Stop Cop City

Stop Cop City (SCC), also known as Defend the Atlanta Forest (DTF), was a decentralized movement focused on Atlanta, Georgia, in opposition to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center or "Cop City". The facility was announced in 2021 as a partnership between the Atlanta Police Foundation and the City of Atlanta, and completed in April 2025. The Stop Cop City movement has received international attention, especially after Tortuguita, a protestor occupying the disputed site, was killed by police during a raid in January 2023 after firing 4 shots and striking a police member. Opponents of the facility are concerned about destruction of the South River Forest and associated environmental justice impacts exacerbating economic disparities and ecological response to climate change in a poor, majority-Black neighborhood. Opponents also argue that the center will increase militarization of policing in the city—which had witnessed several protests against police violence following the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minnesota and the killing of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta. Proponents of the training facility said that the project was necessary to fight crime and to improve police morale. They said there was no feasible alternate site for the training center and argued that the location is "not a forest". The state charged several protestors with domestic terrorism and indicted sixty-one people for criminal conspiracy in September 2023. The protests have drawn participants from all over the United States, and many of those indicted are not from Georgia—leading the project's proponents to cast them as "outside agitators", while movement participants argue that the project will train many police officers from outside of Georgia. A petition for public referendum on the project also became embroiled in a lawsuit, and neither this nor the criminal suits had been resolved by April 2025 when the facility opened.