Local opposition to a police training center in Atlanta, Georgia, that began in 2021 has exploded into a nationwide anti-police and environmentalism movement as activists within the state and across the United States call for the end to "Cop City."
The "Stop Cop City" movement has turned into spurts of violence, resulting in several people arrested on charges of domestic terrorism and one protester shot and killed by police officers, sparking residents' fury even more.
ATLANTA POLICE CHARGE 23 PEOPLE FOLLOWING ATTACK ON POLICE AND FIRE TRAINING CENTER
Here is a look at the expected center and the rise in opposition among activists.
What is "Cop City?"
"Cop City" refers to the Public Safety Training Center, an 85-acre compound intended to educate firefighters and 911 operators, as well as police officers, on how to serve the Atlanta communities. The center is intended for the Atlanta Police Department.
The proposed facility would be constructed within a 300-acre forest in an unincorporated area of DeKalb County. Activists refer to the forest as the Weelaunee Forest, after the Muscogee (Creek) native tribe that occupied the land up until the 1820s. The land later became the site for the original Atlanta Police Academy and the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, per the center's website.
The new center is slated to have a mock city, the echo of the "Cop City" name, as well as a "burn building" for firefighters, a firing range, a driving course, stables and pastures for police horses, and kennels for K-9 dogs.
Why are people upset with the "Cop City" installation?
Atlanta is considered to be the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. In the wake of the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 and the more recent death of Tyre Nichols in January 2023, both at the hands of police officers, the anti-law enforcement movement in the area has grown significantly stronger.
In Atlanta especially, with the death of 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks, residents have been asking for new methods of public safety.
However, the training center is not what they had in mind. The Atlanta City Council voted to lease 85 acres of the forest to the Atlanta Police Department in September 2021, despite 17 hours of negative public comment, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Many black residents and low-income residents live in the area where the center would be built.
Several activist groups have risen up to protest the training center's construction, including Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest, and "ecological destruction and racialized violence" in Atlanta, per DTF's website.
While the training center website says that the site is not for militarized police training, many residents are concerned that the creation of the center will only escalate violent encounters between police and community members, particularly young black men.
“To be clear — cop city is not just a controversial training center. It is a war base where police will learn militarylike maneuvers to kill black people and control our bodies and movements," Kwame Olufemi of Community Movement Builders said in a statement via the Stop Cop City website. "They are practicing how to make sure poor and working-class people stay in line."
The DeKalb County Zoning Board agreed to hear an appeal for the construction project on April 12 but ultimately sided unanimously in favor of the Atlanta City Council.
Environmental concerns
The other side of the "Stop Cop City" argument is that the training center will be harmful to the environment. One organization, the South River Watershed Alliance, filed a petition in the Office of State Administrative Hearings to appeal the Georgia Environmental Protection Division's decision to revoke a permit for the future training center site.
The appeal, provided to the Washington Examiner, alleges that the Georgia EPD is violating Georgia's water quality standards and the Clean Water Act, arguing that stormwater runoff from construction sites could pollute the forest's water sources.
Jacqueline Echols called the training center construction an "awful, environmentally degrading project" and the South River Watershed Alliance is advocating for the project to move out of the forest area.
"It is not the right place for it," Echols said to the Washington Examiner regarding the Weelaunee Forest. "It just will destroy the largest piece of green space inside of I-285 in the city of Atlanta. The impacts on the community, the impacts related to climate change, are just tremendous."
The alliance is also in the process of filing an appeal with the DeKalb County Superior Court to appeal the center contractors' permit.
Echols added that there are "plenty of alternatives to this site" and the alliance's goal is not to prevent police training, but to prevent damage to the area.
"It's not about training Atlanta's police, it never was, because that can happen, and that can happen without destroying green space, without destroying the community," Echols said.
Timeline of protests and arrests
Opposition to the construction of the training center turned from what appeared to be mostly peaceful protesting into all-out violence.
The beginning of Atlanta residents' opposition to police came in June 2020, less than a month after Floyd was killed. Brooks was shot and killed by police after he resisted arrest, grabbed a police taser, and aimed it at officers in a Wendy's parking lot on June 12, 2020. Prosecutors had declined to charge the officers involved. The Atlanta City Council awarded $1 million in reparations to Brooks's wife.
Protesters — a makeshift group of professional environmental justice activists, abolitionists, and anarchists — began camping in the forest, occupying the trees in treehouses. During their time in the forest, activists vandalized work trucks and broke windows to discourage the contractors from their work, as well as set fire to equipment.
In May 2022, police arrived to begin removing protesters from the forest. Officers were met with rocks, Molotov cocktails, and other projectiles. Activists had also vandalized a truck, writing "stop cop city" on it. It was stripped for parts and burned. "Innumerable trees" were "spiked," an illegal act involving the placement of rods and nails into the trees intended to destroy saws or injure workers. Police made seven arrests.
Months later, five people were arrested and charged by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation with domestic terrorism in December 2022 after agents arrived to remove barricades and obstacles blocking entrances to the future training center grounds. The charges included criminal trespassing, domestic terrorism, aggravated assault, and obstruction. All five were members of DTF.
In January, the situation escalated dramatically, resulting in the death of 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, who was shot and killed on Jan. 18 in a shootout with police that also injured a Georgia State Patrol officer during a sweep of the protester's forest encampment. State officials had claimed self-defense, but the shooting remains under investigation. A report from the DeKalb County Medical Examiner's Office determined that Teran had sustained at least 57 gunshot wounds.
In January, 49 organizations called for the resignation of Democratic Mayor Andre Dickens for his response to Paez Teran's death and overall police presence in Atlanta.
"Mayor Dickens has stood by as police violence and rhetoric towards protesters has steadily ratcheted up, including the use of chemical agents and militarized raids on small groups of protesters engaged in civil disobedience," the organizations wrote in an open letter.
In March, at least 23 people were charged with domestic terrorism after a protest turned violent. Protesters had launched Molotov cocktails, bricks, and fireworks at law enforcement officers. Police arrested a total of 35 people from that protest, which only included two Georgia residents. The rest were from other states, and two were from out of the country.
“This was not a protest,” Atlanta Police Department officials had said. “This wasn’t about a public training center; this was about anarchy.”
Several historically black colleges and universities across the U.S. have joined protesters in denouncing the training center project since February.
On Monday, students from Emory University, Georgia State University, Agnes Scott College, Morehouse College, Georgia Institute of Technology, Spelman College, and Clark Atlanta University staged a protest calling on Atlanta officials to cancel the lease and drop ties with the Atlanta Police Foundation, according to a press release provided to the Washington Examiner.
"Let us not delude ourselves: Cop City, if built, will result in more death and destruction at the hands of the police," Morehouse College faculty members said.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the activist movements and the Atlanta Police Foundation for statements. The Atlanta Police Department declined to comment.
Elected leaders throw support behind training center
Dickens has thrown his support behind the Atlanta City Council's project. In March, he created the South River Forest and Public Safety Training Center Community Task Force to seek further input from the community as part of a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in our vital public safety needs and establish the largest park the City of Atlanta would own."
Bryan Thomas, a spokesman for Dickens, said the goal of the center is to help prepare officers for situations in modern-day America, such as mass shootings and convenience store robberies — two of many crimes that have skyrocketed in recent years.
"We need to make sure officers are prepared for real-life scenarios, like if you have a shooting in a nightclub or a gas station,” Thomas said to the New York Times. “And that’s where this facility comes in.”
Both Democratic and Republican state leaders have weighed in on the training center's construction. Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) also supports the training center and is vocal about prosecutors seeking justice in cases where protesters are arrested on charges of domestic terrorism.
“It’s my hope that the prosecutors, and us, go after them very hard,” Kemp said to Atlanta News First. “I believe that we will, but it’s time for the judicial system also to go after these individuals very hard and that’s what I think we need to see happen in this case.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Democratic state Sen. Elena Parent said at a town hall last week discussing Georgia's policing practices that the training center can help prevent inefficient and ill-trained officers — drawing an example from Paez Teran's death.
“I think that the situation is tragic,” Parent said of Paez Teran. “There’s no doubt that we need to have law enforcement. In my view, it is much better to have them well-trained and well-paid, because I think that you can get higher caliber individuals … whether that is the best or only appropriate place for it, I think is a whole other issue.”