Nearly 300 pages of Atlanta’s ‘Cop City’ records released after first-of-its-kind ruling | ‘Cop City‘

After a lawsuit against a digital news organization and a research group allegedly violated the Open Registration Law of Georgia to the Atlanta Police Foundation, the foundation sent a record of approximately 300 pages to the plaintiffs in connection with the role of the police training center known as the “Police City”.

“It opens the door to what we want, a guide stone to register from the police foundations, so they cannot be a black box,” he said. Atlanta Community Press Collective (ACPC) is one of the two plaintiffs in an Atlanta -based digital news and the case.

“A city cannot use police foundations as a way to provide public records, Scot said Scott. APF did not respond to an e -mail looking for comments from Guardian.

ACPC and Lucy Parsons LabsTwo plaintiffs received records after Jane Barwick, the judge of the Fulton County Supreme Court. [the] records […] In accordance with the Open Records Law ”.

Robert Vargas, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, told Guardian to Guardian last year, probably the first example of the country -wide species. Although the case was focused on the Atlanta Police Foundation, the observers said that last year they had to see if the result of the last year had effects on the police foundations in general and could not be exposed to open registration laws. According to 2021, each major US city has a special foundation supporting more than 250 policemen throughout the country. report Small fog and change color by research and activist groups. According to the report, foundations have been used to pay surveillance technologies in cities such as Baltimore and Los Angeles.

Vargas said that the decision and records “precedent”. However, since Barwick’s entire APF’s records are present for the public or whether the police foundations will be accepted as public institutions in general, he added that the results were “mixed bags”.

“The decision does not have difficulty in the biggest issue, Var Vargas said. This means that police foundations may continue to claim that they have the right to store records and further sued.

The 287 -page certificate of the APF, sent to the plaintiffs on July 1, offers an idea that the Foundation’s Atlanta City Council members are actively lobbying to crush the construction of the COP COP City’s construction in the referendum to vote throughout the city.

In the 17 September 2023 E -mail, the APF spokesman Rob Baskin said that the Foundation would talk to the “Mayor’s key people” and members of the Municipal Assembly, and that a referendum in Cop City would allow the delay and the financing of the project before the rail ”. Allow the residents of the city to decide the project, [result] In the loss of the reliability of the Municipal Assembly and its members, the document warns.

The activists behind the referendum are trying to invalidate the elected representatives who designed, discuss and overwhelming twice in a completely transparent public forums. The Foundation neglects that the Municipal Assembly meetings, where the financing of the training center is approved, includes record -breaking numbers of the participants and dozens of public expressions against the project. When the Municipal Assembly already approved the financing of the training center, the referendum effort was born.

COP City Vote The organizers then spent months by collecting 116,000 signatures at the end of 2023 to reach about half of the number of verified, registered voters. The coalition of voting rights and pro -democracy law firms throughout the USA organized a regulation to cod the city in general how to confirm and count voter signatures in petitions to ask questions to the voting compasses and to offer to the Atlanta City Council.

This was needed because the COP City referendum was the first local democracy effort in the capital of Georgia’s 176 -year history, and there was no such process. But in the end, the Municipal Assembly eliminated the regulations behind the closed doors, as Guardian reported at that time; The referendum has never been involved in legal disputes.

Referring to the role of the Foundation in the oppression of the referendum, Scott said, ı If we had taken these documents when we asked and asked, there was immediate impact potential on the public opinion.

It was also announced in the document: the foundation published 40 civil servants and at the end of 2023, the footprint of 171 acres (70 hectares) in a forest southeast of Atlanta, established eight cameras by activists to protect them from any vandalism.

Opposition to the $ 109 million center came from a wide range of local and national organizations and protesters and focuses on concerns such as uncontrolled police militarization and cleaning forests.

Atlanta police and foundation say that the center is necessary to attract “world standards” training and new officers.

The last eight pages of the document seems to have violated the order of the judge to enter a rejection of all records. The plaintiffs plan to file a lawsuit to obtain these records.

After receiving the document a few weeks ago, Scott said that ACPC did not expect to test the decision and demanded open records for a few minutes from the board meetings of the board of directors last week. He hasn’t received an answer yet.

“We will continue for transparency,” he said.