to the Batesville Police Dept. and the Panola County Sheriff’s Dept., the FBI, Bureau of Narcotics and the Miss. Highway Patrol. During the trial we saw that others who comprised what became the Chambers task force also included the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the Miss. Bureau of Investigation (MBI), the U.S. Marshals, the State Medical Examiner’s office — perhaps others.
Once the task force was no longer involved the lessons learned about combining assets and intelligence and building alliances remain with us.