Residents may voice their concerns about the rise and spread of violent crime by contacting their respective city council members in both Phenix City and Columbus.

Another horrific double-homicide remains unsolved after a gunman shot and killed two men on the Phenix City RiverWalk in broad daylight this Saturday afternoon.

After the gunman shot and killed his first victim, a second man unknowingly approached the scene while walking his dog on a typical sunny afternoon. The gunman then shot him as well, presumably for just being there at the wrong time. 

The gunman then fled into downtown Columbus, leading to an unsuccessful manhunt by police throughout the downtown area. The gunman was last spotted on camera near Hotel Indigo wearing a teal-colored athletic jacket and remains at-large at the time of this article’s publishing. 

The grizzly murders took place shortly after the annual  Bi-City Christmas Parade while children and families were still enjoying the holiday festivities downtown, forcing all to experience the fear and carnage of the violent event for themselves.

THE VIOLENT RISE

Shootings, murders, carjackings, armed robbery, and sexual assaults are unfortunately becoming more prevalent in what were usually thought of as the “safer” parts of our sister-cities — and residents can’t help but notice. 

In the wake of the horrific events this Saturday, the Muckraker engaged in dozens of conversations with local residents from both sides of the river. By-and-large,  those we spoke with said they’ll now be avoiding the cities’ downtown areas altogether. They choose not to go on that bike ride. They don’t take that walk. They don’t get that meal downtown. They stay away.

Residents are choosing not to place themselves, their families, nor their children at risk by venturing into areas where they can be harmed just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Those “wrong places” now include the RiverWalk and downtown areas on both sides of the river.

The question is: why?

THE DEFLECTION

The irresponsible, negligent, and uneducated answer would be to dodge the question and erroneously say “well it’s happening everywhere.” — though that’s exactly the sort of deflection offered by long-time Columbus city manager Isaiah Hugley during the city council meeting on November 29, 2022, just a few days before the recent double-homicide.

It isn’t just “happening everywhere.” Not like it is here. Columbus’ rate of violent crime is well above the national average. Columbus is approaching 200 people shot this year. With a population of roughly 205,000, that’s one out of every thousand residents shot; 0.1% of the population has literally taken a bullet in 2022. 

The 2021 murder rate in Columbus was 34 per hundred-thousand. For comparison, so was Nigeria’s.

THE CAUSE

So what’s the cause?

In short: Bad municipal policy over a prolonged period of time, which creates the perfect conditions for urban decay to occur. See: Detroit. 

There are several variables at play, and they all come down to policy. Those policies have been dictated by “pollyanna utopia guys” within Phenix City and Columbus for over a decade. 

When focus shifted towards “tourism” and “economic development” during the Tomlinson administration back in 2015, it shifted away from maintaining the dynamics of its own populace. 

Instead of activating the lives of its own residents through education to build an industrious local economy capable of sustaining itself long-term, officials on both sides of the river insisted on erroneously “marketing” their cities in an effort to build “tourism.” 

Culture began to shift. Those who disagreed with this new model of “economic development” were railroaded off of boards, fired, and even ran out of town completely. 

As a result, poverty continued to rise. And rise. And rise. For a decade. While poverty declined drastically throughout the state of Georgia and the nation as a whole, poverty in Columbus rose from 20% in 2021 to an estimated 22% in 2022 alone. Roughly one-in-four Columbusites now live at or below the poverty line. 

City coffers remain drained as the region now endures some of the highest sales tax rates in the nation. Failed philanthropic efforts with goals specifically aimed at reducing poverty continued to shift their own goal posts as they asked the public for millions of more dollars to continue their measurably counter-productive and poorly-planned grifts.

As the city continued to grow poorer while officials remained focused on “development projects,” focus also shifted resources away from providing adequate policing to protect what the city already had, let alone defend the additional projects it wanted to build.

THE SPREAD

At the time of this article’s publication, the Columbus Police Department is understaffed by 33%; it is missing one out of every three officers it is supposed to have. When taking into account the increase in crime, the force should have been provided with resources to field even more officers — not wind up missing a third of them. Nonetheless, the city remained focused on “tourism” and “economic development” as violent crime began to rise. 

The primary factor of deterring crime is the level of effective policing within an area. Love it or hate it, that’s the fact, Jack. 

Let’s dig into why that is. 

Violent crime in urban areas often occurs at higher rates within isolated “pockets” of a given city. The boundaries of those pockets are generally controlled by the criminals’ perception of the surrounding environment. If criminals feel as if they can get away with something, they act.

When criminals feel they can get away with something in new areas, crime spreads. 

That spread usually occurs through petty crime first. Things like vandalism, graffiti, loitering, and increased public drug use can serve as precursors — all of which have crept into the downtown area in recent months. 

The graffiti on the city’s new multimillion-dollar RiverWalk project serves as a primary example, as reported by the Muckraker just a few weeks ago. 

This concept of “spread” is also highly visible at the Columbus Civic Center, where unchallenged thugs destroyed the parking lot causing an estimated $1.5 million in damages while inviting drug use and other property destruction to take place. Instead of focusing on combating the crime-ridden lot that had been destroyed by gangs of thugs, the city instead focused on partnering the civic center with the Columbus Airport to build its atrocious “VIP” lounge in hopes of attracting “tourists.” 

Drug use has increased dramatically throughout the area, with overdose deaths doubling from 2020 to 2021. In an article published by the Muckraker in August of this year, we warned that this rampant drug use was a likely precursor for violent crime to continue to spread to the downtown area. Unfortunately, we at the Muckraker were right:

“With no foreseeable changes to policies within the Columbus area, drug use and violent crime are likely to increase,” we published in August of this year. 

When smaller crimes like drug use, dealing, and vandalism go unchallenged, criminals feel even more emboldened; no cops stopped them last time, so why should they stop now? Who is standing in their way? They now have new territory in which they feel they can get away with their behavior. The “pocket” has grown. A permissive environment has been created. 

That feedback loop continues to grow. The prolonged absence of adequate policing over a period of time invites more and more unchallenged crime to take place in the area. The area soon becomes overrun.

Violent crime often follows. After all, there is nothing in place to stop them, so why should they feel deterred? 

Violent criminals, by definition, do not care about following “the rules.” They do, however, often have a sense of self-preservation. While they don’t care about the effects of their actions, they do not want to be caught doing what they do. They avoid doing those things in places where they know they’ll likely be caught. 

This brings us to the underlying core principle of what causes violent crime to spread:

Creating a permissive environment that allows criminals to not be caught allows their behavior to proliferate within that environment; proactively creating an environment where criminals know they will be caught deters them from acting within that environment in the first place. 

Guidance on this exact basic principle  can be plainly seen in a Department of Justice directive published on May 26, 2021.

THE FIX

Criminals — by definition — have no respect for the law. To deter criminals from action, that respect is gained through fear: the fear of facing the consequences for their actions; the fear of losing their freedom; the fear of losing their life if they take violent actions that threaten the innocent lives of others. 

Call us crazy, but maybe instead of diverting resources to tourism and new concrete riverfront developments that get covered in graffiti before they’re even completed, we should instead focus on developing a sizable police force capable of manning the city’s infrastructure in its current form before we seek to expand it. 

The world is a dangerous place. Make criminals realize how dangerous it can be for them. Instill the fear of God Himself in the minds of those who dare to challenge our cities and the good people that live here. 

Put the boots on the ground.

Si vis pacem, para bellum. 

Residents may voice their concerns about the rise and spread of violent crime by contacting their respective city council members in both Phenix City and Columbus. 

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

-30-

© 2022 Muscogee Muckraker. All rights reserved.

‍