Atlanta’s controversial ‘Cop City’ training center opens after years of fighting

Georgia officials on Tuesday celebrated the official opening of Atlanta’s Public Safety Training Center, a nearly $117 million police and fire training campus built over the opposition of the vocal “Stop Cop City” movement.

In a speech during the ribbon-cutting event, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens chided protesters for what he said were their “lies” and “very real violence” in attempting to prevent the project.

“Our perseverance to see it through for the people of Atlanta now and for the future cannot be denied,” he said.

Local activists involved in the movement condemned the opening.

“Cop City is officially opening today, made possible only through extreme state violence,” Micah Herskind wrote on X, calling the facility “a police compound that will serve as the infrastructure of fascism.”

Organizer Kamau Franklin, meanwhile, wrote on X that the facility was a “militarized training center no one asked for except rich corporations and cops.”

The project, which includes animal stables, a driving course, and mock buildings for training, has been controversial since the city council voted to begin development in 2021.

The center, which officials said was needed to modernize training facilities and assist in recruitment and retention, was developed in a public-private partnership with the Atlanta Police Foundation, which has counted major corporations like Delta, Wells Fargo, and Home Depot as funders.

Activists previously told The Independent they feared the 85-acre complex in unincorporated DeKalb County would threaten one of the wider Atlanta area’s last untouched green spaces, while increasing militarized policing on the largely working-class Black residents around the facility.

Since then, the controversy has only increased.

In 2023, a multi-agency team of officers fatally shot Manuel “Tortuguita” Esteban Paez Terán, an activist camping in a nearby forest to protest the project.

Police say the activist fired at officers after they used pepper ball ammunition to force the 26-year-old to vacate the area, a claim Terán’s family and fellow activists dispute. A pistol matching an officer’s bullet wound was found at the site.

A private autopsy found that Terán died with their hands up, while a county autopsy showed no gunpowder residue on their hands, a claim state police disputed.

No body camera footage exists of the exchange, and no officers were charged over the shooting.

Others have taken issue with the public’s growing financial share in funding the project, rising from an originally promised $30 million to over $60 million.

Scores of protesters have been arrested challenging the project, and have been hit with what observers say are exceptional and novel charges for local activists.

A group was charged with terrorism over a series of 2022 arrests, as was a group of masked individuals who allegedly attacked the construction site, setting it on fire, in 2023.

In August of 2023, the state indicted 61 people using an anti-racketeering law, with Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr calling them “militant anarchists.”

Activists fought for years to get a referendum about the project on the local ballot, an effort that remained in federal appeals court as of February 2025, even as the center was largely completed.

Organizers accused the city of stonewalling its campaign for the referendum.