URGENT: Officers of the Columbus Police Department are urging members of the public to attend this week’s city council meeting TODAY, Feb. 14, at 9:00 a.m. to show support for the officers of our city’s police force. The meeting will be held on the second floor of the Citizens Service Center, located at 3111 Citizens Way, Columbus, GA 31906.
COLUMBUS, Ga. — This is the sixth exclusive insider article that the Muckraker has published giving voice to officers of the Columbus Police Department.
In response to our previous reporting, a former Columbus Police Officer who recently left the department came forward to speak about why hundreds of officers continue to leave the department over its leadership issues.
The officer made a chilling statement in their message to the Muckraker, saying that one day soon “you will dial 911 and just get a busy signal because there is no one left to send."
Hear the officer’s own words for yourself in their exclusive message below.
Note: The message below is one of many pieces of vetted correspondence received by the Muckraker from officers of the Columbus Police Department. It has been slightly edited for both grammar and content to maintain the strict anonymity of the officer.
“I worked with and for Chief Blackmon for many years. Blackmon was in charge of a particular unit while I was on it. I have many years of law enforcement experience with CPD and an entire career in the military before that.
I've dealt with large crowds and angry mobs in Iraq. Through that experience, I’ve gained a very good idea of what dangerous incompetence looks like. That said, the level of incompetence that Blackmon gives off and the danger it poses is incredible. He doesn’t understand very basic concepts. He tries to explain what he wants us to do, but he is so inarticulate that you can barely understand what he is saying. If you asked him to clarify what he meant, he would then tell you something completely different than what he had just said.
The entire department had started doing exit interviews to find out why we were leaving in droves. When every single officer said the same few reasons over and over (low pay, corruption, incompetence in leadership, corruption in senior leadership, and hostile work environment), they finally just stopped doing the exit interviews. They had no intention of changing any of that so they just quit.
I had the patrol services major tell me to my face that the public perception of officers was more important to him than officers' safety.
Every time you tried to do proactive police work, the department would do whatever it could to crush that out of you.
Myself and four other officers took it upon ourselves, paid our own money, and took our comp time to go to a Georgia Gang Investigators Association training class, just so we could better combat the rise of gang violence and to learn how to set up the District Attorney's office to prosecute those cases under Georgia’s gang laws.
When I asked the DA at the time why they wouldn't prosecute under Georgia’s gang laws, the DA said that their office “didn't use that statute” because it was “too difficult to work with,” despite the fact that we as cops were writing reports to document and interpret gang graffiti, building lists of known Gang members, and citing how officers were currently succeeding in Atlanta and Savannah at combating gang problems.
If you get charged with aggravated battery under the normal legal system, you might spend a month or two in jail and then be out on parole. Under the gang violence statute, you spend every single day of your maximum sentence in jail.
Officers can only watch new recruits they are being paid to train make far more money than they do for so long before any morale they had is just dead. We watched as “problem leaders” who we wouldn't trust to feed a goldfish wind up being promoted — because it's easier to promote an idiot out of your hair than it is to have them fired.
The department can't put more than a dozen patrol officers on the street to take 9-1-1 calls for over 200k people. When you come on-shift, sometimes there are violent crime calls that have already been held for two or three hours and you still have 15 or 20 calls unanswered when you finally get off shift.
It isn't rare for the department to coerce us to work over an extra half shift at night so they can at least cover some of the city — and then they don't even pay us for it. When working overtime gets you comp time, they are always too short-handed to let you actually use that comp time.
They know exactly why we are pissed off and leaving right-and-left, and they don't care one bit about it. Our leadership just says “if you aren't happy then leave and we will replace you.”
Everything I’ve mentioned is exactly why we’re seeing 5, 10, and even 15-year veterans hang it all up and walk away. You can't replace a 15 year veteran with thousands of arrests and closed cases through his or her time as a detective and all their special training and experience.
Not one single officer from my graduating academy class is still employed as an officer of the Columbus Police Department. We all straight-up left for the same reasons. Right now, you are losing officers at more than twice the rate you hire them in Columbus. Worse yet, a lot of them wash out in training even though the standards are lower.
There will be a time soon when you dial 911 and just get a busy signal because there is no one left to send.
We had a saying: "Sometimes you get Justice, and sometimes you get Just Us.”
//———End of Officer’s Message———//
A CALL FOR SUPPORT
Today, Feb. 14, 2023, at 9:00 a.m., representatives of the firm Jensen Hughes will present their Operational Assessment of the Columbus Police Department. According to officers who continue to privately reach out to the Muckraker, members of the public are strongly encouraged to attend the meeting in a show of support for the officers of our city’s police force.
The meeting will be held in the council chambers on the second floor of the Citizens Service Center, located at 3111 Citizens Way, Columbus, GA 31906.
Ask the hard questions. Fix the hard answers. Rake the muck.
Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.
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