Atlanta's Cop City

Author: Nora Lewis

Suggested Citation:

Lewis, N. (2026). Atlanta's Cop City. Technology Assessment Project Case Study Library, University of Michigan. https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/atlantas-cop-city

Atlanta's Cop City

Key Takeaways

• Large infrastructure projects may exist under the guise of community betterment, but often serve to entrench existing power structures and devalue the land and safety of marginalized communities.
• Often, decision making for these projects happens behind closed doors, with corporate interests overpowering community needs.
• When communities express dissent to infrastructure projects, they often face violence, surveillance, and political disenfranchisement as a result.

What is Cop City?

The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, colloquially referred to as Cop City by critics, is an 85-acre police compound slated for construction in Atlanta's South River Forest region. The center's lease was approved by the Atlanta city council in a 10-4 vote in 2021, and in early June of this year was officially approved for $31 million in funding from the city in an 11-4 vote (Rico, 2023). The sprawling facility, which will cost a total of $90 million, includes a mock city for urban police and fire training, as well as a shooting range and K-9 unit kennel (Atlanta Police Foundation, n.d.). Cop City, according to law enforcement and government officials, is a 21st-century approach to policing that seeks to, "set a national standard for community engagement, neighborhood sensitivity and devotion to the civil rights of all citizens by law enforcement" (Atlanta Police Foundation, n.d.). The center is in collaboration with the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF), a private non-profit organization that has raised $60 million for the project through corporate funders such as Home Depot, Delta Airlines, and UPS (Brown, 2022).

From the very beginning, discussions around Cop City have been wrought with contention. Environmental activists and concerned local citizens have expressed anger at not only the potential environmental degradation that will result from the project, but also the militarized nature of law enforcement training encouraged at the facility and the negative implications on Atlanta's Black and brown communities (Maxouris, 2022). Violent clashes between anti-Cop City activists and local police forces have since grabbed the attention of a national audience.

The Environmental Landscape of Cop City

Atlanta's South River Forest

Atlanta, sometimes referred to as the "city in a forest," has the largest tree canopy coverage of any major city in the United States (Georgia Institute of Technology, Center for Spatial Planning Analytics and Visualization, 2021). Its South River Forest and watershed, located in nearby DeKalb County, has been identified as a crucial conservation corridor and one of four "city lungs" (City of Atlanta Department of City Planning, 2017). It not only provides important green space for residents and wildlife, but also protects against storm flooding, which will only intensify with climate change and remains the city's most pressing form of natural disaster (Agbebiyi et al., 2023). The 3,500-acre forest was once inhabited by the Muscogee Creek people, who referred to the land as the Weelaunee Forest. The Muscogee were forcibly displaced by white settlers in the early 19th century and their land auctioned off in "land lotteries" (Atlanta History Center, 2023). By 1918, the city-owned Old Atlanta Prison Farm was built on this land, a complex that used prisoners to essentially perform slave labor to produce food for the region's prison system (Agbebiyi et al., 2023). Incarcerated individuals were subject to abusive, unsanitary, and neglectful treatment, and Black prisoners faced heightened instances of torture and even death (Agbebiyi et al., 2023). After the site was officially closed down in the mid-90s, it became an unofficial dumping ground for trash and the home of an Atlanta Police Department shooting range (Maxouris, 2022).

History of Discriminatory Green Spaces

Environmental racism has been pervasive throughout Atlanta's history. Despite its vast natural spaces, the distribution of such nature is inherently inequitable. Tree coverage and parks are smaller and sparser in areas of the city with predominantly Black residents, giving way to intense heat islands and flood risk (Van Dam & Brink, 2021). The lack of green space afforded to Black Atlantans has opened the door for a disproportionate number of undesirable city projects like the aforementioned landfills and prisons. The South River is also notoriously polluted as a result of failing water treatment and sewage facilities in Dekalb County (Harlan, 2023). But this land is not all desolate dumping ground; an elementary and high school border the park land, as well as various residential neighborhoods (Duncan et al., 2023). Cop City is a continuation of a lineage of racist public works projects in Atlanta, wreaking havoc on natural space in a predominantly Black area under the guise of universal public safety benefits for the community. The land, and its surrounding residents, are treated as expendable goods in the city's quest for a more robust and militarized police force.

When pressed by opponents about the siting choice for Cop City at a 2021 press conference, then-mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms stated that the city, "didn't have anything else to choose from," although she assured attendees that this was not a decision "made overnight" (Huynh, 2021). Still, despite years of planning within the city council, the public was not made aware of potential plans until the site was officially approved in the summer of 2021. This dynamic of opacity from government officials is not novel for large public works projects, but the impacts are no less harmful.

From an economic perspective, it begs the question of whether there will be any tangible benefits for impoverished Atlanta and DeKalb County residents, especially when the project does not bring about an obvious stream of jobs or financial growth to the area. While many battle food and housing insecurity, how is a $90 million police compound effectively using tax dollars to reach the crux of Atlanta's problems? Given the city's history of placing riskier investments in Black neighborhoods, Cop City is poised to exacerbate these pressing racial and income disparities instead of ameliorate them.

Militarized Law Enforcement Response to Environmental Protests

The Death of Manuel "Tortuguita" Terán

An important dimension of the Cop City discourse has been the militarized and brutal police response to environmental protests. Forest defenders and members of the Stop Cop City movement have been building barricades and conducting tree sit-ins since 2021 in an effort to curb construction of the site (Pratt, 2023a). Clashes between protestors and law enforcement have ensued, with police firing tear gas and using other violent tactics against activists on several occasions. Tensions came to a boil in January of this year when one environmental activist, 26-year-old Manuel "Tortuguita" Terán, was fatally shot by a Georgia State Patrol trooper 57 times. This was the first recorded instance of law enforcement killing an environmental activist during a protest in U.S. history (Pratt, 2023b). The Atlanta Police Department maintains that Terán had been the first to shoot at the police, yet the DeKalb County Medical Examiner's autopsy disputes this claim. No gun powder residue was found on Terán's hands, and ballistics show that they were likely sitting cross-legged on the ground with their hands raised at the time of the shooting (Pratt, 2023b). Footage from the aftermath of the event further muddies this narrative, with audio of one officer saying, "You f- your own officer up," leading some to believe that this was an incident of friendly fire (Pratt, 2023b).

Domestic Terrorism Charges and Bail Fund Targeting

The lack of transparency from law enforcement surrounding Terán's death is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. Protests in March of this year saw demonstrators throwing rocks and damaging construction equipment at the facility site (Yousef, 2023). That same day, roughly 35 people were arrested at a nearby music festival on charges of domestic terrorism (Riess et al., 2023). Warrants contained little substantiated evidence of illegal activity, instead using probable cause on the grounds of muddied shoes and mutual aid phone numbers written on belongings as a basis for arrests (Rico, 2023). Of those charged, only two were Atlanta residents, leading many to believe that the APD strategically detained out of state protestors to paint a narrative of "outside agitators" bearing responsibility (Riess et al., 2023). This approach, where protestors are vetted in an effort to separate engagement for the cause from the community, is a dangerous tactic that seeks to downplay local discontent.

Another predatory policing strategy employed in this situation has been the arrest of bail fund organizers. In early June of this year, APD officers and Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents arrested three activists on charges of money laundering and charity fraud in relation to their involvement with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund (Rojas & Keenan, 2023). The organization has covered bail and given legal services to Cop City activists during ongoing protests. Much like the misleading "outside agitators" narrative, this scare-tactic seeks to further paint activists as criminals, even when their protests have been peaceful or legal. It fits into the wider belief among Atlanta law enforcement and state and city officials that more robust policing measures will bring stability to a crime-ridden society. Despite this belief, these disconcerting approaches to weakening adversaries of Cop City have only fanned the flames of public discontent with the project. It gives insight into how the actual militarized training set to be done at the facility could exacerbate an already strained relationship between law enforcement, local government, and the public. Further, the violent, and in the case of Cop City, deadly dynamics of police response to environmental protests sets a frightening precedent for similar protests in the future.

The Dangers of Public-Private Partnerships for City Projects

The nature of Cop City's funding is a tangled web of city funds and corporate backing. The Atlanta Police Foundation, a private organization that although not profit-seeking itself still wrangles multi-million dollar donations from massive corporations, plays a central role in this web. The APF prides themselves on providing, "vital strategic support to the Mayor, the Chief of Police and the Atlanta Police Department," essentially funneling private equity funds into initiatives of their own creation with little public oversight or accountability (Atlanta Police Foundation, n.d.; Brown, 2022). Many of the foundation's board members and trustees also hold lofty positions at the corporations that have donated ample funds to Cop City, including Alex Taylor, CEO of Cox Enterprises, a telecommunications giant that owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Bannon, 2023; Lakhani, 2023). The popular publication among Atlanta residents has published several op-eds in favor of Cop City, as well as an editorial board piece supporting the project and pro-Cop City op-ed from the publication's president (Atlanta Journal Constitution Editorial Board, 2021; Morse, 2023). These apparent conflicts of interest are worrying, and highlight the many channels in which government officials, law enforcement, and even the media are susceptible to the singular interests of private corporations.

The "public" or governmental dimension of Cop City's public-private partnership has been similarly disconnected from the interests of the community. The majority of the discussion around Cop City, including questions of where it would be sited and how much money would be lent to it, happened behind the closed doors of city council meetings. Even when the opportunity for public comment arose before the council, a meeting which lasted 17 hours, the voices of the public were not heeded (Rose, 2024). Around 70% of public participants expressed opposition to Cop City at this meeting, many citing serious environmental, racial, and economic concerns. Despite this, the council vote that followed overwhelmingly approved the project, effectively ignoring the outpouring of concern from the public over the future of their community (Rose, 2024). In 2023, the city council approved funding for Cop City in an 11-4 vote after 14 hours of public comment, with the overwhelming majority of public participants expressing dissent for the project (Pratt, 2023c).

What remains most dangerous about this not-entirely public but not entirely-private dynamic is that it muddies the channels in which a community can voice their concerns. A singular city council meeting (where many residents waited hours to speak) is not a sufficient placeholder for meaningful community partnership when drafting major public works projects. The private interests of the APF and its corporate funders have undermined the public's ability to maintain an active role in Cop City's development. As we've observed over the last two years, when these opportunities for public involvement are stifled, distrust and unrest ensue.

Implications of Cop City for the Future of Social and Environmental Protests

Citizens are made to feel disempowered when the media is saturated with stories of militarized police action against protestors and community organizers. If simply sitting in a tree can result in a domestic terrorism charge or death, the public's willingness to exercise their freedom of speech is greatly diminished. Cop City hints at troubling implications for the future of environmental protests, which only stand to become more prevalent with the yearly intensification of the climate crisis. Atlanta law enforcement's use of various violent destabilizing tactics set a precedent for other cities to combat environmental protests, providing a road map on how to quell public resistance to governmental decisions.

Works projects that skirt the line between public and private, whether they be prisons or power plants, have historically taken advantage of economically-depressed and minority communities. In this way, Cop City is not a unique phenomenon. Yet the APD and Georgia State Police's use of deadly force, falsified terrorism charges, and bail fund disruption represent an approach that has little been seen before in the landscape of environmental activism. When public works projects like Cop City place the interests of local governments, law enforcement, and corporations in opposition to the public instead of in step with it, they harm the community more than benefit it.

This also has implications for democratic processes of public participation. Stop Cop City activists created a referendum campaign in 2024 in an effort to give Atlantan voters a more direct say in the construction of the Cop City project (French, 2024). To get a referendum on the ballot, organizers first needed to collect at least 70,000 signatures per state code (Alfonseca, 2023). Stop Cop City organizers have collected more than 108,000 signatures to date, yet Atlanta city officials have introduced bureaucratic and legal delays that have mired approval in return (Rico, 2025). Atlanta city council, for example, passed legislation in the midst of signature collection that reintroduced signature matching into the referendum approval process (French, 2024). This form of verification has been cited as discriminatory and burdensome by national voting rights groups, and has stymied efforts to get the cause on the ballot (Whalen, 2023). In the meantime, the construction of Cop City nears completion and local voices continue to be suppressed (Donnelly, 2024).

Relevance to Advanced Nuclear Energy

We chose Cop City as an example of a large and contentious infrastructure project sited within a marginalized community. This felt analogous to advanced nuclear because of both the environmental degradation posed by the project and the social implications via greater surveillance and strengthening of existing power structures (in this case, a militarized law enforcement training center). It opened up questions about environmental racism embedded in the siting of large infrastructure projects, particularly when they are vulnerable to the influence of lobbyists and corporations. The illusionary "no-choice" narrative in the siting of Cop City may prove analogous to the siting of advanced reactors, as well as waste storage and mining sites, which traditionally straddle Indigenous land. Cop City also illuminated the sometimes violent lengths that governmental and private entities will go to stifle community dissent in the face of an infrastructure project. The tangled web of corporate influence that went into Cop City made it harder for widespread community dissent to influence decision making, and has implications for the potentially "closed-door" governance of advanced reactors. Advanced nuclear may also promote the maintenance of existing systems of power through these siting tactics, through the environmental degradation and resource extraction it is built on, and through the corporate interests it may heighten. Advanced nuclear is likely to devalue the land and safety of marginalized communities much like Cop City has, particularly if the technology is informed by these aforementioned corporate interests. Advanced nuclear may also disempower local and marginalized communities from expressing dissent if similar suppression tactics from the Cop City context are used.

Key Sources

Agbebiyi, K., Creeks, A. & Mendoz, A. (2023). PE profits from destroying the Atlanta forest. Private Equity Stakeholder Project.

Akbar, A. A. (2023). The fight against Cop City. Dissent, 70(2), 62–70.

Atlanta History Center. (2023). History of the Atlanta Prison Farm site.

Brown, T. (2022, November 15). Meet the major corporations and cultural institutions helping build Cop City in Atlanta. Eyes on the Ties.

City of Atlanta Department of City Planning. (2017). The Atlanta city design: Aspiring to the beloved community.

Duncan, D., Raymond, R., Jones, K. & Johnson, M. (n.d.). Stop Cop City with Keyanna Jones and Matthew Johnson [Podcast].

References

Agbebiyi, K., Creeks, A. & Mendoz, A. (2023). PE profits from destroying the Atlanta forest. Private Equity Stakeholder Project.

Akbar, A. A. (2023). The fight against Cop City. Dissent, 70(2), 62–70.

Alfonseca, K. (2023, August 14). "Cop City" protesters collect enough signatures to put referendum on ballot. ABC News.

Atlanta History Center. (2023). History of the Atlanta Prison Farm site.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editorial Board. (2021, August 21). Crime wave should spur action on center. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Atlanta Police Foundation. (n.d.-a). About the Atlanta Police Foundation.

Atlanta Police Foundation. (n.d.-b). Public safety training center.

Bannon, B. (2023, December 4). Cox City media chronicles. Medium.

Brown, T. (2022, November 15). Meet the major corporations and cultural institutions helping build Cop City in Atlanta. Eyes on the Ties.

City of Atlanta Department of City Planning. (2017). The Atlanta city design: Aspiring to the beloved community.

Donnelly, G. (2024, July 31). "Cop City" construction on track for December completion, Atlanta Police Foundation tells community advisory committee. SaportaReport.

Duncan, D., Raymond, R., Jones, K. & Johnson, M. (n.d.). Stop Cop City with Keyanna Jones and Matthew Johnson [Podcast].

French, P. (2024, February 9). Faced with 'Cop City' referendum push, Atlanta changes up its election rules. Bolts.

Georgia Institute of Technology, Center for Spatial Planning Analytics and Visualization. (2021). Assessing urban tree canopy in the city of Atlanta.

Harlan, W. (2023, April 16). The people's river: Atlanta's forgotten river. Blue Ridge Outdoors.

Hassan, A. & Keenan, S. (2023, March 7). What is 'Cop City'? The Atlanta police center protests, explained. The New York Times.

Huynh, A. (2021, September 9). Atlanta mayor Bottoms says forested land only option for public safety training center. Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Lakhani, N. (2023, March 22). Investment fund links to Atlanta police and 'Cop City' project revealed. The Guardian.

Maxouris, C. (2022, September 24). Atlanta wants to build a massive police training facility in a forest. Neighbors are fighting to stop it. CNN.

Mowatt, R. A. (2023). A people's future of leisure studies: Fear city, Cop City and other tales, a call for police research. Leisure Sciences, 45(5), 497–519.

Pratt, T. (2023a, February 9). 'Cop City' opposition spreads beyond Georgia forest defenders. The Guardian.

Pratt, T. (2023b, April 20). 'Cop City' activist's official autopsy reveals more than 50 bullet wounds. The Guardian.

Pratt, T. (2023c, June 9). Real cost of 'Cop City' under question after Atlanta approves $67m for project. The Guardian.

Rico, R. J. (2023a, March 23). Muddy clothes? 'Cop City' activists question police evidence. AP News.

Rico, R. J. (2023b, June 6). Atlanta project decried as 'Cop City' gets funding approval from city council. AP News.

Rico, R. J. (2025, February 26). Atlanta's "Cop City" is nearly complete. Where does that leave opponents' signature efforts? AP News.

Riess, R., Andone, D. & Valencia, N. (2023, March 6). 23 face domestic terrorism charges after arrests in 'Cop City' protests at planned police training site in Atlanta. CNN.

Rojas, R. & Keenan, S. (2023, June 2). Georgia officials target bail fund in crackdown on 'Cop City' protests. The New York Times.

Rose, A. (2024, January 15). 5 things you need to know about Cop City. American Friends Service Committee.

Van Dam, D. & Brink, H. (2021, September 18). "Hotlanta" is even more sweltering in these neighborhoods due to a racist 20th-century policy. CNN.

Whalen, E. (2023, December 4). Exclusive: A prominent election rights lawyer is calling out Atlanta's voter suppression on Cop City referendum. Mother Jones.

Yousef, O. (2023, June 28). Rights groups are alarmed over domestic terrorist charges in "Cop City" protests. NPR.

Photo: Protesters marching in Minneapolis remember Manuel Esteban Paez Terán (Tortuguita), who was shot and killed by officers at a prolonged protest in an Atlanta forest. Chad Davis / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.