Opponents of proposed public safety training center lose court battle to stop construction

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ATLANTA - Opponents of a controversial $90 million planned Atlanta Public Safety Training Center have lost a battle in court.

Land clearing for the police and firefighter training center that protesters derisively refer to as "Cop City" has already begun, but some opponents to the project want the courts to put a stop to the work.

The South River Watershed Alliance and others were in Fulton County court on Thursday asking a judge to impose a temporary restraining order on the project while they appeal its construction permits. They argued all work at the site should stop while DeKalb County considers a zoning appeal to the project. They also argued about environmental concerns at the site.

The training center was approved by the Atlanta City Council in 2021 after 17 hours of public comments — the majority of which were in opposition to the project. Some locals cited noise concerns, while others said the planned destruction of nature significantly undermines the city’s efforts to preserve its famed tree canopy and would exacerbate local flooding risks.

Many activists also oppose spending so much money on a police facility that would be surrounded by poor, majority-Black neighborhoods in a city with one of the nation’s highest degrees of wealth inequality.

Late Friday afternoon, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox denied their motion.

Judge Cox did order the Atlanta Police Foundation to pay for daily inspections at the site to make sure the project is causing as little disturbance to the land as possible.

In January, while announcing that construction permits had been approved, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said the city is taking steps to protect the woodlands.

"This is Atlanta, and we know forests. This facility would not be built over a forest," Dickens said.

Dickens emphasized that the facilities will be built on a site that was cleared decades ago for a former state prison farm. He said the tract is filled with rubble and overgrown with invasive species, not hardwood trees. The mayor also said that while the facility will be built on an 85-acre site, about 300 other acres would be preserved as a public greenspace.

Tuesday morning, the DeKalb County government released a review of the land development permit application for the site, saying that "no mass grading or land disturbance was detected" and that construction work has been limited to "path clearing," "tree removal along the site perimeter" and "flagging of limits of clearings and stream buffers."

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In addition to classrooms and administration buildings, the training center would include a shooting-range, a driving course to practice chases and a "burn building" for firefighters to work on putting out fires. A "mock village" featuring a fake home, convenience store and nightclub would also be built for authorities to rehearse raids.

Last month, Tortuguita, an activist whose given name was Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, was shot multiple times and killed after officials said the 26-year-old shot a state trooper. Authorities said they fired in self-defense, but protesters have said they do not believe the police narrative, noting the lack of body camera footage from the Jan. 18 shooting.

Over the last two months, at least 19 people have been arrested on charges including domestic terrorism related to protests against the training facility. Six of those arrests came during a Jan. 21 protest in downtown Atlanta after Tortuguita’s death that prompted GOP Gov. Brian Kemp to declare a state of emergency, giving him the option of calling in the Georgia National Guard to help "subdue riot and unlawful assembly."

Since then, local officials have vowed to move forward with the project.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.