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COLUMBUS, Ga. — This is the fourth article of a six-part series by Muscogee Muckraker covering the four Columbus Police Department documents we leaked in part one. If you’re new to the topics covered in this series, you can get caught up through our previous works here.
Yesterday, we took a detailed look at a leaked memorandum addressed to police chief Freddie Blackmon that contained the findings of the department’s specially-formed retention committee. The document identified many serious concerns for Blackmon’s leadership, calling him out on his behavior and specifically citing examples of how he should implement improvements. However, just as he did with the results of the SWOT analysis performed on the department by Columbus State University the year prior, Blackmon ignored the committee’s recommendations and opted to disband the committee instead. No city officials took any intervening actions to correct Blackmon nor the issues within the department.
Today, we’ll be taking a look at the third document leaked in part one of this series, which indisputably memorializes the extreme severity of the safety concerns voiced by our city’s police officers while under the command of police chief Freddie Blackmon.
As you read through the document and our commentary explaining its content below, it is important to remember that the serious leadership concerns voiced by officers within the document had already been known by Chief Blackmon since 2021. Though the same concerns were clearly identified in two other independent studies that city officials had known of for years, no action was taken to correct the issues.
When the FOP presented their findings to city council in February 2022, city officials jointly dismissed the claims and opted to call the voices of 70% of the city’s entire police force ‘racist’ instead.
Here’s the official FOP survey publication and what it reveals.
FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE CPD SURVEY FINDINGS (2/22/2022)
After no action was taken by chief Freddie Blackmon nor by city officials to address the department’s serious leadership issues, the officers themselves voiced their concerns through the Columbus area’s chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police.
The FOP is a national union-like organization consisting of more than 364,000 sworn police officers across the U.S. The organization serves as “the voice of those who dedicate their lives to protecting and serving our communities,” and is “committed to improving the working conditions of law enforcement officers and the safety of those we serve through education, legislation, information, community involvement and employee representation.”
DEEP CONCERN
The document begins by stating that the organization surveyed all 232 of its members who were officers of the Columbus Police Department, which accounted for 73.6% of the entire department overall. In short: the survey included just under three-fourths of every single officer of our city’s entire police department.
The FOP then stated how deeply concerned it was for both the safety of our police officers and for the residents of our city, using crime statistics and officer retention data to back up its rightful concerns.
EXTREME RESIGNATIONS
According to the FOP survey’s preambling paragraphs, CPD experienced a 112% increase in officer resignations in 2021, while the national increase that same year was just 18%. This highly significant piece of data shows — by itself — the extreme effects of the department’s current malignancy; officers are quitting the Columbus Police department at a rate 6.22 times higher than the rest of the nation.
This by itself debunks the wrongful claims of some city officials who have continued to say “well it’s happening everywhere.” It isn’t. It is happening here at a rate 6.22 times higher than “everywhere.”
DISMISSALS BY OFFICIALS
Those city officials who have continued to make that claim are either mathematically inept and incompetent, or they are making excuses in an attempt to intentionally fool the public. We will leave it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions on why city officials who have made that claim — like Isaiah Hugley — continue to do so to this day.
The document continues by stating that at the time in February 2022, 16 officers had resigned from the department within the first 7 weeks of the year. Now, in 2023, that same trend continues, as no less than twelve officers have resigned between Jan. 1 and Feb. 23, 2023; the first seven weeks of the year.
THE BROKEN RATIO
The FOP goes on to explain that the department was funded to support a total of 488 sworn officers in 2008 when the city had a population of only 180,000 people. As of 2022, the city’s population was at an estimated 206,000 people, implying that the city should now have even more officers than had been allocated in 2008.
Using that same 2008 ratio of 2.71 officers per 1,000 residents, the Columbus Police Department should now have a total of 558 sworn police officers in its ranks. Instead, the department has an estimated 290 as of the date of this article's publication on Feb. 23, 2023.
By that same ratio dictating 558 officers, the department is only 52% staffed; it is missing one out of every two officers our city requires to keep our city safe.
IT AIN’T HAPPENIN’ EVERYWHERE
The document then cites the current staffing of other cities from the region, drawing additional attention to the fact that this is not in fact “happening everywhere” as city officials have continued to claim. According to the FOP’s 2022 document, the police departments of the following cities were staffed at the following percentages:
As of the date of the FOP’s 2022 document, Columbus had — past tense — 64.3% of the city’s 488 allocated positions staffed.
RESIGNATIONS CONTINUED
Of those same 488 allocated positions — which were intended for the city’s smaller 2008 population — the Columbus Police Department is now only 59.4% staffed, with 290 officers filling the city’s 488 funded positions. Again, the city really should have 558 officers given its current population. Given that ratio of officers-to-residents, this would mean the department is actually only 52% staffed; it only has half of the police officers our population requires to keep us all safe.
THE SURVEY: ASKED AND ANSWERED
Because of the Columbus Police Department’s extreme rates of officer resignation when compared to other cities in the region and the nation as a whole, and in light of chief Freddie Blackmon’s complete disregard for the findings of his own department’s retention committee — which he disbanded — and the findings of the SWOT analysis performed by Columbus State University —both of which cited Blackmon’s extreme lack of leadership ability — the FOP asked all 232 of its CPD members the following questions:
OFFICIALS’ RACIST RESPONSE
In response, many officials who have no background in policing attempted to simply dismiss the FOP’s claims as “racism,” paying no mind to the fact that many of the officers stating Blackmon was incompetent were of a non-white race themselves.
Remember: city officials and chief Blackmon had already been in the possession of two prior studies that had already identified and vindicated the years-worth of professional concerns voiced by CPD officers regarding Blackmon’s ability to lead the department.
Nonetheless, city officials — namely city manager Isaiah Hugley — saw the opportunity to see only color instead, labeling the voices of 73% of the city’s entire police force as somehow being racist instead.
Wane Hailes, the president of Columbus’ local NAACP branch, was quoted as saying, “They meant to embarrass the chief of police,” claiming that the multiracial and diverse pool of 219 veteran police officers somehow were only motivated to oust their chief because of his skin color, ignoring the officers’ cited reason of Blackmon’s failed leadership ability.
The officers — who make up roughly 70% of the city's entire police department — would continue to have their voices ignored. Other city officials also publicly used the excuse of “racism” to dismiss the 219 officers who were deeply concerned with Blackmon’s leadership ability.
IT ‘MUST’ BE PERSONAL
Both Mayor Henderson and City Manager Isaiah Hugley both dismissed the claims, publicly stating they believed the officer who gave the presentation must have had some personal vendetta against Blackmon — completely ignoring the 219 officers whose voices were being presented.
Hugley in particular then went on to claim “racism” as the reason, further demonstrating a lack of regard for the voices of 70% of the entire Columbus police force. Hugley gave a long-winded lecture of the history of black police officers in an attempt to dismiss the claims through an emotional race-based plea.
“Chief Blackmon … I want you to know that I stand with you,” Hugley said, “I have never witnessed such treatment of a police chief in 37 years.”
Instead of heeding the voices of 219 Columbus police officers, city officials continued to dismiss their votes of no-confidence as somehow merely being “racist.”
Their statements, of course, completely contradicted the two previous studies that had already vindicated the professional concerns for Blackmon’s shoddy leadership and how it affected public safety.
THE EGG ON YOUR FACES
Knowing that both Henderson and Hugley knew of the officer’s concerns, their craziness in dismissing the legitimate concerns of 73% of our city’s cops as “racism” gives the unignorable appearance of a purposeful suppression of the situation in the public eye.
Whether that was indeed a purposeful suppression or not, the sheer fact that our mayor and city manager chose to dismiss the claims of 73% of the entire police force by calling them all ‘racist’ is a serious red flag for the integrity and leadership ability of our current city officials.
THE IRONY OF DEFENSIVENESS
Blackmon himself attempted to dismiss the claims against him as being race-based, which probably didn’t help to win over more confidence from the 70% of his department that cited his poor leadership ability as the reason for their dismay.
“They didn’t just start over night … They didn’t just start when I became the chief of police, Blackmon said in response.
However, data from a third-party study of the department would later show that Blackmon was in fact likely to be the cause — but that’s a story for another day. Stay tuned.
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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