Field Notes

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Cop City

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Cop City is the nickname opponents gave to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, an 85-acre police and fire training complex in the South River Forest of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, and by extension the site of the Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest movements. Approved by the Atlanta City Council in 2021 and opened in April 2025, the facility drew a protest movement whose prosecution produced the largest protest-related racketeering case in US history — and whose collapse in late 2025 moved the legal fight to federal court.

The facility and its funding

The council approved a ground lease of city-owned forest land to the APF on 7 September 2021, by a 10-4 vote, after public comment running overwhelmingly against the project.1 Pitched at roughly $90 million — $30 million public, the balance raised privately by the APF — the project’s public share grew under a leaseback provision, and the final cost settled near $117 million, which officials attribute largely to security measures after arson attacks they say caused over $10 million in damage.2 Construction finished in December 2024 and the ribbon was cut on 29 April 2025.3 The campus trains Atlanta police, firefighters, and 911 dispatchers around a mock village and a six-story burn building.

The movement and the forest

Opposition coalesced in late 2021 around the forest’s destruction — the area is called the Weelaunee Forest by the Muscogee people displaced from the land and by their supporters — and the militarization symbolized by a mock-city police training ground.4 Activists occupied the woods in tents and tree sits, drawing environmentalists, police abolitionists, and neighbors into one coalition. Alongside peaceful protest the site saw repeated property attacks, culminating in a 5 March 2023 assault by masked activists and a police raid on a nearby music festival.5

The killing of Manuel Terán

On 18 January 2023, in a multi-agency clearing operation, Georgia state troopers shot and killed Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, 26, inside a protest tent. The GBI says Terán fired four shots through the tent, seriously wounding a trooper, before six troopers returned fire.6 The county autopsy counted at least 57 gunshot wounds and saw no gunshot residue on Terán’s hands, while cautioning that residue is not always visible; the family disputes the state’s account.7 In October 2023 special prosecutor George Christian declined to charge the troopers, calling the force objectively reasonable, and refused to release the underlying evidence.8

Mass prosecution

Georgia began charging protesters under its 2017 domestic-terrorism statute in December 2022; 19 faced the charge before the festival raid added 23 more, most of them from out of state.5 The statute reaches any felony intended to coerce government policy by damaging critical infrastructure and carries five to 35 years.9 In August 2023 Attorney General Chris Carr’s office indicted 61 people under the state RICO statute, framing Stop Cop City as a “militant anarchist” conspiracy whose alleged acts ran from Molotov attacks on police to providing protesters food and distributing flyers; each defendant faced up to 20 years.10

The RICO case’s collapse

On 30 December 2025, Fulton County Judge Kevin Farmer dismissed the racketeering count against all 61 defendants, holding that the attorney general needed the governor’s written authorization to bring RICO charges over the local district attorney — authorization Carr conceded he never sought.10 Farmer left standing domestic-terrorism and arson counts against five defendants, which fall within the attorney general’s statutory authority. Carr, who made the case a theme of his 2026 gubernatorial campaign, appealed in January 2026; the Georgia Court of Appeals accepted the appeal in February, and the state’s filing conceded the remaining counts may be “difficult if not impossible to prove” without the RICO evidence.11 As of late July 2026 the appeal is pending, and a parallel Cobb County prosecution of three protesters over a 2022 contractor attack was dismissed in June 2026, the second state case over that incident to fail.12

The failed referendum

The Vote to Stop Cop City coalition sought to repeal the lease ordinance by citizen referendum, which required 58,231 valid signatures. Organizers submitted petitions on 11 September 2023 claiming more than 116,000; four news organizations hand-counted about 108,500.13 The city refused to verify the petitions, citing an Eleventh Circuit stay of a federal injunction that had extended the deadline, and never counted them. In January 2026 the Eleventh Circuit ruled 2-1 that the effort was doomed regardless: under Kemp v. City of Claxton (Ga. 1998), Georgia’s referendum process repeals municipal charters, not ordinances, so the plaintiffs could show no irreparable harm from the residency rule for signature gatherers.14 The referendum never reached a ballot.

Federal prosecutions and this wiki

On 9 June 2026 a federal grand jury indicted Katie Kloth and Tyler Norman, two of the original 61 defendants, over a May 2022 attack on the offices of general contractor Brasfield & Gorrie, charging property damage by fire and explosives and intimidation during a civil disorder; the Justice Department framed the case under its NSPM-7 initiative and Joint Task Force Vanguard.15 The sealed November 2025 indictment in United States v. Tunick is the other active federal case. Per the defense motion there, Tunick was placed on a terrorism watchlist over his alleged association with Defend the Atlanta Forest, which the government internally classifies as an “Anti-Government, Anti-Authority Violent Extremist Group.”

  1. AJC on the completed facility (Dec. 2024), covering the 10-4 lease vote and the cost history. ↩

  2. AJC on the opening (Apr. 2025), reporting the leaseback provision, the near-$117 million final cost, and the damage estimate. ↩

  3. AJC (Apr. 2025), ibid.; WABE on the finished complex (Dec. 2024). ↩

  4. ABC News on the March 2023 clashes, describing the site and the Weelaunee name. ↩

  5. Jeff Martin and Jeff Amy, “23 charged with terrorism in Atlanta ‘Cop City’ protest”, Associated Press, 7 March 2023. Contemporaneous reporting on the charges as filed, which is not evidence of what was later proved. ↩↩

  6. “Special Prosecutor Decision in January 18, 2023 Shooting Incident Near The Site Of The Future Atlanta Public Safety Training Center”, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, 6 October 2023. The investigating agency’s own announcement, not an independent review of it. ↩

  7. Rosana Hughes and Caroline Silva, “Autopsy: Gunshot residue ‘not seen’ on activist killed at Atlanta police training center”, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 20 April 2023, reporting the DeKalb County medical examiner’s findings. ↩

  8. Kate Brumback and R.J. Rico, “Troopers who fatally shot a ‘Cop City’ activist near Atlanta won’t be charged, prosecutor says”, Associated Press, 6 October 2023. ↩

  9. Al Jazeera on the March 2023 charges, reporting the 19 earlier domestic-terrorism charges, the statute’s breadth, and the erroneous DHS-designation claims in arrest warrants. ↩↩

  10. AP on the RICO dismissal (Dec. 2025); Farmer had announced his intention at a September 2025 hearing. ↩↩

  11. Matt Scott, “Georgia Court of Appeals will take up ‘Cop City’ RICO case”, Atlanta Press Collective, 11 February 2026. Attorney General Chris Carr appealed Judge Kevin A. Farmer’s dismissal of the racketeering charges against 61 people; the court accepted the application over defence objections to process. ↩

  12. Timothy Pratt, “Trump administration targets Cop City protesters in latest push to prosecute ‘antifa’”, The Guardian, 26 June 2026. ↩

  13. “Analysis: It’s uncertain if push to ‘Stop Cop City’ got enough valid signers for Atlanta referendum”, Associated Press, 13 December 2023. A news-organization analysis of the signatures, not an official count, and it reached no determinate answer. ↩

  14. Baker v. City of Atlanta, No. 23-12469 (11th Cir. Jan. 2026), vacating the injunction under Kemp v. City of Claxton, 496 S.E.2d 712 (Ga. 1998), over a Newsom dissent. ↩

  15. Andre Butso, “2 face new charges linked to Atlanta police training center, feds say”, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 12 June 2026. A grand jury indicted two people over a 2022 attack on an office of the training centre’s general contractor. ↩

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