Tyler Estep
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(TNS)
Land disturbance permits were approved last week for Atlanta’s public safety training center, clearing the way for initial construction to begin on the deeply controversial project.
City leaders, who had been largely silent on the matter for months, took the opportunity to restate their case for the facility — reminding folks what is and isn’t included in the proposal, reiterate why they think it’s needed and pitch the benefits they believe the community will see from the $90-million complex.
Opponents, of course, responded in kind. And a growing list prominent local officials called for, at the very least, more public conversation about the project.
“We are hopeful that answers will be found,” a group of seven Democratic state senators wrote in a statement, “and that the voices of those living in the communities most affected by this conflict will be listened to above all others.”
In a Tuesday afternoon press conference announcing the new permits, as well as in a subsequent sit-down with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens described the planned training center in southwestern DeKalb County as both a “critical need,” a “true community asset.”
A total of 85 acres would be developed, with the remaining 300 or so acres in the area remaining publicly available greenspace — most of it the forest that exists on the eastern side of the property now, with trails and such added, and the rest scattered amid the facility’s various buildings.
“A park that will have a training center on a modest footprint within it,” as the mayor put it.
So-called “cop city,” Dickens stressed, would be not just for police but fire-rescue cadets as well. It would include classroom and meeting spaces, a driving course, academy housing, a “burn building” for firefighters, kennels and other facilities for K-9s, and stables and pastureland for equine units.
The public would also have access to meeting space and outdoor amenities like pavilions.
Also planned, of course, are a firing range and a “mock village,” a life-size work up of various buildings you’d find in a city, used for tactical training. That portion, which was not directly mentioned by Dickens this week, is the most controversial aspect of the site plan.
Atlanta police Chief Darin Schierbaum described the current training situation for Georgia’s largest law enforcement agency as “disjointed.” APD rents classroom space at Metropolitan State College and goes to Fulton County or other neighboring jurisdictions for more active training.
Likewise, Atlanta fire chief Rod Smith said his agency has been “operating in a fractured state for over 30 years.” For decades their classroom training was in a vacant elementary school (which has since been condemned). They bus folks to DeKalb County or Douglasville for live fire training.
Fire department recruits used to learn to drive “big boy ladder trucks,” as Dickens put it, in grocery store parking lots. Stores recently nixed that, complaining the heavy machinery damaged the asphalt.
Recruits now learn to drive on the actual streets of Atlanta, at night, and hope for the best.
Officials have suggested the new training center would be a boon for recruiting and morale.
At the same time, Dickens said last week that APD