Members of the Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee (CSAC) for the Atlanta Police Safety Training Center (APSTC), widely known as “Cop City,” gathered on Zoom for their second quarter meeting on July 30.
Construction is still on track for “substantial completion of most components of the site” by December, Alan Williams, Atlanta Police Foundation’s project manager for the site, said. Since most of the buildings at the site already have roofs installed, the heavy rain this month has not slowed down progress too much, he said.
Williams noted that the main entrance to the public safety training center campus has been relocated to Constitution Road, the horse barn for the mounted patrol police force has been moved closer to Key Road, and sidewalks are currently being built along Fayetteville Road and Key Road, with lights installation and tree planting planned for later this year.
Williams said the campus will also maintain a 100-foot buffer from any residences adjacent to the site and additional parking will be created on Key Road. He pointed to these updates as evidence that the Cop City project is incorporating CSAC’s suggestions.
Commissioner Justin Cutler and Keith Hicks from the Atlanta Parks and Recreation Department shared plans for a network of trails around two ponds located off of Key Road, outlining details of trail construction, which should also be completed by the end of the year.
The presentation confusingly labeled the site as Intrenchment Creek Park. After CASC member Amy Taylor asked for clarification, Cutler said it was only due to its proximity to the actual Intrenchment Creek Park, which has been closed to the public since March 2023 following the police killing of Cop City protester Manuel “Tortuguita” Paez Teran.
The committee and speakers repeatedly mentioned allowing the community to enjoy the trails and green space around these ponds, but Cutler said the City of Atlanta has yet to determine whether this park will be as accessible as other city parks, which are open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days per week, or be open to the public on a more limited basis due to its proximity to the training center.
“Security remains tight at the training facility,” Carven Tyus, Assistant Chief of the Atlanta Police Department (APD), said. “We have not had any issues — knocking on wood — in the past three to four months.”
Protesters are still showing up to the site on Fridays and members of the South River Watershed Alliance visited this week, he said.
“Other than that, we have had no issues at the training site. We will keep a robust amount of officers out there, given the current climate, until we open that facility,” Tyus said.
CASC chair Alison Clark reiterated several times during the 40-minute call that only committee members and members of the panel are eligible to ask questions during the meeting. There was no ability for the public to speak, submit questions, or make comments — as the Zoom chat function was turned off. The ability for attendees to see who else was present on the call was also disabled.
The committee itself has been a source of controversy since it was established in 2021. The very first meeting in October 2021 was called out for a lack of transparency. Accurate information on the members of the committee has been hard to pin down, and the city quietly changed the frequency of public meetings from monthly to quarterly in May of 2023.
CASC members will set a date for a site visit to the public safety training center to “see the progress,” Clark said. That is likely to happen more swiftly than the seven months it took for defense attorneys in Georgia’s Rico case against protestors to be allowed into the forest and onto the construction site.
The next CASC meeting is scheduled for Sept. 17. The committee will discuss recommendations for how the site can be used by the community while still adhering to the security requirements of APD.
“Be prepared to consider, for our next meeting, the parameters that you wish to see in place relative to community groups or community use of the public safety training center,” Clark said.
Meanwhile, the more than 100,000 Atlanta residents that petitioned for a vote on the use of this land for a police training facility still have not had their voices heard, as the referendum process remains tied up in legal challenges by the city.
Can you please stop using the term “Cop City”? That is a term coined by an extremist group, many of whom have no connection to our City and have committed numerous crimes against our City. Please refer to the Atlanta Police Safety Training Center by its proper name. As a journalist, your phrasing matters.
As a journalist it is your duty to be accurate and accountable. Cop City is not the proper term to describe the Atlanta Police Safety Training Center. If you were not so biased in your writing you would know that. To link the time line of construction to the criminal case of the group of people not from this area is uncalled for. As a citizen you should be proud that this city is working hard to provide its police officers with a state of the art facility to train modern police procedures to better serve its citizens. The main complaint from social justice leaders and all of the protest against the police is better training for officers. APD listens and does just that and this publication does nothing but criticize. You are not wanting to inform the public you want to further the negative narrative towards the police.
I agree with John. “Cop City” is a name that stirs conflict. This is a training center and clearly, police in our state and in our city need training in defusing fraught situations and training should occur on chasing cars, on delivering warrants to homes safely, etc. Atlanta has needed this for a long time.
Actually, the proper name is Atlanta PUBLIC Safety Training Center. Please do stop saying cop city. Thanks.
Thanks for correcting that, Mel.
It’s a shame that the city of Atlanta is rushing ahead with construction of this facility without considering the voices of the 100,000+ people who want to vote on whether it should be built. Debating about the name used in a headline is a waste of time. The debate should center around why the city government is spending millions of dollars to build a facility that the people of Atlanta don’t want.
The city’s existing training facilities for law enforcement have fallen into disrepair due to years of neglect and poor stewardship by the APD and APF. Why should they be trusted with a brand new multi-million dollar facility?
Meanwhile, the planet just experienced its two hottest days in recorded history (not a great time to demolish one of our last remaining forests), our roads are falling apart and traffic is getting worse, there’s only one hospital in the city with a Level 1 trauma center, the city still has no plans for the old Wellstar AMC property that closed more than a year ago, the old Civic Center property has been vacant for a decade, and we can’t even get the city to build two miles of a streetcar track.
And if y’all want to talk about the criminal case against the Cop City protestors, maybe consider reading the link below in which a judge declares that the state AG’s office committed “gross negligence” with the evidence in the case.
Here’s that link: https://www.gpb.org/news/2024/08/01/georgia-prosecutors-committed-gross-negligence-emails-in-cop-city-case-judge-says
Thank you for speaking up for your community <3
I appreciate the candid writing you’ve chosen, Grace.
As an Atlanta resident who’s had so many of my concerns discarded by the city, you are asking the right questions:
– How can there be more transparency?
– What can be done to rebuild trust with community?
– What has been the reason city leadership opts to neglect the requests of tens of thousands Atlantan voices?
I want safe streets for all to enjoy.
I also scrutinize the logistics of the plan and the way it’s been rolled out – and over residents’ will.
Thank you for your reporting, Grace!
PS – “Cop City” is a colloquial term that’s easily recognized (and easier to say).
There is no doubt that the City of Atlanta needed a state-of-the-art public safety training center. I was horrified by the patchwork group of facilities in use once that came to light, a situation I was not aware of. However, it was the site chosen and HOW it was chosen that was a problem. Evidently, as it later became clear, the planning department was not part of the process or choice. Very odd indeed. What was clear from the beginning was that the site was in direct violation of the Atlanta City Design Document. Evidently that document, the official guide to the City’s development meant little to our City Council that before the Training Center came up for a vote had adopted the document. We can all come to our own conclusions of course. Realpolitik. And an old story line.
It became pretty evident from the get-go that the author of this piece was no friend of the men and women who, despite the woefully inadequate (and sometimes dangerous ancient training facilities ….mold, vermin, sewage backing up into bathrooms, etc.), still put on a badge each day to go out and face the danger and situations that most of us would not ever want for ourselves. (Mercifully, that facility has been closed and space for classroom training then had to be leased by the city at Atlanta Metropolitan College….not really adequate for outside training exercises.)
The derisive “Cop City” slur was coined by an anti-police element (and its disciples) who have little regard for the safety of Atlanta citizens who are preyed upon regularly by criminal elements.
Much hand wringing had been done over the destruction of the “Forest”. Much of this training area was once cleared farmland…. arborists who have examined the area maintain that the current vegetation is overwhelmingly dominated by invasive species…softwoods, vines, and brush. Just this past December, 200 hardwood trees (oaks, dogwoods, hickories, etc.) were planted…with more to come. In addition, scattered rubble from old structures, and asphalt from old parking lots was strewn around areas of the property. The Ga. Dept. of Forestry estimates that about 24 million acres of woods and forest are to be found in the state….don’t think we’ll run out of trees anytime soon.
When the city of Atlanta OK’d 23 million dollars for a fancy walking bridge over Northside Drive…when a tiny fraction of that money could have provided pedestrians with an enhanced crosswalk to get across that throughfare, …there was no one throwing Molotov cocktails (gasoline bombs), or shooting commercial grade fireworks rockets at security personnel to stop the construction. Nor do I recall hooded figures dressed in black rioting downtown over that bridge construction, burning a city police car, breaking out plate glass windows, and defacing property …general mayhem.
So much for our city.
Grace, can you post a link to the Sept. 17th meeting? It does not seem to be on the CASC website and some of us from the DeKalb Soil and Water Conservation District would like to attend. Thanks.