Stop Cop City

The Atlanta Police Foundation is trying to bulldoze a significant portion of Weelaunee (South River) Forest to build a police military training center

The foundation purchased a lease to use 381-acres for only $10 a year. The plans for this base include:

•   Military-grade training facilities
•   Replica of a city to practice urban warfare
•   Black Hawk helicopter landing pad
•   Dozens of shooting ranges
•   Bomb testing sites
•   Potentially a jail

Military-grade weaponry in the hands of police trained in urban warfare tactics makes our neighborhoods less safe especially for Black residents. With the construction of this mock city, we cannot imagine why the police would be training in urban warfare except to use those tactics against civilians. These are tools of controlling people, destroying ecosystems, and enacting violence. These are not tools that make our communities safe.

Ecologically and socially, Cop City is dangerous and bolsters the prison industrial complex. This construction will destroy essential forests, pollute our watershed, and train officers in dangerous militarization tactics.

How does the community feel about this police facility?

The community surrounding Weelaunee Forest, which is primarily low-income Black residents, overwhelmingly opposes this facility. 98% of respondents to a survey of 371 participants oppose police/fire facilities being built in the area.

Community members have been protesting and organizing against this facility for months. Additionally, members of the Muscogee Creek ceremonial community have also voiced grave concerns over the potential destruction of what is left of their ancestral homelands. They demonstrated their grievance of the destruction this past November during a Stomp Dance and cultural sharing, a gathering at the Weelaunee Forest which brought out over 500 Atlantans.

Mekko Chebon Kernell, community leader of Helvpe Ceremonial Grounds, expressed his concern over the project: “Not only will the bulldozing of trees destroy life in the forest that all members of creation depend on, but also the proposed project itself will lead to further harm to marginalized communities of Georgia. I stand in solidarity with those trying to halt this assault on our natural world in hopes that what is left of our forests and ecosystems will remain intact for generations to come.”

About the Weelaunee Forest

As the lungs of Atlanta, Weelaunee Forest provides health and vitality to Atlanta. Weelaunee Forest is the largest forest in Atlanta, and one of the last remains of forested Muscogee homelands. Weelaunee Forest offers us:

•   Clean air
•   Carbon sequestration
•   Essential watershed infrastructure for water runoff
•   Temperature regulation – the forest lowers heating & cooling costs, affecting low-income people most heavily
•   Essential wetland and forest habitat for wildlife, especially amphibians and migratory birds

Destroying this forest would create huge flooding issues across South Atlanta, decrease air quality, and worsen rising heat levels in South Atlanta, especially in the summer. The destruction of Weelaunee Forest would also impact our nation’s capacity to mitigate climate change.

It’s estimated that by 2100, 13 million people in the United States could be displaced due to sea level rises, and a significant portion of these climate migrants will flee to Atlanta, according to a study by PLOS One.

As human survival depends on our capacity to adapt to climate change, it is vital that we preserve essential ecological infrastructure like Weelaunee Forest and build systems of community care, rather than systems of incarceration and criminalization.

An independent analysis completed in July 2022 using the US Forest Service software “i-Tree Canopy” determined that the 117 acres of forested canopy planned for removal provide immense value in removing carbon and air pollution from the atmosphere and surrounding communities.

The deforestation of these trees will result in an additional 579 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), and 8,661 pounds of other air pollutants entering the atmosphere each year, and negatively impacting local communities..

Why is Cop City bad for Atlanta?

This facility will further militarize police, making Black, Brown, and low-income communities less safe. Training officers in military-grade weaponry and urban warfare techniques is dangerous. Police already use excessive and lethal force, which results in violence and death. In Atlanta, the police have murdered Rayshard Brooks, Anthony Hill, Jamarion Robinson, Matthew Williams, and many other innocent people. Militarized police are lethal, and they make marginalized communities less safe.

The system of policing in the United States trains officers in violence, not safety. This police militarization facility embodies the nature of policing in the United States, as it would train police in military-grade weaponry and “crowd-control” techniques.

The “crowd-control” techniques that police have used in social movements have been excessively violent, as demonstrated in the police response to the 2020 protests against the murder of George Floyd. Here in Atlanta, we saw the kind of excessive force that police are capable of, such as shooting people with rubber bullets, tasing two innocent college students in their cars, and violently tear-gassing and assaulting peaceful protestors. This facility will make police violence worse and bolster the structural issue of racist policing.

What would it look like to address harm outside of policing?

Policing is not a reliable way of addressing crime or emergencies. Police often escalate situations and perpetuate harm, and they are very inefficient at addressing crime. They rarely recover lost property, identify perpetrators, or solve rape/murder cases. Rape and murder cases almost always go unsolved by police. Police do not address violence like rape and murder, and, in fact, they often perpetuate these violences.

Although a police person can be immediately fired for a positive marijuana test, police rarely hold each other accountable when their coworkers are domestic abusers. Additionally, the police are frequent perpetrators of harm in Black and Brown communities, as they regularly harass, incarcerate, and displace people.

Police respond to complex social dynamics with force, incarceration, and violence. These are not solutions to crime. Focusing on and falsely relying on police keeps us from coming up with alternatives to policing that would actually increase community safety and security.

Police do not address harm. Access to resources like housing, health care, and food prevent harm. Community prevents harm by investing in systems of care, mental health infrastructure, and changing culture. We should be investing in community care and access to resources, not militarized police.

So…. if this facility isn’t about public safety, what’s it about?

Follow the money. This facility is being funded, designed, and pushed forward against the will of the community by the Atlanta Police Foundation. The Atlanta Police Foundation is a part of a network of police foundations that militarize police for the benefit of the corporations that fund them. Read this ground-breaking report by Color of Change that details the connection between corporations and police foundations: https://policefoundations.org

Millions of dollars for this facility are being put up by corporations in Atlanta invested in maintaining the status quo. This facility reflects the interests of corporate elites in training the police to suppress community movements for justice. The profits of the elite depend on maintaining oppression and extraction.

Corporate elites and companies have poured millions of dollars into this facility in the interest of maintaining white supremacy and economic domination. The people of Atlanta are not fooled into believing this is a facility for “public safety”. We see this facility as exactly what it is: a tool of corporate elites to train police to hinder community movements for change and further criminalize poor people and communities of color.

What will be the effects of Cop City?

This police training facility will affect the entire country, as police from all over will train here. Internationally, Atlanta already has a police exchange training programs set up. In the GILEE program, Israel exchanges strategies for busting into people’s homes with their surveillance tactics against Palestinians.

Georgia is also preparing to build the largest ICE detention facility in the Southeast and this training facility will be used to prepare cops to violently and unfairly arrest and detain immigrants in Atlanta. Atlanta will become a leading exporter in violent police tactics if we let this training compound be built.

Destroying the forest will worsen the urban heat island effect, decrease air quality, and cause massive flooding. These outcomes will disproportionately impact low-income residents.

Additionally, Cop City will continue the violent legacy of this land. Muscogee people were violently dispossessed from these lands in the 1800s. This lease is also on the site of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, where people were wrongfully incarcerated under horrendous conditions. The history of the farm is detailed in a report at atlpresscollective.com.

There is a high likelihood of unmarked graves and human remains from the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, which has not been investigated despite being marked as a concern. This land has a violent history of abuse, dispossession, and incarceration that the police militarization facility would continue to perpetuate.

What is the environmental importance of South River Forest?

Weelaunee Forest provides needed ecological infrastructure to dwindling other-than-human populations. These forests are the crucial breeding grounds for amphibians and migration sites for wading birds. Destroying these woods would be devastating for local and migratory animal life.

As Weelaunee Forest provides habitat to local wildlife, sequesters millions of pounds of carbon, cleans our air, and manages our water runoff, this forest offers essential ecological infrastructure that must be protected.

This project is ecologically and socially toxic, and goes against the will of local residents. We demand an immediate cancellation of this project. We need forests and community care, not militarized police.

How to Get Involved

Ask your friends neighbors, and coworkers if they’ve heard about the police military base that the Atlanta Police Foundation is trying to build in Weelaunee Forest. Organize to put pressure on the mayor, city council, and corporate donors to get the project cancelled. For more information, please visit stopcop.city.