Georgia ACLU resigns from new training center task force, calls for project’s halt

By John Ruch

The representative from the ACLU of Georgia has resigned from Mayor Andre Dickens’ new task force about the controversial public safety training center and called for a halt of its construction, citing a lack of transparency and renewed debate about the police killing of a protester earlier this year.

The resignation came April 20, the day after the first meeting of the South River Forest and Atlanta Public Safety Training Center Community Task Force and the first time that Dickens confirmed its meetings would be secret, reportedly due to members’ safety concerns. Christopher Bruce, the policy and advocacy director for the civil liberties organization’s Georgia chapter, had been among 42 “initial” members named by Dickens.

The Georgia ACLU said in a press release that Bruce agreed to join “hoping to increase the level of transparency surrounding the training center and to protect protesters exercising their First Amendment rights. The ACLU of Georgia is disappointed by the lack of commitment to transparency in providing media and citizen access to the meetings of the Task Force and its subgroups.”

The Georgia ACLU also cited this week’s release of an official autopsy report on the killing of Manuel Esteban “Tortuguita” Paez Teran, a protester engaged in civil-disobedience camping near the training center site in DeKalb County. Teran was killed by police after allegedly shooting a state trooper during a raid. The new autopsy report has stirred controversy with findings that Teran had no evident gunshot residue on their hands and was shot 57 times. In the wake of the report, Atlanta District 5 City Councilmember Liliana Bakhtiari has called for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the incident.

“The ACLU of Georgia’s priority is protecting the First Amendment rights of protesters and legal observers,” said Bruce in the press release. “With the closed-door policy of Wednesday’s meeting and the report months after Tortuguita’s death, showing that police struck him with more than 50 bullets, I have lost faith in trying to increase transparency through the task force and echo our original demand to stop building the training facility.”

The Georgia ACLU also again called for the dropping of controversial domestic terrorism charges against dozens of protesters, calling that “an over-criminalization of demonstrators under a constitutionally dubious statute.”

Meanwhile, another high-profile member of the task force tells SaportaReport that she will remain on the body. Jill Savitt, president and CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, said she understood transparency solutions to still be in discussion and that she wants to give input on police training.

“From the meeting, my understanding was that the task force was being broken up into four committees and each committee would be making recommendations to the mayor on their topic,” said Savitt in an email. “I welcome the opportunity to provide recommendations on law enforcement training and the curriculum to be used at the training center, especially as policing issues relate to protecting and upholding human rights.

“My takeaway from the meeting was that there was a wide-ranging discussion about how to ensure greater transparency of the committee meetings — including the idea of allowing for observation by the public and reporting out the minutes of discussions to the widest community,” added Savitt. “I have not heard that a decision about these issues has been reached. …My impression was that the suggestions made would be given serious consideration and balanced against the need for task force members to have productive and honest discussions about issues as they formulate recommendations.”

Dickens’ task force was his latest unilateral move to counter the “Defend the Atlanta Forest” protest movement, which has dubbed the training center “Cop City.” The task force is attempting to merge the very different plans for the training center and a large green space vision called the South River Forest. The South River Forest is merely a conceptual idea, while the training center is already in a pre-construction phase under the leadership of the Atlanta Police Foundation, a private nonprofit.

The task force’s exact role, authority and transparency remain unclear, and the Mayor’s Office did not confirm until this week the fact that its meetings would be private. Since the task force’s announcement in February, officials have never answered SaportaReport questions about where the recommendations will go, what leverage they have on the plans, and how input on the training center and the South River Forest would be distinguished. Several task force members previously told SaportaReport they did not know those answers, either.

The green space question has practical and legal significance. As SaportaReport previously revealed, APF and the City appear to be counting properties outside the training center’s legal boundaries to meet a lease-required amount of green space.

The task force essentially supplants – or “supplements,” according to the Mayor’s Office – an existing Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee (CSAC) for training center planning. The CSAC has been beset with its own controversies over transparency, ethics and mutiny. Earlier this year, one CSAC member resigned over Teran’s killing while another filed an appeal against the training center’s site-preparation permit, which was recently denied by DeKalb’s Zoning Board of Appeals. Some other CSAC members recently appeared in City-produced publicity materials touting the training center as supposedly supported by the local community.

Secrecy has been a fundamental controversy of the training center plan from its start in 2021 when it was subject to private site selection and corporate and philanthropic fundraising before approval by the City Council. Many basic details of the plan remain unknown, including its current budget.