A legal case in Atlanta stemming from the controversial “Cop City” project is being closely watched because it has the potential to cast a spotlight on the activities of police foundations nationwide.
The case raises the issue of state open records laws, and whether they apply to police foundations. The private foundations exist in every major US city, with more than 250 nationwide, according to a 2021 report by research and activist groups Little Sis and Color of Change.
The foundations have been used to pay for surveillance technologies in cities like Baltimore and Los Angeles without the contracts being subject to public scrutiny, according to the report.
In the Atlanta case, a judge is considering 12 hours of testimony, related case law and evidence in a lawsuit that concerns whether records such as board meeting minutes from the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) are subject to the state’s open records law. If they are, they must be released to plaintiffs: a local digital non-profit news outlet and a Chicago-based research organization.
Although it is a private entity, the police foundation is the driving force behind the controversial police training center colloquially known as “Cop City” and which has attracted global headlines after police shot dead Manuel Paez Terán, or “Tortuguita”, an environmental activist protesting the project.
At the same time, the prosecution of anti-“Cop City” activists – especially using Rico laws usually reserved for organized crime – has prompted accusations that the state is using police and the courts to crush dissent and free speech.
The open records complaint, filed last year on behalf of non-profit news outlet Atlanta Community Press Collective (ACPC) and digital transparency research organization Lucy Parsons Labs, details how numerous records queries to the foundation under Georgia’s Open Records Act were ignored.
After a two-day bench trial last week, Fulton county superior court judge Jane Barwick must now decide whether to order the foundation to release those records, including a “line-item construction budget” and contracts.
It was probably the first such lawsuit nationwide, University of Chicago sociology professor Robert Vargas told the Guardian last year – and is being followed closely by researchers and activists alike.
One of the hallmarks of police foundations is how difficult it is to get information out of them,” said Gin Armstrong, executive director at LittleSis and the Public Accountability Initiative. “From a research point of view, this case could open up possibilities … in understanding where money is coming from for policing.”
“A ruling here that the Atlanta police foundation is subject to meaningful public oversight [by releasing the records] would send a very important signal,” said Jonathan Manes, senior counsel at the MacArthur Justice Center.
One reason, he said, was the high profile of the $109m training center project. Built on a 171-acre (70-hectare) footprint in a forest south-east of Atlanta, opposition to the center has come from a wide range of local and national organizations and protesters and is centered on concerns such as unchecked police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis.
Atlanta police, and the foundation, say the center is needed for “world-class” training and to attract new officers.
The movement against the center dates to 2021 and has included the destruction of construction equipment and the arson of Atlanta police motorcycles and a car. It has also included efforts to mount a referendum on the training center that gathered signatures from more than 100,000 voters – and continues to languish in court – as well as historic levels of public participation in city council meetings, lawsuits, numerous protests, and support from national environmental and civil rights groups.
Despite the years of protests and worldwide media coverage – and although the APF built the center, with corporate and taxpayer funds – the foundation and its CEO, former Secret Service leader Dave Wilkinson, have largely escaped public notice. Most attention has centered on Atlanta’s police department (APD), which will be using the center, and local and state governments.
Because of this, the lawsuit and last week’s bench trial – meaning the judge decides, not a jury – draw attention to the APF. The APF is one of the nation’s largest and most well-funded police foundations, with support from companies like Delta, Wells Fargo and Home Depot. Wilkinson is also the highest-paid among police foundation CEOs nationwide, with a 2022 salary of $500,000.
In his hours of testimony last week, Wilkinson revealed his take on ACPC, which began reporting on the training center in late 2021, filling a vacuum left in local media exemplified by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution failing to disclose in much of its news and opinion coverage of the project that Alex Taylor, CEO of the paper’s owner, Cox Enterprises, had led a multimillion-dollar fundraising drive for the foundation.
Wilkinson testified that he thought ACPC would be “giving information to … anarchists” – referring to protestors who committed acts of property destruction or vandalism – and that, in withholding information, he was “trying to protect people from harm”.
He and others – including Alan Williams, project manager for the training center – offered hours of detailed descriptions of protests, including cellphone videos and news clips showing protestors throwing rocks, lighting fireworks and screaming such chants as “Fuck you Alan!”
Matt Scott, executive director of ACPC, said: “They were doing the best they could to make ACPC look like an organization intent on causing harm – but they brought no evidence against ACPC.”
Manes found the APF’s stance “deeply chilling – the idea that the press is responsible for how people use or react to information”.
In her closing argument, Joy Ramsingh – one of three attorneys who represented plaintiffs pro bono, along with Samantha C Hamilton and Luke Andrews – said that Wilkinson “clearly believes that if … he feels [open records requestors] are bad people, then they should be denied Open Records Act requests. But [the law] is not governed by our feelings.”
The police foundation and its lawyer, former Georgia US chief justice Harold Melton, also argued that the foundation was no different from other private entities that work with government, whether corporations such as Chick-fil-A or other non-profit organizations – and so, like these entities, it should not be subject to open records laws.
Melton declined to comment on the case. The APF did not respond to a query from the Guardian.
Ramsingh countered this notion rhetorically in court: “Is there any Chick-fil-A that calls itself Atlanta police Chick-fil-A and only serves chicken nuggets to APD?”
Ed Vogel, a researcher at Lucy Parsons Labs, said: “If APD didn’t exist, APF wouldn’t exist – it gives the ability to wealthy people and corporations to organize and mobilize funds in a way that supports their interests, without any public oversight.”
Ramsingh said she hopes the case “helps shine a light on what police foundations do, and illuminates their reach”. In Atlanta, that includes not just raising money for the training center, but building and managing it. “Most people have no idea there’s this whole other entity making decisions on public safety.”
