Despite
yearlong protests from environmental and
anti-police activists in the Atlanta area,
and right on the heels of the police
killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis,
Atlanta officials announced the
construction of the Atlanta
Public
Safety Training Center - dubbed
“Cop City” by activists - will move
forward.
Atlanta
Mayor Andre Dickens and DeKalb County CEO
Michael Thurmond cleared the way for the
85-acre, $90 million complex on city-owned
forest land that sits near a predominately
Black community. According to the
Atlanta Police Foundation - the
organization leasing
the
land and
funding
two thirds of the facility with
Atlanta taxpayers picking up the rest of
the tab - the training center promises to
“reimagine law enforcement training and
Police/Fire Rescue community engagement.”
This
complex will reportedly contain training
facilities for urban
warfare
tactics,
explosive testing sites, firing range, a Black
Hawk
helicopter landing pad and
more.
In
September 2021, the Atlanta City Council
approved a plan to build the facility in a
10-4 vote. Then-Mayor
Keisha
Lance Bottoms
supported the plan, calling the council
vote “courageous” and rejecting the idea
that we must “defund the police” as Black
Lives Matter protesters have advocated.
“What I’ve said repeatedly over the last
year is that holding the men and women who
serve us in a public safety capacity
accountable is not mutually exclusive from
supporting them,” Bottoms said, suggesting
the only way to abolish police is to
abolish crime.
Atlanta
law enforcement pushed for Cop City, and
Bottoms claimed the training facility
would “help boost
morale,
retention and recruitment” of police
officers, and provide “21st century
training, rooted in respect and regard for
the communities they serve.” The center
would be among the largest in the country,
more massive than LAPD or NYPD facilities.
The decision to build Cop City comes amid
growing calls to reimagine, defund or even
abolish police that emerged from the
global protests over the 2020 police
murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and
other police killings such as Rayshard
Brooks
in Atlanta.
Community
opposition to Cop City, in the form of the
Stop Cop City movement,
reflects the sentiment that this training
center will bring more police violence and
environmental devastation to Black
communities in the area.
Protesters
maintain
that Cop City will allow the police to
continue to kill Black people and thwart
and suppress community protest and
responses to that police violence. “To be
clear - Cop City is not just a
controversial training center. It is a war
base where police will learn military-like
maneuvers to kill Black people and control
our bodies and movements,” said
Kwame Olufemi of
Community Movement Builders. “The facility
includes shooting ranges, plans for bomb
testing, and will practice tear gas
deployment. They are practicing how to
make sure poor and working class people
stay in line.”
Further,
this training center will have an impact
beyond Atlanta, with 43% of trainees at
the facility reportedly coming from out
of state. And as
anti-Cop City activist and founder of the
Atlanta-based organization Community
Movement Builders Kamau Franklin suggests,
Cop City has international implications,
as police in Atlanta and Israel are
engaged in international
training. “The
tactics that are used against Palestinians
are going to be exported here to the
United States, and the tactics used
against Black people by the police are
going to be exported to Palestine,“
Franklin said on
“Roland Martin Unfiltered.”
Community
objections to Cop City are environmental
as well. The site of the training facility
rests in South River Forest - 381
acres of
forest once home to the Muscogee Creek
Nation, who were removed from the land
through genocide. The land was
subsequently used as a plantation for the
forced labor of enslaved Africans,
followed by a prison farm.
The city
designated South River Forest as one of
Atlanta’s four “lungs” to
protect against environmental damage and
carbon pollution. Environmental activists
known as forest defenders have squatted in
the forest and lived there since late 2021
to protest the construction of Cop City.
Low-income Black people who live in the
area strongly
oppose
the facility opening
there or anywhere else.
One of
those forest defenders, queer
Afro-Venezuelan activist Manuel
Esteban
Páez Terán, also
known as Tortuguita, was
killed by a Georgia State Patrol trooper
on Jan. 18. After the shooting, Gov. Brian
Kemp declared
a
state of emergency and
activated 1,000 National Guard troops. And
19 other forest defenders were charged
with
domestic terrorism under a
broad 2017
law intended
for cases such as the massacre at Emanuel
AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The terrorism law, which The Intercept
reported could be invoked to prosecute
Black Lives Matter protesters as
terrorists for blocking roads, has been
used against these forest defenders who
are accused of trespassing.
Officials
have pledged environmental
protections for the
site, including the preservation of nearly
300 acres as a public green space.
Activists
have also focused on the financial backers
of the Atlanta Public Safety Training
Center. Cop City has the support of
Atlanta’s political leadership, and the
Atlanta Police Foundation, the
organization backing the facility enjoys
the support of major corporations. Some of
the companies bankrolling the foundation
include Bank of America, Cox Enterprises,
Delta, Equifax, Verizon and others.
Coca-Cola stepped down from the Atlanta
Police Foundation board, Mainline
reported, after Color
of
Change released
a report on the
harm that police foundations bring upon
Black, brown and Indigenous communities by
financing police militarization, and the
“unchecked corporate power” behind these
foundations.
Meanwhile, the protests continue.
This
commentary
is also posted on The Grio
