For over a year, environmental, labor, and criminal justice activists, alongside Georgia residents, have continued to protest the building of an “urban warfare” training center dubbed “Cop City” by critics. The city plans to bulldoze the mostly forested land for a $90 million police complex. This complex would include classrooms, a bar, and a mock neighborhood to practice utilizing military-grade equipment on Americans.
In protest, forest defenders have taken up residence on the land to halt construction. This has resulted in the cops killing at least one environmental activist and pursuing terrorism charges on others raising bail money. News broke recently that one of the complex’s many supporters, alongside the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF), can’t even afford to use it. So, they’re working on building their own.
The greater Atlanta area covers roughly six counties, with the four main ones being Fulton (west/central), DeKalb (east/central), Cob (northwest), and Clayton (south). Nearly all officials in each country advocated, alongside APF, for Cop City’s construction. Each police group intended to send their employees there to train and network. However, Atlanta is constructing Cop City in De Kalb. This choice put a hefty four million-dollar-a-year price tag on Fulton’s police departments. So, instead of using the facilities 15 miles away, Fulton is expanding their existing training center. They estimate this will cost $15 million. This is the same county that just closed its last hospital in the southern half less than one year ago.
Where is the money coming from?
Local organizer Micah Herskind spoke with The Atlanta-Journal Constitution criticizing this project. He reiterated what other activists have said about Cop City and similar developments: these projects invest in punishments and cops rather than “the services and resources that communities need to be safe.” The $100 million dedicated between Fulton’s training center and Cop City is a drop in the bucket of nationwide police funding. Over $2.3 billion is slated for new training centers across Florida, New Jersey, and Texas. Some, but not all, of it comes from “leftover” COVID-19 funds, while factors that are linked to crime, like economic insecurity, are on the rise. With the focus on the police and state violence in DeKlab with Cop City, Fulton’s own initiative is currently flying under the radar.
After approving $36 million upfront (the rest coming from APF fundraising) against a wave of backlash in June, Atlanta is likely in no place to direct funds to Fulton. So, Fulton plans to get $3.45 million from a facility reserve fund. The rest will come from a 2019 approved bond intended for an animal shelter. This shelter’s construction was delayed due to the pandemic, with the labor and supply cost rising since. Still, Fulton is diverting $12 million from the shelter budget to the police. Maybe the justification was that the police help lessen the need for an animal shelter. After all, according to the Department of Justice, cops kill 25-30 pets daily (usually dogs) every year.
Every step of this whole plan by Atlanta lawmakers and “enforcers” is ridiculous. As much as the media and supporters of Cop City have tried to paint pushback as outside agitators, this is false. People in the community see the dissonance: the in claiming this is for public safety while destroying the local floodplains around Black neighborhoods, the dissonance in claiming this is for a public good when the last major projects in the forest—including Native American removal (1830) and building a private prison plantation (1900s)—were framed similarly. Additionally, they see through the lies that diversifying the force and training with military weapons will mean less death and corruption.
Currently, citizens in the Atlanta area are passing around a petition to put the continuation of Cop City to a local vote this November. If successful, this could permanently end this training center that’s already two years behind schedule. It could also stir up hope for people fighting similar projects nationwide. This includes galvanizing support against the Fulton facility, which is getting rubber-stamped by officials.
(via The Atlanta Journal-Consitution, featured image: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
