If you’re an officer or employee of the Columbus Police Department and wish to voice your opinions on the current state of the department, please reach out to the Muckraker. We will privately verify your credentials and will not publish your identity.
Residents may voice their opinions on the current state of the Columbus Police Department by contacting their city council members.
COLUMBUS, Ga. — “We are all participating in mandatory fun activities.” — Michael Scott, Branch Manager of Dunder Mifflin, NBC’s The Office.
This is the second article in a five-part series on the recent Operational Assessment of the Columbus Police Department, as presented to city council by Jensen Hughes on February 14, 2023.
Immediately after that world-class study vindicated the years-long concerns of officers for their chief’s ability to lead the department — specifically an absence of leadership, communication, trust, and published procedural policy on how to combat the city’s rising gang violence — police chief Freddie Blackmon took to the podium and provided city council with an update on the department.
SOFTER THAN SNOT
Blackmon began his remarks in a soft-spoken voice that projected the absolute opposite of leadership presence. His tone, speech patterns, demeanor, and body language all presented a lack of confidence in himself — which was readily-detectable by his own officers seated behind him in the council chamber.
At no point did Blackmon choose to turn around and speak to his own officers seated ten feet behind him, nor did he thank them for their attendance of the meeting and their own support for the department during their off-time. Instead, Blackmon chose to further himself by playing a political move of self-defense, creating a guise of self-righteousness by thanking the local businesses who funded the Jensen Hughes study.
We’ll be exploring this very specific point in-depth in the next article of this five-part series, and provide some professional insight on what it might have looked like if Blackmon had actually chosen to lead instead.
SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT
Instead of providing city council with any sort of strategic plan to enact the recommendations of Jensen Hughes — which Blackmon has been in possession of since November of last year — Blackmon provided slides of statistical crime and police employment retention data in an effort to defend his now- objectively-measurable failures that were just highlighted by Jensen Hughes ten minutes prior.
It is also extremely noteworthy that Blackmon’s slides selectively showed the city’s one-year decrease in murder, but did not list the continuously-increasing number of shootings nor shooting victims within the city.
The city of Columbus had 181 shooting victims in 2021. That number rose to 196 shooting victims in 2022; an increase of 8.28% over the past year. The marksmanship of criminals is absolutely not an indicator of our city’s safety and security, despite whatever cherry-picked data Blackmon’s slides may choose to include.
DEATH BY POWERPOINT
Blackmon then presented slides showing the turnover rate of sworn police officers within the department from 2016 to the present. Ironically, the data Blackmon presented not only showed those failures during his time as chief, but also displayed how deeply the department suffered under his leadership when he was in charge of the Office of Professional Standards prior to becoming chief.
During the year Blackmon took over as chief in November of 2020, the department received 634 employment applications from interested applicants, with 51 of them being hired onto the force. During that same year, 41 officers resigned, 1 was terminated, 1 passed away, and 17 retired, for a net total loss of 9 fewer officers than the department had at the beginning of 2020.
After Blackmon’s first year as chief in 2021, the department only received 345 job applications; a decrease of 45.58%. Of those 345 job applications, the department hired 44 new officers; a decrease of 13.72%. Within that first year with Blackmon as chief, an unprecedented 84 officers resigned from the Columbus Police Department, 3 were terminated, 1 passed away, and 11 retired, for a net total loss of a whopping 55 fewer officers than the department had before Blackmon’s first calendar-year as police chief.
In 2022, the department received 374 job applications, of which 42 were hired as new officers. However, 57 officers resigned, 2 were terminated, 1 passed away, and 6 retired, for a net total loss of 24 officers.
STRATEGY? WHAT STRATEGY?
No actionable plan was presented by Blackmon to rectify the serious problems within his department that he himself had briefed to city council, despite the fact that he has been in possession of Jensen Hughes’ report since November of last year.
It genuinely appeared as if Blackmon believes his job as chief is to merely collect and display statistics, without realizing that his responsibility is to actually lead the department to improve the numbers on the slides.
Blackmon then presented slides that were labeled as a “5 Year Strategic Plan,” but consisted of only buzzwords and desired end-states. Blackmon presented these slides immediately after Jensen Hughes told him to his face, in front of everybody, that his department does not have a strategic plan — which it still doesn’t by the way.
To quote Blackmon directly, let us paint a picture of what Blackmon’s “strategic plan” was:
“Our strategic plan was to address crime in our community … from a two-pronged approach: the first approach was through proactive policing, and the second part of that was through our community engagement.”
Clearly, that “strategic plan” has absolutely not worked. There’s a reason for that.
THE OPERATIONAL ART
Let us grab your attention for a minute, Chief: your slides did not, under any circumstances, contain anything even remotely close to what a “strategic plan” is. For a good idea on how to realistically begin thinking about these sorts of things, we would highly recommend you begin to form a strong base-in-theory by reference the following:
In particular, we would implore you to study the Application of Operational Art, found on page 2-1 of ADP 3-0; and the Elements of Operational Art, found on page 2-5 of the same.
We believe these widely-distributed methods may help to provide your department’s future leaders with a framework of reference for how they may seek to develop the department. As chief, it is your responsibility to train them on these methods — not to be absent of them yourself.
A MAN OF ACTION
To top it off, the only actionable method Blackmon presented that he believed might better serve his extremely overworked, underheard, and underappreciated officers was to suggest an increase of “mandatory fun day” activities. These activities, of course, wouldn’t be required for officers to attend, but just highly encouraged (it’s always an implied requirement and you will suffer if you don’t attend).
Blackmon’s vision for this was highlighted through his self-proclaimed successful example of the recent “chili cookoff day” he orchestrated.
According to officers who have confidentially reached out to the Muckraker, that chili cookoff day was in fact filled through heavily-coerced and mafioso-style, “highly encouraged” attendance. Your officers were not fans, Blackmon.
“The best way to gain the trust of overworked police officers who just gave you a vote of no confidence because of your lack of leadership ability is obviously to coerce them into attending a mandatory fun day on their time off.” — Sun Tzu, Sarcastically.
Be sure to stay with us for part three of this five-part series on the recent Operational Assessment of the Columbus Police Department, as presented to city council by Jensen Hughes. We’ll be taking a look at what Chief Blackmon could have done immediately following the assessment’s presentation.
Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.
-30-
© 2023 Muscogee Muckraker. All rights reserved.
Previous Coverage:
Be sure to follow Muscogee Muckraker on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to see all the muck that’s fit to print as it breaks throughout the coming week.
