TBI Inaugural Media Day in West Tennessee

Media members spent the day learning what officers of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation go through every day.

TBI officers from the drug investigations unit, the criminal intelligence unit, and more also spoke on prevalent issues seen in West Tennessee.

One of those is human trafficking.

TBI says its happening in the rural communities of West Tennessee and they give parents some advice to help keep their kids out of dangerous situations.

“Not all these shady websites nobody ever hears about if you don’t know about it. It's twitter its snapchat so I think monitoring is going to be your first step in being involved,” says Jeremy Lofquest.

Another common problem are drugs.

Aside from the opioid epidemic TBI officers say drugs like meth and marijuana are still some of the most popular and problematic in West Tennessee.

“Now that we have the opioid crisis and fentanyl being so prevalent, we still have a lot of meth available and throughout all that time marijuana is still the drug of choice and used by a lot of people and sold for a lot of profit,” says Jay Barnes.

In 2018 alone, TBI’s crime laboratory in Memphis received over 7 thousand new cases, but soon they'll be testing evidence somewhere else.

In just weeks TBI will be having their groundbreaking for a testing lab in Jackson, making it a more centralized location for West Tennessee.

“We will have a presence of our field investigators in that building as well,” says Donna Nelson.

For 39 News, i'm Camila Rueda.