What is Cop City?

Nine months of your rent. That's what $90 million means for most people in Atlanta. But for the Atlanta Police Foundation, it's the price tag on Cop City—a $90 million police training center designed to teach officers extreme military tactics.

The facility is being marketed as a training ground for "urban warfare"—urban warfare, not police work. You don't need a $90 million complex to learn how to de-escalate conflicts, serve warrants, or respond to emergencies. You need that kind of facility when you're training police to treat neighborhoods like occupied territory.

And they're moving forward despite sustained, ongoing resistance. The community knows what this is. The cops know what this is. The only people pretending otherwise are the ones writing the press releases.

Kinston, NC (pop.19,900) police officers and Army unit stand infront of 1033 gifted MRAP

The 1033 Program: War Surplus for Local Streets

This isn't new. The War on Drugs gave us police militarization—tanks rolling through streets, SWAT teams serving warrants for nonviolent offenses, language of "battleground" and "frontline" applied to American neighborhoods. What was once foreign policy became domestic policy by way of the Pentagon's 1033 program, which funneled surplus military equipment to local police departments.

Officially called the Law Enforcement Support Office program, 1033 was created by Congress in 1997 as a way for the Pentagon to dispose of surplus military equipment by giving it to police departments. It's free—departments only pay for shipping and maintenance. What started as a disposal mechanism has become the primary pipeline for militarizing American policing.

Here's what flows through that pipeline: armored vehicles including MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles) designed for Afghanistan battlefields; assault rifles including M16s and M4s; bayonets and grenade launchers; night vision and thermal imaging equipment; helicopters and aircraft; tactical gear including Kevlar helmets, body armor, and riot shields.

Since 1997, the Department of Defense has transferred over $7 billion in equipment to more than 8,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. Small-town police departments with 10 officers have ended up with armored vehicles that would look at home in a war zone. This is not an accident. This is deliberate policy designed to put military equipment in the hands of local police—the same equipment used to occupy foreign populations.

What the War on Drugs Started, the War on Terror Finished

The War on Terror finished the job. It took the same mindset and applied it to intelligence gathering and surveillance. According to the ACLU, military-style surveillance technology like Stingray devices has expanded far beyond drug raids and public order policing into everyday police work.

Stingray devices are suitcase-sized surveillance tools that mimic cell towers. When you connect to one, police can track your location and intercept your calls and text messages—all without a warrant, without your knowledge, without a judge ever seeing the request.

A handful of states—Minnesota, Utah, Virginia, Washington—now require warrants for Stingray deployment. But those are exceptions, not the rule. In most of the country, if a police department has a Stingray, they can use it on you whenever they want. You don't get to know. You don't get to challenge it. You just get watched.

The Imperial Feedback Loop

Here's how the loop works: The U.S. fights wars abroad—in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Iran, Lebanon. It develops counterinsurgency tactics, technology, and mindset designed to occupy foreign populations and crush resistance. Then it brings those same tools home. The equipment flows through the 1033 program. The tactics spread through training conferences and consultant networks. The mindset arrives as the default assumption that anyone who resists is the enemy.

Who gets policed? Communities of color. Immigrants. Indigenous people. Poor neighborhoods. Anyone who protests. The same populations the U.S. occupies abroad are the ones it polices most aggressively at home.

And the language never changes. Police talk about "clearing" neighborhoods the way soldiers talk about clearing villages. They call neighborhoods "hotspots" the way military intelligence calls areas of resistance. They describe protestors as "insurgents" the way occupation forces describe those fighting back.

Activist march through the forest planting trees

Atlanta's Resistance: Stop Cop City

The good news is that Atlanta has not accepted this quietly. The Stop Cop City movement has organized sustained resistance for years—protests, legal challenges, community organizing, direct action. This is not a moment of outrage. It is a sustained campaign.

The movement has brought together Black community organizers, environmental activists, abolitionists, students, and neighbors of the proposed site in the Weelaunee Forest. The forest itself—85 acres of Atlanta's remaining green space—has become a site of resistance, with activists defending it as both an ecological commons and a line against expanding police power.

“Any survey that’s been done has shown that 70% of Atlantans have been against the building of this facility, but yet they went ahead and decided to build it anyway.” – Kamau Franklin, Atlanta-based anti–Cop City activist.

Legal challenges have targeted the environmental approval process, the transparency of public input, and the diversion of public funds to private police foundations. Every delay, every court hearing, every public meeting where residents voice opposition is a victory in the longer struggle.

The police state does not need public support. It needs funding and political cover—both of which it has in abundance. But sustained resistance creates costs. It raises the price of empire. It forces the system to deploy resources that could go elsewhere. And it builds the networks and experience needed for longer-term struggle.

Proposed map of 85 acre, $100 million + cop city

Cop City as Imperial Infrastructure

Cop City is not a training center. It is infrastructure for domestic counterinsurgency. The $90 million investment is not about improving police-community relations or reducing violence. It is about institutionalizing the mindset of occupation. When you train police in extreme military tactics, you get a police force that thinks like an occupying army.

“I think slapping them with domestic terrorism is also an attempt to warn other people who are organizing against this, other activists, to be careful and be scared in a way to try and silence our movement.” – Jasmine Burnett, Atlanta-area organizer speaking about charges against “Stop Cop City” activists.

And that's the point. The ruling class understands that empire abroad requires repression at home. You cannot bomb Gaza, starve Iraq, and support Israel's genocide in Lebanon while simultaneously maintaining a free and open society at home. The logic of empire is the logic of control. Wherever there is power to challenge it, there must be the capacity to crush it.

The Expansion of Surveillance

Stingray devices are just one piece of a surveillance apparatus that grows more sophisticated by the year. Facial recognition cameras, predictive policing algorithms, social media monitoring, automated license plate readers—each technology justified by the same narratives: safety, security, crime prevention. Each technology deployed first in the communities most vulnerable, then normalized, then expanded.

“From its inception, the plans for the Training Center have depended on obfuscation, disinformation, and disregard for the people in and around Atlanta.” – Statement from the Center for Policing Equity

What the War on Terror did for police intelligence gathering, the war on protest is now doing for crowd control. The same surveillance tools tested on foreign dissidents are now used to monitor organizers, track protest movements, and pre-empt resistance before it even begins.

The Machine Can Be Dismantled

Resistance matters. Every protest, every lawsuit, every piece of legislation that requires warrants for Stingray deployment—that's a battle won in the longer war of dismantling the machine. And the machine can be dismantled. Police departments that acquire military equipment can be forced to return it. Surveillance programs can be defunded. Training centers can be shut down.

The question is whether enough people understand that the wars abroad and the police state at home are the same system fighting on two fronts. The same money that funds Cop City funds the war in Iran. The same mindset that treats Gaza as a target treats Black neighborhoods in Atlanta as occupied territory.

This is something that could have been prevented. There was no reason for them to take the tactics that they did in terms of going into the forest with weapons in hand… to go shoot forest defenders who were engaging in civil disobedience and direct action politics.” – Kamau Franklin, on police tactics at the protest encampment

The Choice

You cannot have an anti-war movement that accepts the police state, and you cannot have a police abolition movement that accepts the wars abroad. The logic of empire is not selective. It is a comprehensive system of domination. If you reject it in Gaza, you must reject it in Atlanta. If you reject it in Iran, you must reject it in your own city.

The left hand of empire polices the streets of Atlanta. The right hand bombs the cities of the Middle East. They work together.

Cop City is not a local issue. It is an imperial issue. And dismantling it is part of the same work as ending the war in Iran.