Columbus Police Chief Stoney Mathis will be laying down his badge at the end of 2026. What he leaves behind is a legacy that has had a positive impact on his law enforcement team, a safer Columbus, and a recently released book.
Numbers don’t lie. More officers were hired under his watch, crime was down, and officer morale was up, according to Columbus Police Department veterans and other city leaders. Sergeant Katina Williams, a 27-year veteran of the police department, said, “The best thing Chief Mathis ever did was create the community policing unit. Everything he’s done here at CPD has been good for our city.”
Attitude reflects leadership
“My dad was in law enforcement at Fort Sill just north of Lawton, Oklahoma, where I grew up. It’s a military town like Columbus. By my second year in college, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I switched from an education major to criminal justice,” explained Mathis.
After graduating in 1992, Stoney entered the police academy in Monroe, Georgia, and spent the next 34 years in law enforcement across the state. He was named Chief of Police in Columbus in 2023.
“It wasn’t easy. I was the first chief hired from outside Columbus. We had lost 200 officers, and crime had skyrocketed.”
He has ruffled a few feathers along the way, but that goes with the territory. As police chief of the 2nd-largest city in the state, he is in some heady company of well-respected leaders including former police chiefs Curtis McClung, Ricky Boren, and Jim Wetherington, who went on to serve as Columbus Mayor.
Former police officer and city councilor Byron Hickey took the podium at Stoney’s recent retirement ceremony to personally thank the police chief for his success. “And what I say to all your critics out there, you need to be saying thank you as well.”…