Community reacts to recent Columbus City Council meeting

COLUMBUS, Ga. (WTVM) - People around town are not seeing eye to eye when it comes to the treatment of Police Chief Freddie Blackmon. Some are against him and want change, while others believe he needs more time to do his job.

Retired police officer, Byron Hickey, is one of the several who believes the issue is not Blackmon’s race. It’s his lack of leadership.

”If we’re serious about getting crime under control in this city. We first start by getting the proper leadership inside of the police department.”, said Hickey. ”If there’s a race issue, why would they leave a black chief and go work for a black sheriff. If you’re able to do your job, why do you need somebody to pull a race card to help defend your job. There’s a serious retention issue. The department doesn’t have enough people out here on the streets to provide the proper service to our citizens and all that is due to poor leadership.”

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Meanwhile, others like pastor Reverend Dr. Johnny Flakes, III, think the chief needs more time to do his job and is being treated unfairly. Flakes pointed out city council never asked the former chief to present a written plan, within a thirty-day deadline, on how he plans to address issues within the department.

“The previous chief of 16 years had retention issues, had recruiting issues, had morale issues, had compression issues and they didn’t ask. All of a sudden, you get an African American, black police chief and the standards are changed, so that gives a different message.”, said Flakes. “It’s not like that Chief Blackmon has come in and all of sudden, these problems have showed up. There were things that were already there and he inherited all of it.”

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The next council meeting where this topic is expected to come up will be on March 14th. It’s unclear if the mayor and council will take any actions against the police chief right now.

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