Atlanta's Cop City: Other Cities Are Also Building Police Training Facilities, Despite Pushback
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This year, the night before Valentine’s Day, more than 200 people attended a city council meeting in Fitchburg, a suburb of Madison, Wisconsin. The house was packed because of one agenda item in particular: plans for a new $50 million police station, featuring a “regional training facility." The plans, which were first proposed in late 2023, alarmed community members who have been fighting police violence in Wisconsin.
Freedom, Inc., a Madison-based queer feminist organization working in low-to-no-income Black and Southeast Asian communities, began mobilizing the community in response to the proposed plans. They drew comparisons to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, a large police training compound that has caused massive controversy and which local activists have dubbed “Cop City.” In the lead-up to Fitchburg’s city council meeting, organizers hosted teach-ins, gathered more than 1,600 signatures for a “Say No to Cop City Fitchburg” petition and canvassed the neighborhood, talking to, by their estimate, over 3,000 people.
They got the results they wanted — for now. After the meeting, which ran past midnight, the plans for the $49.2 million facility were rejected. The proposal is being sent back to the city’s design team, where it must be reworked to fit the original $35 million budget and be approved by the city council.
Organizers say what’s happening in Fitchburg is part of a national pattern. Since the mass racial justice protests of 2020, new police facilities have been proposed or constructed across the country, according to one website that uses local news articles to track the development of so-called cop cities.
Bianca Gomez, co-executive director at Freedom, Inc., tells Teen Vogue that the emergence of these facilities nationwide is not a coincidence. “This is their response to the global uprising after George Floyd and Breonna Taylor,” Gomez says. “All of these things are causing people to rise up and join movements and organizations that are fighting back…. at the same time that they're militarizing local police departments to become more equipped to subdue unrest.”
Madison organizers like Gomez have joined and echo a nationwide call for cities to divest from police and to reallocate resources directly to communities. Here’s what you need to know about the construction of cop cities, and how organizers are fighting back in Fitchburg and beyond.
What is Atlanta’s Cop City?
The construction of Atlanta’s Cop City, a $90 million facility slated to take up more than 85 acres of the Weelaunee Forest, has caused local and national outrage. If the project is completed, it will be one of the largest police training facilities in the country. Plans for its development include military-style training facilities, designated explosives testing areas, and shooting ranges. The plans also feature a mock city, complete with greenery and a replica of an Atlanta city block, where police can run drills and practice “urban warfare.”
The proposal for Cop City came in the wake of several public uprisings in response to police violence. In May 2020, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis. Following his death, protests were held in every state across the country. Just weeks later, two Atlanta police officers shot and killed Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man. The officers that killed Brooks were initially charged with murder and assault, before the charges were dismissed, and both officers were reinstated.
Some who oppose the construction of the Atlanta facility are concerned it will “fuel the criminalization of marginalized people and further expand the carceral system,” among other issues related to the destruction of the environment and use of public funds. Organizers claim that Cop City will allow police to learn tactics to more easily subdue protests and unrest.
Organizers have been protesting Atlanta’s Cop City through the movement Stop Cop City for the past several years by organizing rallies, mobilizing via social media campaigns, and occupying the proposed site itself. Protesters have been met with opposition, as in January 2023, when Georgia state troopers shot and killed 26-year-old activist and forest defender, Tortuguita. There have also been several police raids, resulting in activists facing domestic terrorism and racketeering charges, including two people from Madison in their early 20s. (So far, 57 of the 61 indicted activists have pled not guilty.)
Radley Balko, the author of Rise of the Warrior Cop, explains to Teen Vogue the risks associated with certain uses of police training facilities. “We do know that a disproportionate amount of training is about use of force, and there's too little emphasis on de-escalation and negotiation,” he says. “When these facilities include mock cities, it's appropriate to ask how they'll be used. There's a ton of research showing that the surest way to turn a peaceful protest violent is for police to get aggressive and use tactics like kettling. If that's what they're teaching, that's a big problem.”
From Atlanta to Fitchburg
In Wisconsin, funding for the police has ballooned since the 1980s. Says Gomez, “We're abolitionists, so we don't want them to get a dime. But even without an abolitionist perspective, $50 million does not match the needs of the city and the community in terms of policing,” she notes, referencing the original proposed cost of Fitchburg’s new police facility.
The proposal in Fitchburg also comes as gentrification in Madison pushes many people of color into nearby suburbs. At one of the initial meetings for the project, the Fitchburg Police Department claimed there was a need to expand policing facilities due to projected population growth, according to a report from local independent website Tone. Fitchburg recently expanded to include the former town of Madison, which accounts for part of the projected population growth. The town of Madison, which is distinct from the city of Madison, was home to a larger proportion of Latinx and Black residents, and low-to-moderate-income households than Fitchburg’s overall population.
One of the largest concerns, according to Gomez, is the possible creation of a more “militarized police force” in an area where there is a significant Black community. “This isn't being built up North in rural Wisconsin. This is being built in a community where they're seeing an influx of Black folks because of gentrification in Madison,” she explains. “Black folks are being pushed out of Madison and pushed into cities like Fitchburg. And they're building a police compound.” (In an email to Teen Vogue, a Fitchburg Police Department spokesperson said that the new police department building was proposed to address “space needs” within City Hall, where multiple city departments, including the police, are currently housed. “The design of the new police department no longer includes space for training,” the spokesperson added).
Where else is this happening?
New police training developments proposed in states across the US indicate there is a clear national trend. Just last year, a $170 million “public safety training facility” was unveiled in Chicago, despite years of pushback from activists and organizations such as No Cop Academy, after plans were first approved in 2019. The facility is on Chicago’s West Side, where historic community disinvestment has resulted in a lack of resources and social services.
The emergence of related projects across the country, says Balko, “shows that the claim that police have been ‘defunded’ is largely a myth.” He adds, "There was just a study put out showing that in cities that had protests in 2020 and a larger-than-average share of Republicans, police budgets have grown substantially since then.”
Activists nationwide are banding together to put a stop to these trends. Gomez says, “We are building with folks from all over the country who are fighting against cop cities and building a movement.”
She continues, “The answer is very simple. You invest in people. You don't invest in systems and institutions that mean to do us harm and that add to the problem.”
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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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