Cop City

The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center (APSTC), commonly known as Cop City, is a police and fire department training campus in the South River Forest located in Southwest DeKalb County near Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Much of the land included in the plans was formerly part of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, which was abandoned in 1995. The facility opened on April 29, 2025. The project was proposed by the City of Atlanta in 2021, and met a multi-faceted movement opposing the construction of the training center. In January 2023, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, an environmental activist and member of the Stop Cop City movement, was fatally shot by Atlanta police after allegedly firing a weapon at officers attempting to evict them from an encampment, drawing national and international attention and escalating conflict around the project. Stop Cop City protestors arrested in late 2022 and early 2023 were charged with domestic terrorism; the appropriateness of these charges has been criticized by civil liberties advocates. In September 2023, sixty-one people were indicted with racketeering under the state's RICO law, in what is likely the largest criminal conspiracy case ever filed against protestors in the US. In September 2025, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kevin Farmer dismissed the RICO charges.