As our nation reacts this week to two avoidable deaths, Tyre Nichols in Memphis, TN, and activist/protestor Manuel Teran, illegally camping on the grounds of the former Old Atlanta Prison Farm, one similarity stands out between the two deaths. More and better training of all law enforcement professionals, local, state, and federal, could have potentially saved both lives.
Better educated and continually trained law enforcement professionals make better public servants, better cops, sheriff deputies as well as detectives, investigators, and special agents. And to GET THAT ADDITIONAL training, there have to be spaces and places to provide those skills.
Yes, all Georgia State Troopers, GBI Agents, National Guard members, and even local police and sheriff deputies need to be equipped with body cameras for a sensitive and potentially explosive assignment like clearing an active and longstanding protest site, where violence, vandalism, and even Molotov cocktails are becoming the norm. The lack of cameras on State Troopers during the response fire from protestor Teran's gun and the serious wounding of a State Trooper, unfortunately, undermined the credibility of the superior forces on the state's side, legally readying to clear the site of squatters, vandals and previously violent protests, to move forward with site clearance for development of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center (PSTC).
And since the Atlanta Police Foundation, a private, nonprofit enterprise, regularly committing good across our region, undertook point on the effort to build out the $90-million state-of-the-art, best practices training center on 85 acres of land already publicly owned, adjacent to the Metro Detention Center and undergoing continuous use as a firing range and outside mock burn facility for Atlanta firefighters, is decades well-past being a pristine old-growth forest, wetland or even unique greenspace.
The Police Foundation’s plans also include Michelle Obama Park, just on the other side of an existing Georgia Power utility easement, with federal funding already secured by DeKalb County to connect that park with the South River and Arabia Mountain Trails. The entire parcel is only a small fraction of the South River Forest of more than 3,500 acres of primarily undeveloped land in southwest DeKalb and bordering Rockdale County. To put this site's size in perspective, Piedmont Park is roughly 150-acres and Stone Mountain Park is more than 3,400 acres.
Since the beginning of this proposal, two of the main focus areas for the PSTC have been improving social justice, as well as setting national standards for improving community engagement, neighborhood sensitivity, and devotion to the civil rights of all citizens by law enforcement. PSTC training will embrace police reform and cultural sensitivity through extensive training and an ongoing educational partnership with the National Center for Civil & Human Rights in Atlanta.
The PSTC will afford the Atlanta Police and Atlanta Fire Departments, the south's two largest public safety agencies, with all the essential training facilities and flexibility required for best-in-class urban public safety agencies, including a mock burn and crime scene village, crisis scenario, and mass shooter training, ongoing conflict de-escalation and cultural sensitivity training as well as a superior firing range (with significant sound baffling) and a driving range/skid pad facilities - https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/programs/public-safety-training-center/
Protestors and activists may be winning the bumper sticker battle at this point with "Stop Cop City," but in a capital city with 173 homicides during 2022, and 141 in adjoining DeKalb County, the vast majority of residents in the region remain more concerned about rising violent crime, than the partial loss of 85 acres of woodlands, adjacent to an existing high-security Detention Center.
And not to be nonchalant about losing any tree canopy, but this land was used as the Old Atlanta Prison Farm from the 1920s to 1990, producing food for the region's prisons and jails. The area remains largely undeveloped, with the nearest residences and community structures on Key Road, Constitution Road, Old Constitution Road, and Fayetteville Road more than a mile away.
So here is another strong YES for Cop City, following votes already in favor by Atlanta's City Council (10-4), and pending favorable action by the DeKalb County Commission.
Hopefully with this additional and ongoing training and certifications, particularly around matters of social justice, we won't see more deaths in Georgia like those of George Floyd, Tyre Nichols, or even guerilla activists like Manuel Teran, whose legally purchased weapon was also found on those grounds and at the scene of the shooting of a Georgia State Trooper. If Cop City completes its mission as planned, fewer Atlanta police actions in the future are likely to go sideways.
