Stop Cop City: The Social Movement Re-defining Community Safety
It all begins with an idea.
In the United States, police kill over 1,000 and injure more than 51,000 people each year, with evidence suggesting that these figures could be underreported by as much as 55%. In addition to these numbers being substantially higher than other developed nations, unfortunately, they are also plagued by biases and systematic failures which disproportionately affect Black citizens. Compared to white Americans, Black folks are 3.5x more likely to be killed by police, and are 5x more likely to suffer traumatic injuries resulting from law enforcement.
Years past the martyrdom of Michael Brown, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and many more innocent souls, Black Americans continue to be slain in plain sight. Recently, the Springfield, Illinois Sheriff's office released footage detailing the tragedy of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old mother of two, who was murdered in her home after calling 911 for support. Amid such horror, our national government fails to pass even the tiniest of neoliberal reforms, and local investments in police continue to rise across the country.
For the past several years, I have been working as a policy researcher in Atlanta, working alongside organizations, such as The Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR), The Black Futurists Group, and The Legal Action Center, collecting stories, crunching data, writing, and working with Atlanta community members to understand the scope of policing in our communities.
The most important takeaway from my experiences: the U.S. police system not only makes us less safe, it also perpetuates our nation’s most neglected crises.
Atlanta’s investment of $30,000,000 taxpayer dollars into Cop City represents a continuation of the structural violence that has long undermined the well-being of Black communities in our city. As my comrade Micah Herskind writes, "Cop City is the Atlanta ruling class' chosen solution to a set of interrelated crises produced by decades of organized abandonment in the city." Instead of addressing the root causes of these crises—protests against police violence, deepening racial and economic inequalities, gentrification, and the displacement of Black communities—city leaders opted for repression.
The urban warfare facility was originally slated to cost $90 million dollars total, but has since grown by $20 million. The list of private investors supporting development makes clear the broad network of corporate actors, including Chick-fil-A, Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Georgia State University, and Cox-Enterprises, the parent company of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The city government has pushed forward with the Cop City facility, ignoring the disapproval of 70% of the 350 residents who spoke (out of 1,000 who signed up) during a 17-hour City Council public commentary, multiple Atlanta neighborhood associations, and 98% of residents—at least 80% of whom are Black—living near the development site.
The appropriation of this land use represents the continuation of what Michelle Alexander coins The New Jim Crow, where the criminal legal system remains a cornerstone institution perpetuating racial caste. Indigenous activists and Black legacy residents have been outspoken about the land's sacred history, the generational traumas imposed by the facility’s development and the environmental warfare it strengthens.
Prior to the 1800s, these forests were inhabited by the Muscogee Creek indigenous people. However, white settlers seized the land and turned it into a slave plantation. After the emancipation of enslaved people, the U.S. government repurposed the area into a prison farm, which it remained until 1995. During this time, Black citizens arrested for non-violent, low-level offenses were brought to the prison farm. This operation was described in newspaper accounts as late as the 1980s as "slave labor," and the facility faced an ACLU lawsuit in the 1980s for "illegal and unconstitutional" punishment practices, including the use of leg irons, extended solitary confinement, and unsanitary conditions, resulting in a settlement in 1985.
Amid public pushback and controversy, Mayor Andrew Dickens and the Atlanta Police Foundation argue for the facility irregardless, claiming such investments are necessary to make the city safer. Yet, violent crime continues to drop steadily over the past several years, and half of APD arrests continue to be for low level, often quality of life related issues.
In Atlanta, policing consumes more governmental resources nearly $250 million dollars, while housing and healthcare combined are less than $5 million dollars, even as the latter reduce crime, lower recidivism, and uplift social health outcomes. As one of the most funded departments in the nation, APD utilizes their extraneous resources by maintaining a higher arrest rate for low-level quality-of-life offenses than 85% of other cities. Black Atlantans, only 47% of the city’s population, account for 90% of all departmental arrests, and are 15 times more likely to be arrested for these offenses compared to white residents.
Studies indicate what residents have long known - investments into policing are ineffective at reducing violent crime., while they strongly predict racial, economic, and environmental injustices. Take for instance that Cop City has already begun clearing 85 acres of the South River Weelanee Forest, also known as one of the four "lungs of Atlanta." The forest helps cool the city by up to 10 degrees and filters 19 million pounds of pollutants annually, reducing the threat of heat islands and protecting air quality in the southern part of the city where the facility is slated to be developed.
In a region that already suffers from high asthma and diabetes rates compared to the nation, with most residents living at or below the federal poverty level, these neighborhoods also rank in the 96th percentile for toxic water pollution. The planned reduction of vital forest land protections will only exacerbate issues long unaddressed.
As it currently stands, Atlanta’s approach to public safety is harmful at best to those with longstanding unmet needs. One in eight Atlanta city jail bookings are to unhoused citizens, 86% of whom are Black, —making them at least 30 times more represented than the general population. Relatedly, individuals with prior mental illness represent between a quarter to half of all police encounters, and are 16 times likelier to die from lethal state force.
Nygil Cullins, a 22-year-old Black man diagnosed with schizophrenia, was killed by Atlanta Police after his mother called for help during his mental health episode. Two hours later, an ambulance still hadn't arrived, and Cullins, in a state of crisis, made his way to Fogo de Chão, where officers were called by patrons and dispatched immediately. Cullins was dead shortly thereafter.
These harrowing contexts have brought activists, organizers, care practitioners to call for approaches to community safety that focus on rehabilitation versus punitive measures. The Community Movement Builders, one of the most active forces against Cop City, demands the reallocation of policing funds into community programs that actually promote safety, like affordable housing, youth support, healthcare services, and economic development.
Emergent coalitions, such as Communities Over Cages have made similar calls, proposing divestments from the carceral system and closure of the Atlanta City Detention Center. In the jail’s place, organizers argue for transforming the space into a community hub with reentry support, wellness services, training programs, childcare, crisis centers, and spaces for arts, entrepreneurship, and nonprofits.
While working as a community educator for SCHR, I traveled around the city speaking to residents in each Atlanta Police Zone about their visions on public safety. Over 90% of the 100 residents my team surveyed, most of whom were Black, desired increased funding for wrap-around services, such as health services, counseling, family care, and housing support. As well, nine out of ten respondents supported decriminalizing the traffic code, deprioritizing drug and quality of life offenses, and expanding alternative crisis response programs throughout the city.
The Global Law Enforcement and Public Health Association, an international collective driven to advance community safety, recommends shifting from traditional reactive policing to a proactive public health model. Key pillars of this approach include addressing root causes such as poverty and mental health issues, building trust and legitimacy through data-driven approaches, and reducing recidivism by focusing on rehabilitation and reintegration.
Investments in communities significantly lower violent crime. Renovating housing and transforming vacant lots have led to reductions in violent crime by up to 29%. Improving public spaces, by installing street lighting, painting sidewalks, rehabilitating parks and maintaining vacant lots has been shown to decrease homicide rates by up to 76%. Whereas areas with stop signs and security bars on housing were significantly higher. Economic initiatives, such as youth workforce programs, have been found to reduce violence among youth by 35% to 45%. Princeton sociologist, Patrick Sharkey, found that in cities with populations of 100,000 or more, the establishment of each additional community-based organization focused on local needs contributes to a cumulative 1% decrease in violent crime.
Instead of funding Cop City and expanding APD resources, Mayor Dickens and City Council are called to redirect tax dollars to support these aforementioned policies and programs. We must prioritize systems that are proactive versus reactive, in order to ensure safety is a right for all, not a privilege for a few.
Forest defenders recognize that stopping Cop City is a multifaceted fight that challenges the state’s insistence that our community members suffer under its hand. AntiBlackness, environmental racism, mass surveillance, state sanctioned violence, and other destructive institutionalized conditions have no place here. We will continue to unite and demand that our folks live with dignity, from the Atlanta forest, to Palestine, and beyond.
Opal Gay is an artist, researcher, and organizer in Atlanta, Georgia. Their work focuses on promoting community wellness through research, advocacy, and public policy.