A forest outside Atlanta is the new front line in the debate over policing
ATLANTA — When construction crews rolled into a patch of pine and maple trees southeast of Atlanta last month, the scene had more in common with a military incursion than a municipal building project in the suburbs. Police officers in armored trucks escorted construction workers as they cleared a pathway for heavy equipment and installed antierosion fences.
For 18 months, this parcel of woodland — once a prison farm for low-level convicts, now mostly reclaimed by the surrounding forest — has galvanized both environmental advocates who want to preserve one of the region’s largest remaining green spaces and activists concerned about the increased militarization and aggressive tactics of police forces.
Mounting protests and scattered violence culminated in January in what police described as a shootout that left a protester dead, a state trooper seriously wounded and Georgia’s governor authorizing the National Guard to intervene. Now, with organizers staging mass demonstrations starting this weekend — hundreds of activists gathered Saturday near the training site to protest the development — officials worry that confrontations may resume and that the conflict could escalate.
The tension was sparked by a plan, authorized by the Atlanta City Council in 2021, to build an enormous training center for the city’s police and fire departments on property owned by Atlanta in DeKalb County. Blueprints for the 85-acre complex include classrooms, an amphitheater, a driving course, a shooting range, pastureland for police horses and what is described by supporters as a “mock city for real-world training” that includes apartments, a nightclub and a convenience store.
Opponents deride it as “Cop City.”
Atlanta officials say that for years, police have run their academy out of old school buildings or, more recently, a college and have needed a more modern facility. And the Fire Department has long wanted to teach rookies how to drive fire engines on a training track instead of on city streets at night.
Bryan Thomas, a spokesperson for Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, said the center — approved under Dickens’ predecessor, Keisha Lance Bottoms— was designed to help officers train for situations that have become increasingly common in modern America, such as convenience store robberies and mass shootings.