Environmentalists are up a tree in an Atlanta forest, with activists determined to halt local law enforcement from building a $90 million training facility in an unincorporated piece of forest land.
Protesters with Defend the Atlanta Forest have occupied the area for months, living in the treetops and installing makeshift barriers and roadblocks to prevent city police from transforming the area into a training center. Local groups have long opposed city plans to build the facility within the forest, but the Atlanta City Council approved the proposal to build what activists call “Cop City” in September last year.
“We’re certainly disappointed that the city continues to move forward with this project despite the overwhelming public opposition,” Nina Dutton, chairwoman of the Metro Atlanta Group, told the Guardian.
“The environmental ramifications of clearcutting a wide swath of one of the last remaining undeveloped forests in our city and replacing it with this facility would be significant and long-lasting.”
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After a string of vandalism and violent clashes with police, protesters are no longer allowed to camp out on the property and will be arrested if they return to the area, officials announced Monday.
“The Atlanta Police Department supports every citizen’s right to a peaceful and lawful protest. Atlanta is the home of civil rights protests and other social justice movements. It is in our DNA,” the Atlanta Police Department told the Washington Examiner. “Our role is public safety. We intervene when the law is broken. We, in conjunction with our law enforcement partners, the Atlanta Police Foundation, stakeholders, public officials, and community supporters, will continue to move forward with the mission of constructing this state-of-the-art public safety training facility that will allow us to teach and train recruits and our tenured police officers and firefighters in an environment that is safe, aesthetically pleasing, and technically capable of moving public safety training forward.”
The planned center would cost the city about $90 million and would provide different facilities to train police officers and firefighters in real-life scenarios. Such facilities would include a burn tower to practice extinguishing fires, an open space for high-speed vehicle chases, a helicopter landing pad, and a shooting range, among other things.
However, environmentalists have expressed concerns about the social and environmental impacts of the center, occasionally clashing with law enforcement officials who say protesters are trespassing on private land in their endeavors to conserve the area.
“We don’t want to live in a police state,” said an activist who only identified himself as Red. “We don’t want to live in a world that’s ravaged by climate change. And, you know, we just want to protect the nature that exists. And for me, as an individual, this whole thing is coming from a place of love, not from rage or anger.”
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Protesters have decked themselves out with face paint and camouflage clothing, vandalizing abandoned objects in the forest with spray paint and anti-police insignia. Some activists were arrested in mid-May after allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails at officers patrolling the land. City officials are also investigating whether the group is responsible for a spate of vandalism at offices and city equipment outside the forest in recent weeks.
The new facility is being funded by a mix of private and public agencies within the city, including the Atlanta Police Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports local law enforcement.
