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COLUMBUS, Ga. — A local gas station’s recent closure and demolition has been publicly blamed on the city’s rising violent crime, though it doesn’t take much to see why some residents are now raising questions about the bizarre pattern of events surrounding the suspicious closure of the local business. 

Just four days after the Chevron gas station at the corner of Farr Road and Old Cusseta Road was announced to have been demolished due to the city’s rise in violent crime, a pre-planned highway development project was conveniently approved to break ground on the very same patch of the ground the local business previously stood.

According to an article by WTVM published on March 2, 2023, the Chevron gas station owner had boarded up his store’s windows last year in 2022  after three separate shootings all occurred in the immediate area in a single weekend. 

In a follow-up article also by WTVM published on March 6, 2023, a highway construction project ten years in the making was announced to finally be getting underway to install a new highway exit off I-185. The project conveniently is taking place on the very same piece of land the recently-demolished gas station formerly stood on.

The highway development project was initially planned in 2012 under the administration of then-mayor Teresa Tomlinson. 

During that same time frame, Tomlinson’s radical progressive policies also set the conditions for the violent and tumultuous reality our city is now enduring.

Consider the following factual chain of events:

1. In 2012, Under Teresa Tomlinson’s administration, the Columbus Consolidated Government desired to build a new exit ramp on I-185 near Farr Road in an effort to “eliminate blight” — Tomlinson’s preferred method for allegedly ‘reducing’ violent crime in our city.
2. Current buildings and businesses occupied the land needed to enact the construction project.
3. Teresa Tomlinson’s administration began enacting progressive policies that were highly advised against, as they would knowingly increase violent crime throughout the city.
4. Teresa Tomlinson infamously stated “we do not have a gang problem,” saying her plan to combat violent crime was by “eliminating areas of blight” instead.
5. In 2014, then-Captain Freddie Blackmon of the Columbus Police Department was promoted to Major and placed in charge of the department’s Office of Professional Standards.
6. Violent crime continued to rise throughout the city.
7. Ten years later, with violent crime at all-time highs, the business standing in the way of the I-185 construction project shut its doors. The city’s rise in violent crime was cited as the reason the business could no longer operate.
8. Immediately following the demolition of the gas station — just four days later — the long-awaited I-185 construction project was announced to be underway.

The chain of events above are but one of several examples of local businesses shutting their doors and leaving town due to the city’s extreme levels of violent crime, shootings, and homicide.

The factual chain of events listed above does beg the following question:

Who’s legacies, political agendas, and wallets inadvertently stand to gain from the rather obvious neglect of our city’s rise in deadly violent crime?

Perhaps it’s time that our city’s residents, city officials, and our local media correspondents all begin to ask these rather obvious questions.

When asking these sorts of obvious yet ignored questions, there is a single thread that often does not lie: 

Follow the money; it often reveals the trifecta of means, motive, and opportunity.

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

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