‘Cop City' legal case could cast spotlight on US police foundations' activities

A legal case in Atlanta stemming from the controversial 'Cop City' project is being closely watched because it has the potential to cast a spotlight on the activities of police foundations nationwide.
The case raises the issue of state open records laws, and whether they apply to police foundations. The private foundations exist in every major US city, with more than 250 nationwide, according to a 2021 report by research and activist groups Little Sis and Color of Change.
The foundations have been used to pay for surveillance technologies in cities like Baltimore and Los Angeles without the contracts being subject to public scrutiny, according to the report.
In the Atlanta case, a judge is considering 12 hours of testimony, related case law and evidence in a lawsuit that concerns whether records such as board meeting minutes from the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) are subject to the state's open records law. If they are, they must be released to plaintiffs – a local digital non-profit news outlet and a Chicago-based research organization.
Although it is a private entity, the police foundation is the driving force behind the controversial police training center colloquially known as 'Cop City' and which has attracted global headlines after police shot dead Manuel Paez Terán, or 'Tortuguita', an environmental activist protesting the project.
At the same time, the prosecution of anti-'Cop City' activists – especially using Rico laws usually reserved for organized crime – has prompted accusations that the state is using police and the courts to crush dissent and free speech.
The open records complaint, filed last year on behalf of non-profit news outlet Atlanta Community Press Collective (ACPC) and digital transparency research organization Lucy Parsons Labs, details how numerous records queries to the foundation under Georgia's Open Records Act were ignored.
After a two-day bench trial last week, Fulton county superior court judge Jane Barwick must now decide whether to order the foundation to release those records, including a 'line-item construction budget' and contracts.
It was probably the first such lawsuit nationwide, University of Chicago sociology professor Robert Vargas told the Guardian last year – and is being followed closely by researchers and activists alike.
One of the hallmarks of police foundations is how difficult it is to get information out of them,' said Gin Armstrong, executive director at LittleSis and the Public Accountability Initiative. 'From a research point of view, this case could open up possibilities … in understanding where money is coming from for policing.'
'A ruling here that the Atlanta police foundation is subject to meaningful public oversight [by releasing the records] would send a very important signal,' said Jonathan Manes, senior counsel at the MacArthur Justice Center.
One reason, he said, was the high profile of the $109m training center project. Built on a 171-acre (70-hectare) footprint in a forest south-east of Atlanta, opposition to the center has come from a wide range of local and national organizations and protesters and is centered on concerns such as unchecked police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis.
Atlanta police, and the foundation, say the center is needed for 'world-class' training and to attract new officers.
The movement against the center dates to 2021 and has included the destruction of construction equipment and the arson of Atlanta police motorcycles and a car. It has also included efforts to mount a referendum on the training center that gathered signatures from more than 100,000 voters – and continues to languish in court – as well as historic levels of public participation in city council meetings, lawsuits, numerous protests, and support from national environmental and civil rights groups.
Despite the years of protests and worldwide media coverage – and although the APF built the center, with corporate and taxpayer funds – the foundation and its CEO, former Secret Service leader Dave Wilkinson, have largely escaped public notice. Most attention has centered on Atlanta's police department, which will be using the center, and local and state governments.
Because of this, the lawsuit, and last week's bench trial – meaning the judge decides, not a jury – draw attention to the APF. The APF is one of the nation's largest and most well-funded police foundations, with support from companies like Delta, Wells Fargo and Home Depot. Wilkinson is also the highest-paid among police foundation CEOs nationwide, with a 2022 salary of $500,000.
In his hours of testimony last week, Wilkinson revealed his take on ACPC, which began reporting on the training center in late 2021, filling a vacuum left in local media exemplified by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution failing to disclose in much of its news and opinion coverage of the project that Alex Taylor, CEO of the paper's owner, Cox Enterprises, had led a multimillion-dollar fundraising drive for the foundation.
Wilkinson testified that he thought ACPC would be 'giving information to … anarchists' – referring to protestors who committed acts of property destruction or vandalism – and that, in withholding information, he was 'trying to protect people from harm'.
He and others – including Alan Williams, project manager for the training center – offered hours of detailed descriptions of protests, including cellphone videos and news clips showing protestors throwing rocks, lighting fireworks and screaming such chants as 'Fuck you Alan!'
Matt Scott, executive director of ACPC, said: 'They were doing the best they could to make ACPC look like an organization intent on causing harm – but they brought no evidence against ACPC.'
Manes found the APF's stance 'deeply chilling – the idea that the press is responsible for how people use or react to information'.
In her closing argument, Joy Ramsingh – one of three attorneys who represented plaintiffs pro bono, along with Samantha C Hamilton and Luke Andrews – said that Wilkinson 'clearly believes that if … he feels [open records requestors] are bad people, then they should be denied Open Records Act requests. But [the law] is not governed by our feelings.'
The police foundation and its lawyer, former Georgia supreme court chief justice Harold Melton, also argued that the foundation was no different from other private entities that work with government, whether corporations such as Chick-fil-A or other non-profit organizations – and so, like these entities, it should not be subject to open records laws.
Melton declined to comment on the case. The APF did not respond to a query from the Guardian.
Ramsingh countered this notion rhetorically in court: 'Is there any Chick-fil-A that calls itself Atlanta police Chick-fil-A and only serves chicken nuggets to APD?'
Ed Vogel, a researcher at Lucy Parsons Labs, said: 'If APD didn't exist, APF wouldn't exist – it gives the ability to wealthy people and corporations to organize and mobilize funds in a way that supports their interests, without any public oversight.'
Ramsingh said she hopes the case 'helps shine a light on what police foundations do, and illuminates their reach'. In Atlanta, that includes not just raising money for the training center, but building and managing it. 'Most people have no idea there's this whole other entity making decisions on public safety.'

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

CBS News

38 minutes ago

• CBS News

Body found in search for missing 16-year-old girl in Yorkville, Illinois

Body found as police search for missing teen in Yorkville, Illinois Body found as police search for missing teen in Yorkville, Illinois Body found as police search for missing teen in Yorkville, Illinois Police in Yorkville, Illinois west of Chicago confirmed that a body was found during the search for a missing 16-year-old girl Sunday. Aiyana Williams was reported missing almost one week ago. Yorkville police said officers were conducting foot patrol and drone operations in the search for Williams early Sunday morning, and located a dead body. Investigators late Sunday were working to confirm the identity of the person found dead, and the circumstances of the discovery. Police asked residents to avoid the area of the Country Hills subdivision during the investigation.

CBS News

an hour ago

• CBS News

SUV hits Chicago police squad car, 3 other cars on West Side

A sport-utility vehicle hit a Chicago police squad car and three other vehicles in the West Garfield Park neighborhood Sunday evening, police said. At 6:23 p.m., a Chevrolet Equinox was headed west on Monroe Street when it hit a marked police car that was traveling south on Kostner Avenue. The Equinox also hit a Dodge headed south on Kostner Avenue, police said. Two parked Hyundais were also struck, police said. Police did not have information about injuries. Charges were pending late Sunday against the driver of the Chevy Equinox, police said.

Boston Globe

2 hours ago

• Boston Globe

Will Iran again sip the ‘poison' of a forced peace, or escalate?

At 86, with much of his life's work in ruins around him, he may prefer martyrdom to the surrender that President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel are demanding of him. Advertisement Iran's first response was defiant. 'The Islamic Republic of Iran is resolved to defend Iran's territory, sovereignty, security and people by all force and means against the United States' criminal aggression,' the foreign ministry said in a statement. Iran has launched a serious barrage of missiles on Israel. It may, as it has warned, attack some of the 40,000 US soldiers in the region. What will be crucial is whether Iran's retaliation is prolonged. If it does enough to convince the Iranian people that it has not capitulated, Khamenei may then decide to enter talks with the United States about a settlement of the war. After all, in January 2020, when Trump ordered the assassination of a key Iranian figure in his first term, General Qassem Soleimani, with a drone strike in Iraq, Iran responded with a punishing wave of missile attacks against US troops in Iraq. It then stopped, fearing a wider war that could threaten the regime. Advertisement Iran has a variety of responses if it chooses, that show both resistance and restraint, said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. Khamenei could approve leaving the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and expelling the nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency who have been monitoring Iran's nuclear facilities. He could target those US bases in the region that have largely been evacuated and activate the Houthis in Yemen to resume their attacks on American ships in the Red Sea. 'This would be actually a cautious mix of options designed to show that Iran has the ability and the daring to stand up to Trump, but is still trying to avoid full-scale regional escalation,' Vakil said. 'If Khamenei sidesteps strikes on the US, this lays the pathway for diplomacy and will signal to Trump his intention to de-escalate,' she said. Trump, too, by warning Iran of the strikes in advance and limiting them, at least so far, to the three main Iranian nuclear sites, also showed restraint, she said. The US attacks, for instance, spared political targets and military bases. But Khamenei hardly trusts Trump after he unilaterally pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal that Iran agreed to with the Obama administration and other governments in 2018. Even if there were a new pact agreed upon now, Vakil asked, 'could he trust Trump to provide sanctions relief and ensure Israel is on board?' Iran could do much more, of course. It could try to close the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, a move that could drive up oil prices by blocking oil tankers from leaving or entering the Persian Gulf. It could attack the energy infrastructure of Gulf states, as it did in 2019. It has a sophisticated cyberwarfare program that it could activate. And it could work with Al Qaeda to hit Israeli and US interests in the region and abroad, from bases to embassies. Advertisement Iran will do more, and aggressively, said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank. 'Iran knew this was coming and will have prepared a chain of responses,' she said, with an immediate escalation of attacks against Israel. But Trump's efforts to draw a line now will fail, she said. Attacks against the United States 'are now inevitable and will be swift and multilayered,' Geranmayeh said. 'Iran knows it cannot win this war — but wants to ensure that the US and Israel also lose.' A lot will depend on the assessment of the damage done, which is still unclear. It is also unclear where Iran's large stock of highly enriched uranium is. Iran has enough to make up to 10 nuclear warheads with a bit more enrichment, according to the US military. Many analysts assume that Iran has dispersed it, perhaps where IAEA inspectors cannot access it. The IAEA said Sunday that there had been no indication of radioactive leakage, which would be the case if the uranium stockpiles had been hit, said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of 'Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History.' That is one reason the United States and Europe should do all they can to keep Iran in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the IAEA, he said, so the world does not lose its eyes and ears on Iran's nuclear program. Advertisement For Nasr, the conflict is just beginning, not ending. For Iran, he said, 'it will be live to fight again.' There is 'no one grand gesture after which everything will change,' he added. Most important, he said, 'the larger lesson for Iran is that it needs serious deterrence, and a bomb is the only one that will work.' Iran's missiles and proxies did not protect it, Nasr said. Even if Khamenei dies, the country has been shown to be vulnerable, he said, and nuclear deterrence is the most likely response. Geranmayeh agrees. 'This is the great irony,' she said. 'Although Trump has sought to eliminate the nuclear threat from Iran, he has now made it far more likely that Iran becomes a nuclear state.' And that could mean a future of continued bombing campaigns and Iranian counterstrikes, she said. Still, Geranmayeh believes that diplomacy is the best way out for all parties. After a week of violence in the region, she said, 'there could be a window for Tehran and Washington to come to their senses.' Matthew Kroenig of the Atlantic Council, a think tank, is skeptical. With so much damage to their expensive nuclear program, he said in an email, 'they probably won't rebuild.' Iran has 'spent billions of dollars and decades only to invite sanctions and a devastating war with the most powerful country in the world. Why hit replay on that tape?' Advertisement If Iran does rebuild, he said, the United States 'can hit them again.' This article originally appeared in