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COLUMBUS, Ga. — This is the second article of a new six-part series by Muscogee Muckraker covering the four documents we leaked yesterday in part one. If you’re new to the topics covered in this series, you can get caught up through our previous works here.
Before we begin this article, we need to take a minute to recognize and thank the absolutely heroic officers of the Columbus Police Department. We at the Muckraker are eternally grateful for your continued dedication and service to our city. You guys are in some pretty unfathomable circumstances right now, yet you continue to run towards the things that most people simply pretend do not exist — and you do it relentlessly, professionally, and with distinction. From our heart to yours: Thank You.
If you’re reading this, the next time you're out-and-about and you see an officer on patrol, please thank them for what they do every day for our city. We’d bet it really would mean an awful lot to them.
Now, back to the topics-at-hand:
Yesterday, we published four leaked documents of professional studies that assessed the operations of the Columbus Police Department. Those documents have been held close-to-the-chest by city officials and news media outlets. Those documents also show the demonstrated leadership failures of police chief Freddie Blackmon.
Every news agency had these documents, though none chose to make them available for public viewing. We believe the public has a right to know — so we published them for you.
Today we will be taking a look at the first of those studies: the Columbus Police Department SWOT Report, performed by Columbus State University in 2021.
Back in 2021, the Columbus Police Department under the command of Chief Freddie Blackmon realized it was having some very serious internal problems. In response, and with the help of Columbus State University’s Leadership Institute, the department conducted a SWOT analysis; a process of evaluating an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Officers involved in the 2021 study provided “votes” for what they perceived to be the department’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Those votes were then tallied and assessed, consolidated, reviewed, and plotted onto a pie chart for each category.
As you read through our commentary of what the document really reveals, it is important — absolutely paramount — that the reader keep in mind that chief Freddie Blackmon had this written SWOT analysis in his personal possession in 2021. We cannot stress that point enough.
COLUMBUS POLICE DEPARTMENT SWOT REPORT (2021)
Here’s a breakdown of what the document really reveals to have been known by chief Freddie Blackmon, mayor Skip Henderson, city manager Isaiah Hugley, and other city officials all the way back in 2021 — though nothing was done to correct any of it as the department continued to rot from the inside-out, with the city’s public safety continuing to crumble in-turn as violent crime shot through the roof.
STRENGTHS
Right off-the-bat, the document clearly shows that officers felt very strongly about the level of their training. According to page 3 of the document, nearly 73% of votes received said their high level of training was a tremendous strength of the department.
Clearly, training was not an issue within the department and can be assumed to not have been a cause of the department’s retention issues or internal dysfunction.
The remaining 27% of votes in the “strengths” category are where reading between the lines allows a deeper understanding of what the numbers reveal.
By looking at the small number of relative votes received for items pertaining to leadership and teambuilding, we can begin to see a lack of support for items that could be easily overlooked as a “strength” when the small support from officers’ votes clearly shows them as weaknesses instead.
Of the remaining votes, only a small majority felt the department had good teamwork (13%); positive community relations (7%); and a good response to citizens (7%).
Let's take a minute to break that down, because that is mind-bogglingly important:
No one identified that as a tremendous red flag in 2021? Really? No one? Not one single city official saw that as a reason to call for a formal investigation with the possibility of resulting in someone being relieved for cause?
Additionally, other “strengths” were listed by the study as having received “few votes” — so few in fact that they were not even registered within the pie chart. The lack of votes for these additional “strengths'' makes it quite clear that they were not in fact strengths at all. Those additional “strengths” were: experience/knowledge; new vision; diversity; and recruitment.
Given the lack of officer support for these “strengths” as shown through their lack of votes, and also given the department's bonafide serious recruitment/retention issues at the time in 2021, it is a very safe assumption to make that these “strengths” were almost certainly not suggested by the officers themselves, but likely by their leadership. While we concede that this assumption is purely speculative, the preponderance of evidence and interpretation of the data tends to suggest that this is likely the case.
How else can we tell?
Well, the study also lists “strengths” that received no votes — not one — in an additional bulleted list. Ponder that in your mind for a second: how can something be genuinely considered a “strength” of the department if not one single officer in the department cast their vote for its consideration? We’ll leave you to deduce your own answer for that rhetorical question.
Those additional no-vote “strengths” included exactly the things you would think they would: weaknesses of the department. In fact, they are the very same items specifically underscored by Jensen Hughes — continuously — throughout their world-class $190,000 operational assessment of the department as weaknesses of the department. Huh. Weird.
Those no-vote “strengths” that were almost certainly put forth as suggestions by the department’s leadership themselves were, of course: leadership; being good at dealing with chaotic situations; technology; and written communication.
Huh. Weird.
So in summary, so far, on the very first page of data within the report, we can rather easily identify that the department’s leadership put forth items as the department’s strengths — which no other officer agreed with nor voted for as actually being a strength — and no one bothered to take note of that rather obvious discrepancy nor do anything about that from a leadership standpoint.
Huh. Weird.
WEAKNESSES
This is where the report really starts to become interesting. Remember, all of this was known back in 2021.
Page five of the document shows that 45% of all votes received identified pay and compensation as weakness of the department — specifically, that pay compression causes junior officers to be paid more than their seniors, that the pay was sub-par, and that it offered few if any benefits and incentives.
It took until the end of 2022/early 2023 for our city’s officials to even begin implementing changes to address that pay compression — but the damage it caused to the department had already been done.
Another 39% of votes received were for a lack of leadership (14%); micromanagement (19%); and low morale (6%). It is absolutely paramount for the reader to understand that these are now known to be highly underreported percentages; officers had censored themselves from speaking out against the department’s leadership out of fear of retaliation.
The 39% of officers who voted to identify a lack of leadership, micromanagement, and low morale as weaknesses in the department are only those who were willing to put their careers on the line to do so — which is in fact exactly what one would expect to see in an environment where micromanagement and toxic leadership are rampant. Do we see the connections here?
The votes identifying a lack of leadership specifically mentioned a lack of confidence, a top-heavy ruling within the department, and a genuine need for the department’s leadership to communicate a new direction for the department to move toward. That last part, by the way, is a complicated way of saying the department’s leadership had no vision for how to lead — and the troops knew it. In 2021. Do we see the connections yet?
The votes identifying micromanagement specifically mention a lack of understanding or appreciation of workload from leadership; leadership not listening to officers; and heavy-handed disciplinary actions against officers.
Again, this is exactly what we would expect to see from an environment where toxic leadership was in fact running wild — and no one bothered to investigate this further nor implement immediate action to ensure the officers of our city’s police department were receiving the proper leadership they were entitled to.
The votes of low morale specifically identified that there was a sense of placing “I” before “team”; angry personnel; and an overall negative work environment.
Following the same patterns demonstrated above, these are exactly the sorts of things that we would expect to see in a toxic command climate where officers were being shown the exact opposite example of what their leadership should have been showing them every day. Follow the leader, right? Do we see the connections yet?
An additional 10% of officers voted to identify a lack of personnel as a weakness, specifically within the department’s sections most crucial to actually policing the city and physically putting bad guys in handcuffs: patrol, detective, and other essential units (almost certainly the Special Operations Unit, though the document does not specifically list this; we know this through cross-referenced information).
A small percentage of officers were bold enough to identify a lack of trust/respect/fear of retaliation (2%). If we had to guess, these were almost certainly from the most seasoned patrol officers who truly knew what “right” looked like and did not care about what their own leadership thought of their honesty — because they cared more about taking care of their own officers and the department, despite the toxic environment created by the department’s senior command staff. Again, this is exactly the sort of thing that we would expect in an actual toxic command climate.
Remember: all of this was identified in-writing and known by chief Blackmon and city officials in 2021, though no formal investigation was called for nor was any action taken. We do, however, distinctly remember city manager Isaiah Hugley dismissing these same claims as somehow being “racist” the following year.
Again: No one identified these items as tremendous red flags in 2021? Really? No one? Not one single city official saw that as a reason to call for a formal investigation with the possibility of resulting in someone being relieved for cause?
OPPORTUNITIES
The study continued by identifying the opportunities the department had to improve itself and its effectiveness. Remember, all of this was known by chief Blackmon and city officials back in 2021.
Of all votes received to identify those opportunities, 29% of them were for having the department better support its personnel. To put that another way, roughly one-third of officers therefore thought the department was doing a poor job of supporting its officers. In following the observable pattern, no action was taken to address this by chief Blackmon or city officials back in 2021.
Another 29% identified a need to build better loyalty to the department. Again, this is another way of saying that roughly one-third of officers felt the department lacked a sense of loyalty — which is again exactly the sort of red flag we would expect to see in a toxic command climate. Yet again, no action was taken to address this by chief Blackmon or city officials back in 2021.
Eight percent of officers voted to identify that the department should do a better job of listening to employees about things that affect them, and 9% identified a lack of cross-department resource sharing. Again, no action was taken to address this back in 2021.
Additionally, 8% of officers’ votes identified that the department should make better strides in rebuilding trust within the community; 9% said the department should seek better progressive policies in dealing with both the public and employees; 4% said the department needs to do more for its own officers and create better opportunities; and 4% said the department needs to do a better job of utilizing its staff to get the job done.
Again: No one identified these items as tremendous red flags in 2021? Really? No one? Not one single city official saw that as a reason to call for a formal investigation with the possibility of resulting in someone being relieved for cause?
THREATS
In the final part of the SWOT analysis’ core components, officers voted to identify the department’s “threats,” or the challenges they believed they may face as the department sought to leverage its strengths to achieve the opportunities it had identified.
Unsurprisingly, the single largest hurdle that officers voted to identify in the 2021 study was the city’s District Attorney — though that is an entirely different story that warrants a full series of articles in-and-of itself. If you are from the Columbus, Georgia area, you are likely familiar with that saga.
According to officers who have privately reached out to the muckraker, the issue wasn’t a new one in 2021. There were other serious perceived issues with the District Attorney’s office, largely relating to an alleged lack of the DA office’s willingness to prosecute gang-related crime under Georgia law. Officers stated the DA’s unwillingness stemmed from the state’s gang laws being “too difficult to work with.”
Additionally, 14% of officers voted that media disinformation was largely a threat to the department — though this may not be as it seems on the surface. Cross-referencing this perception with other contemporary documents shows that officers were largely dissatisfied with their leadership’s misrepresentation of the state of the department to the media, specifically citing chief Freddie Blackmon’s false statements of the department being properly manned and the city being adequately policed.
Do we see the theme? Are we sensing the root of the problems?
Another 14% of officers identified the department's continuous loss of experienced officers to other outside agencies. Again, this was identified back in 2021, yet no actionable plan was put in place to prevent the further loss of the irreplaceable seasoned officers of the department. Furthermore, the information raised no red flags as to what might be causing these highly-seasoned officers with 15 and 20 years of hardened experience to want to leave the department.
We’re going to go ahead and guess that these veterans raised their concerns countless times, spoke up for the younger officers in their charge, and were met with angry self-righteous supervisors who paid no mind to their serious concerns — so they resigned and took their irreplaceable experience with them. In following the trend, no one did a darn thing about it either, even though this was known back in 2021.
Twelve percent of officers voted to identify the department's inability to handle violence and gang-related crime, though no actionable plan was even written to address this, let alone implemented to impact change. Instead, chief Freddie Blackmon gutted the Special Operations Unit in order to utilize its elite officers for standard patrol duty. This in turn not only allowed the city’s gangs to flood their memberships to an estimated 1,800 gang members within the city while shootings skyrocketed, but it also caused highly-trained, elite officers to take their extremely rare and valuable skill sets with them as they resigned to go serve in other departments elsewhere — ironically serving to exacerbate the issue of losing experienced officers.
Yet again, no red flags were raised by Chief Blackmon nor city officials, no accountability was had, and no action was taken to address the issues as they were left to continuously devolve into the department’s current state.
Circling back to the weaknesses identified earlier, 6% of officers saw pay compression, department funding, and a lack of incentives as a threat to the department’s future.
Another 12% of officers identify a threat due to changes in case law regarding how an officer’s actions could be judged as excessive force, specifically citing the case of Graham v. Connor. Additionally, another 11% of officers took heed at the public’s lack of trust in police.
Again: No one identified these items as tremendous red flags in 2021? Really? No one? Not one single city official saw that as a reason to call for a formal investigation with the possibility of resulting in someone being relieved for cause?
THE BOTTOM LINE
All of the information contained within Columbus State University's SWOT Report of the Columbus Police Department was known in 2021.
It was ignored.
To this very day as of this article’s publication, no strategic plan has been conceptualized, written down, published, delivered, presented, implemented, nor measured or assessed to impact change on the items mentioned above.
Instead, officers of the Columbus Police Department continue to resign, specifically naming a lack of leadership ability in chief Freddie Blackmon as the reason for their departure. As a result, the city continues to go largely under-policed as the extremely hard-working, valiant, and brave men and women of the Columbus Police Department continue to run towards the monsters our city officials seem to pretend do not exist.
These officers continue to answer the call anyway, day-in and day-out, eight days a week — so that you don’t have to.
They are all entitled to outstanding leadership — and our city officials ought to provide that leadership.
Perhaps our city officials ought to remember that.
Be sure to stay with us as we continue this six-part series on The CPD Files: The Four Leaked Documents That Show CPD’s Leadership Failures.
Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.
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