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UPDATE : 7/13/2023 at 2:07 p.m. — The city has posted the full text of the resolution to their website, outlining greater details about the city’s authorized payment of $600,000 to the officers discriminated against. You can follow this link to the Clerk of Council’s website to see Resolution 238-23 in full here.

COLUMBUS, Ga. — The city council unanimously voted to authorize the settlement of a year-long suit of racial- and gender-based discrimination against the city.

The vote, which occurred at the very end of the city council meeting held on July 11 after the Council returned from executive session, authorized the payment of $600,000 to two officers of the Columbus Police Department who were systematically discriminated against based on their race and gender by the city’s promotion policy.

That policy blatantly violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as Title 42 U.S.C., Section 1981.

Immediately upon the council’s vote to authorize the settlement, we reached out to one of the officers who had been systemically discriminated against to see if they could provide comment. Very humbly, the officer had the following to say, noting that no other news outlet seemed to notice the huge conclusive settlement nor had reached out for comment:

“It’s impressive that you caught this today,” the officer began. “No one else commented. You have been a friend of police officers … I am happy to have this behind us and I look forward to the city and the police department moving forward.”

We at the Muckraker are also very happy to see the matter being resolved. We, too, look forward to watching the Columbus Police Department continue to rebuild.

THE BACKSTORY

According to court documents, the city’s Affirmative Action policy explicitly requires departments to — and we quote —  “place a priority on filling upper-level supervisory, managerial, and executive positions with minority/female qualified candidates where underutilization exists.”

The policy was first created by former mayor Teresa Tomlinson. It was later reapproved in 2020 and again every year since by Mayor Skip Henderson. 

The same documents state that former chief of the Columbus Police Department, Freddie Blackmon, actively “discriminated against (the two officers) by denying them promotions in seeking to achieve and maintain a predetermined racial and gender balance.”

Blackmon, who ‘retired’ back in April of this year after all-but-destroying the city’s police department from the inside-out, chose to implement the city’s policy by objectively and measurably lowering the standards for promotions throughout the department in order to purposefully widen the pool of candidates eligible for promotions. Blackmon then hand-picked candidates based on their race and gender for promotion over other candidates who were measurably higher-qualified. 

Consistently, as shown in court documents, Blackmon actively ignored the merits of officers deemed as “highly promotable” by the Assessment Center, which places officers through a rigorous series of exercises designed to evaluate job-related dimensions. According to Ordinance 20-058, Section 17-26.4, Blackmon was legally-mandated to promote those “highly promotable” officers at the first-available opportunity upon a comparison of their education, seniority, performance evaluations, disciplinary actions, and commendations.

The two officers who were discriminated against were ranked second and third among all officers of their grade who were eligible for promotion; the Department was legally required to promote them ahead of the other candidates whose metrics did not yet exceed that of their peers.

Instead, according to court documents, Blackmon ignored the legally-mandated ordinance altogether and hand-picked candidates for promotion based on their skin color and gender. 

The two highly-qualified candidates were passed over for promotion because their skin wasn’t the right color and their gender wasn’t preferable.

Blackmon’s methods of implementing the  city’s own discriminatory policy blatantly violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as Title 42 U.S.C., Section 1981.

As a result, the two officers filed a civil action on March 15, 2022 against the Columbus Consolidated Government, Mayor Henderson, then-chief Freddie Blackmon, and the city’s Human Resource Director Reather Hollowell.

After over a year in court, the city council voted on July 11, 2023, to finally fold their hand on the prima facie case of racial and gender-based discrimination  by authorizing a $600,000 settlement payable to the two officers.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Making decisions in the workplace based on the color of someone’s skin isn’t just disgusting.

It’s against the law.

Make decisions based on merit — and nothing else — by following the law instead.

It’s 2023 and CCG still hasn’t figured this out. C’mon, man. Enough already.

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

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