US city approves funding for ‘Cop City’ after months of protests
The Atlanta City Council voted to fund a major new law enforcement training facility after 14 hours of public comment.
Local authorities in Atlanta, Georgia, a city in the southern United States, have voted in favor of a controversial new law enforcement training facility that critics have dubbed “Cop City,” despite concerns about police brutality and the location’s environmental impact.
In a vote Tuesday, the Atlanta City Council approved the $90 million project by an 11-4 margin, after 14 hours of public comment, much of which denounced the facility.
“A vote today for this paper is a public endorsement of war, of human rights violations, of militarized streets in our city,” said Rev. James Woodall, a former president of the Georgia branch of the civil rights group NAACP.
He called the council’s vote on the police facility “immoral and undemocratic”.
Tuesday’s approval comes after years of organized resistance by social justice groups protesting the creation of the sprawling new police training facility. They claim it will encourage trends of police militarization and destroy a local forest they call “the lungs of Atlanta.”
Supporters, meanwhile, say the facility will help the city recruit and retain police officers and better serve the public. The facility includes a mock city where police and firefighters can train and take driving courses.
As part of Tuesday’s vote, the Atlanta City Council also approved $31 million in immediate public funding for the project, as well as a lease-back agreement that will pay the Atlanta Police Foundation $36 million over 30 years.
In a statement on Tuesday, Mayor Andre Dickens said the vote was an “important milestone in better preparing our fire, police and emergency responders to protect and serve our communities.”
But opposition to the project united environmental, racial justice, indigenous rights and left-wing political groups across the country, who opposed what they characterized as the prioritization of policing over other public needs.
“We’re here to stop environmental racism and the militarization of the police force,” said Matthew Johnson, executive director of Beloved Community Ministries, a local nonprofit social justice organization. “We need to go back to meeting basic needs instead of using the police as the sole solution to all our social problems.”
The protests gained more attention in January after police shot dead environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, a 26-year-old who had joined other protesters to occupy the project’s future site.
A number of activists have been arrested since the protests began. In March, a judge charged 22 people with “domestic terrorism” for their role in the demonstrations, raising concerns about freedom of expression and the right to protest.
Last week, police also arrested three organizers who ran the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which provided bail to those arrested during protests.
Prosecutors have accused the group of fraudulently funding protest actions. The Associated Press reported that the arrest warrant lists expenses such as “gasoline, forest clearance, baking, COVID rapid testing, media [and] yard signs”.
Human rights groups have expressed alarm at the arrests, which were carried out by a group of heavily armed police officers. Even US Senator Raphael Warnock weighed in on Twitter.
“While we still don’t have all the details, as a long-serving justice minister, I am concerned about what we know about last Wednesday’s violent crackdown on Atlanta bailiff organizers,” the Georgia senator said. wrote.
“The footage from the raid reinforces the very suspicions that help fuel the current conflict — namely, Georgians’ concerns about over-policing, the suppression of dissent in a democracy, and the militarization of our police.”
The facility will be built on 85 acres (34.4 hectares) of city land in unincorporated DeKalb County. It received first approval in September 2021.