Atlanta’s “Cop City” Is Putting Policing Before the Climate

On a grey, drizzly day final December, activists and organizers with the Atlanta-based Cease Cop Metropolis motion held a press convention on the sting of the Weelaunee Forest. Hours earlier than, a large police drive had descended on Weelaunee, the place a bunch of forest defenders have been residing since 2021 to stop the development of an enormous police militarization facility, known as Cop Metropolis by native organizers. Through the raid, police arrested 5 forest defenders, who had been in the end charged with home terrorism. The extreme fees are a results of 2017 state laws meant to additional criminalize protests. 

“It’s clear that if the general public doesn’t reply… escalation goes to proceed,” a consultant of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund informed the assembled press that day. “Are we going to finish up in a scenario the place police are murdering protesters so as to advance not public security however their explicit political agenda in constructing Cop Metropolis?” 

These phrases turned out to be tragically prescient. Simply over a month later, on January 18, Georgia State Patrol shot and killed a forest defender named Manuel Teran throughout a raid. On that very same day, police made at the very least seven extra arrests, resulting in extra home terrorism fees. Organizers say Teran, who glided by the identify Tortugita, had a deep dedication to nonviolent resistance. 

Full particulars of the taking pictures have but to emerge. The official police narrative — which, as a rule, needs to be handled with skepticism — has been murky from the beginning. First, police mentioned there could have been gunfire by an unseen shooter, which resulted within the nonfatal taking pictures of an officer; shortly after, police claimed that they had been in dialog with a forest defender who then fired at them. 

The Georgia Bureau of Investigations claims there isn’t any physique digicam footage of the taking pictures, as Georgia State Patrol officers are not outfitted with physique cams, and has refused to launch the names of any officers concerned. Different companies that had been current with physique cams, together with the Atlanta Police, are refusing to launch no matter footage they’ve. In the meantime, stories from the bottom have steered the potential for unintended pleasant fireplace.

As we watch for the complete story to develop into clear, the actual fact stays: Nobody would have been killed had Atlanta’s management not rammed by the unpopular venture often known as Cop Metropolis.

The proposal for Cop Metropolis, formally often known as the Public Security Coaching Middle, was publicly introduced in 2021, and began getting consideration that summer season, when laws was formally launched. The $90 million facility would function a coaching middle for Atlanta police and firefighters; the proposal consists of the development of a mock metropolis within the forest, therefore the moniker Cop Metropolis. The proposed web site is the Weelaunee Forest (often known as the Atlanta Forest, or the South River Forest, although we might be utilizing the unique Muscogee identify, Weelaunee). 

Referred to in an official report as one of many 4 “lungs” of the town of Atlanta, the forest is a important bulwark towards environmental catastrophe and serves as an vital public good for the numerous residents who discover pleasure in strolling the forest’s trails. In a metropolis already dealing with harmful warmth waves (projected to worsen) and flooding (additionally projected to worsen) on account of the local weather disaster, the safety that ecologically wealthy land offers can’t be overstated. Each the Weelaunee Forest and the South River, which winds by it, are teeming with life.