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. — As shown by the ‘strategic plan’ presented to city council on Tuesday, police chief Freddie Blackmon’s leadership couldn’t be described as anything other than extraordinary.
Through a 12-slide presentation that summarized a 45-page spiral-bound document developed by a hired consultant, Blackmon’s years of proactive leadership enabled him to speak with such deep insight that no one in the room could even comprehend.
Inspired by Blackmon’s true strategic genius as memorialized in the slides prepared for him by a hired consultant, we at the Muckraker took it upon ourselves to develop our own strategic approach for the department — though ours only took a single afternoon to conceptualize and articulate instead of requiring the demands of city council over the course of more than two years to produce.
Throughout his presentation, Blackmon’s esteemed leadership experience and technical knowledge remained on full display as he managed to convince audience members that the reason his talking points will achieve a desired end-state is actually because of their disconnected and incoherent state.
In a similar fashion, Blackmon’s true leadership ability enabled a hired consultant to identify that Blackmon’s proactive leadership has been so great that his strategic plan should rely solely upon having to bribe officers not to quit the department so they’ll remain under Blackmon’s outstanding command instead.
Blackmon’s strategic intent appears to stem from a widely-used tactic throughout many Columbus agencies known as “throw money at the problem.” Thankfully, the racial tensions created by city manager Isaiah Hugley which he associated with Blackmon’s years of exceptional leadership back in Feb. 2022 have now empowered Blackmon to employ this same tactic.
Blackmon’s incredible aptitude for earning the respect and admiration of the men and women of the Columbus Police Department enabled him to proactively identify that those officers’ sufferings do in fact have a series of monetary value. Paying that amount to officers is now the cornerstone of Blackmon’s brilliantly-developed strategic approach. By empowering officers to ignore the reality of their extremely toxic command climate, Blackmon’s entire policing strategy for the security of our city relies on a quid-pro-quo that takes advantage of his officers’ financial status.
Blackmon described his two-pronged approach to buying his officers’ loyalty through crystal-clear communication that definitely did not sound anything like a Jen Psaki briefing:
“What I wanna do in April,” Blackmon said, “is implement, the, fifteen-hundred dollar retention bonus, for April, for the men and women, the sworn officers, as well as our emergency communication, our emergency communication, uh, officers, and 911, I would like to implement that in April (a total of roughly $2.9 million annually). Now the, uh, uh, five-thousand dollar additional amount for our sworn personnel, that's a cost of, of the numbers we have, 444 budget, budgeted positions, that’s gonna be about, give or take, a couple of numbers, about $2.2 million”
These figures — which are a 13% increase to Blackmon’s budget by themselves — do not even begin to pale in comparison to the tens of millions of dollars Blackmon is requesting for everything else his years of proactive leadership experience haven’t yet been compensated for. The bribery bonuses will be prorated all the way back to Jan. 1 of this year.
None of these funds exist within this year’s fiscal budget, which we suppose is part of Blackmon’s genius that we mortals simply aren’t wise enough to comprehend.
In just the 28 days since Blackmon was put on notice by city council to deliver a strategic plan for how his exceptional leadership will secure the safety of our city:
Our city should be thankful for Chief Freddie Blackmon’s years-long track record of exceptionally-proactive leadership. His new ‘strategic plan’ is entirely indicative of his extreme leadership potential, as it solely relies on having to bribe his officers not to walk off the job and move their families out of our gang-infested city.
It is of course no wonder our city’s leaders continue to sit on their hands and do nothing while they cowardly laud his unrivaled genius. After all, “the city is safe.”
Isn’t it?
Residents may voice their opinions on the current state of the Columbus Police Department by contacting their city council members.
Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.
-30-
© 2023 Muscogee Muckraker. All rights reserved.
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.
