Sometimes it takes a false start to show someone the way to go.
For example, Joe Dillon, former Columbus public information officer, wanted to be a cop.
Dillon, a native of Columbus, graduated from Caldwell High School and earned a degree in communication from Mississippi State University.
From there, a fascination with law enforcement and a desire for public service sent him to the Starkville Police Department.
“I was officer S-25,” Dillon remembered. “It was the late ‘70s. We drove a four-door Chevy Nova and had a little five-shot revolver. It was very different than today. I worked for a year and the chief came to me and told me, ‘Police work isn’t for you.’”
Dillon ended up working at C&P Printing in East Columbus. After a brief stint in Texas, he returned to Columbus and the printing business, opening his own shop, Sign and Banner Express, which he would run for about 20 years.
Along the way, Dillon picked up the technical skills that would serve him later in life and would lead him to his first jobs with the Columbus Police Department.
“I’ve always found electronics fascinating,” Dillon said. “(My printing company) was putting the lettering on CPD’s cars, and we started repairing their sirens. The siren would go out and they would bring it to me and break down the wiring and find the problem. Then they wanted us to reinstall blue lights.”
The sirens led to installing shotgun locks and, eventually, to in-car cameras. Columbus, Dillon said, was at the forefront when it came to installing cameras in police cars.
“It started with a VHS player in the trunk of a car,” Dillon said. “We took VHS players off the shelf, I think we bought most of them at Kmart, and officers would have to load it with a fresh VHS tape when they started their shift.”
Working on police cars evolved into helping out with communications issues, he said.
“The chief at the time would talk to me about how he wanted a way to let people know this or that, and wanted a way to quickly communicate with the masses during an emergency,” he said. “At that time Twitter was more used than Facebook, and I helped set up and run the department’s Twitter account as a volunteer.”
In turn, working with the police department led Dillon into discussions with the city of Columbus itself.
“(Then-Mayor Robert Smith and then-Chief Operations Officer David Armstrong) were talking about doing regular press releases,” Dillon said. “I wrote a few for them, just to show them how it could be done. It kind of evolved from there, and they created the PIO position.”
Dillon was one of three to interview for the job, and was hired as a contractor in 2016.
“They offered me a full-time job, and wanted me to come in and work in an office,” he said. “I politely told them I would do the job but I just couldn’t be in a building. I’ve never done that. I’ve always been out, doing things in the field.”
He was PIO for eight years, and he estimated he worked with the city — especially the police department — for about eight years before that. The eight years Dillon was officially in harness didn’t follow the expected path for a PIO.
The COVID-19 pandemic meant the city had to come up with a way to keep its meetings public while also barring non-critical attendance at council meetings.
“In March 2020 (Smith) said in a meeting on Friday we needed to figure out a way to close the (Tuesday) council meeting and put it online,” he said. “We got the equipment together and streamed that next meeting, and for over a year we did streaming only.”
He said his most memorable moment was helping solve the mystery of what hit the pedestrian bridge at the Riverwalk in February 2020.
“My phone started ringing early because people were asking if the bridge had been damaged,” Dillon said. “I drove down there and you could see green paint at the waterline. I called (City Attorney Jeff Turnage) and said, ‘Let’s go down the river.’”
Columbus Fire and Rescue provided an inflatable boat and some firefighters, and the crew set off.
“We rode down the river and found the barge,” he said. “It was almost all the way down the river to Eka Chemicals. We collected some concrete off of it, and took pictures and everything like that. The river was very high, and it was almost as exciting as it was scary.”
He said he was thrilled by the whole experience.
“Maybe that police officer thing never left me because we felt like we had discovered a pot of gold,” he said. “It had dents in it, and it matched the paint (on the bridge). We were excited like children on Christmas morning.”
The city would eventually settle a federal lawsuit for $4.2 million over damage to the bridge. Repairs are currently underway.
He told The Dispatch he is focusing now on installing and maintaining surveillance cameras.
“I’ve got an electronic surveillance license to install cameras and things like that,” he said. “I’m spending more time doing that.”
Dillon said he already misses working for the government.
“It was an honor to see government from the inside and sit in meetings where grown-up stuff is talked about,” he said. “That’s the part I miss, the problem-solving. That was the most rewarding part of my job.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 46 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
