From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul the Blackjack King Decant. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want.
You to know.
We are officially back from Vegas. Fellow conspiracy realist. What a ride. As we were on the road, like most folks from Atlanta, we stayed glued to the news about an ongoing controversy, quite possibly a conspiracy afoot in our fair metropolis. If Atlanta's powerful have their way, our town will become home to something called the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center street name cop City. Now, we've talked about this a little bit on the show, right, we've definitely talked off.
Air, Oh for sure. I think we've covered it in Strange News several times. It's kind of been an ongoing thing, but we haven't done a full episode yet, and now is definitely the time because we have a lot of information at this point.
Yeah, there are a lot of there's a lot of stuff being said about this, right, and it's tough to know what's real, what's not real, what's propaganda from either side. So you're just like, Okay, I think I have an understanding of what's going on and why, but honestly I was confused going in.
Yeah, agreed, and full disclosure. All three of us might not be necessarily on the same page in different aspects of this. Again, being from this city, we do have on the ground experience, we have opinions, we have a horse in the race, quite literally, right, So here are the facts. When you hear cop city, that's an attention grabbing phrase, when you will never hear that from the supporters of this facility. You'll hear them instead describe it
as the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. What does that mean? What do they say? What do they say about this concept?
Well, it certainly sounds harmless enough. Public safety to me just sounds like, yeah, we're good with that. But this would essentially be a quite large compound dedicated to training police personnel for all kinds of situations. And they'll have, you know, the most I guess cutting edge equipment for said training and lots of space to do it well.
And it includes large areas for all kinds of things, a canine training center, I believe, stables and even training for mounted police so horse police.
Copter pads, burn towers.
A big old firing range.
Brand new still got that new cartridge smell.
But would sound baffling.
Yeah, yes, we audiophiles love that. Also, in full disclosure, they are aiming to train the Atlanta Fire Department. So if you are familiar with some outfits in the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Mississippi, you may this may sound familiar. The idea of setting up not quite atomic city, fake towns wherein people can practice different tactics. In some ways, it's similar to the School of the Americas in Fort Benning. You're not going to read that on the official website.
Uh yeah, But like School in America's had some some aims right there were is like hey, let's do girl warfare kind of thing, you know, but.
They're a alumni were positioned for different careers.
You could also think about it like Quantico, you know, or like a like a giant headquarters for training. FBI agents, you know with like ropes, courses and shooting ranges. If you've seen the beginning of Silence of the Lambs, similar stuff to that.
And just to so, where I live now, there's a fire department training facility that has what you're talking about, like a building or two that they use to actually go in and put out fires that they set to train the fire department, and that.
Is inarguably important. It's mission critical to be competent in that stuff. Again, when you're in a stressful situation, you need to rely on established experienced muscle memory. Right. No one wants to No one wants to be caught on the fifteenth floor of a burning building and then hear the call, Hey, we got this guy coming up. It's his first time though, so it's pretty cool. Yeah, it's his first stage, just a job training. No, not in
these types of situations. And we're obviously going to get into the various sides that you mentioned, Ben in terms of their various propagandistic tactics and aims. But one of the issues at play here is where the facility is located, which is in eighty five acres of city owned green space, and anyone that's been to Atlanta does tend to comment that who's maybe from like New York City or another metropolis. We've got a lot more green spaces than most of
those other cities do. And this is a massive one in a proper forest, you know that as up to now I believe been you know, used as almost like a park. Yeah, currently right, this is not for me. Is Atlanta known as the city in a forest? It has massive green space, massive tree canopies. If you live here, you're very lucky to do. So we'll talk a little
bit about the ecological aspects here. If you look at a map, like if you've never visited this city, you can look on whatever your big brother of choice is and when you look there, you will see something called the South River Forest, which used to have many other names. As you said, Noel, the facility proposed is pretty big, eighty five acres of city owned land. Opponents say it's more than three hundred acres in terms of impact, and the official website for this site. The official website for
this site says quote. The land also served as the site of the original Atlanta Police Academy, unfortunately not related to the Astonishing film series, which is just a bummer for everybody. And then it was also an explosive ordnance disposal site, then it was a landfill, and then they go on with a little bit of Depending on where you fall, it's either it's either a sincere thing about
preserving history or its lip service. But what the official website does not mention is that this was also the location of the old Atlanta Prison Farm, which was a slave plantation and then a forced labor camp, which is another kind of slave plantation that ran under extremely sketchy circumstances from about nineteen twenty to nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties.
And quickly, just to jump in here so you can get a picture of where this is if you're not able to look at a map right now. If you've experienced Atlanta and you're not from here, you've probably flown into Hartsfield Jackson Airport. It's one of the busiest on the planet, they say. And if you get into the city and you are actually going to Atlanta from the airport, you would travel north on one of our highways, probably eighty five and or seventy five, and those two large
highways head north into Atlanta proper. If you were to go. I guess it's if you're to follow too eighty five, which is the wrap around highway that goes around Atlanta, and you followed that to the east, it would take you towards the area that we're talking about here where the training center slash cop City is going to reside.
So it is what like locals might call outside the perimeter, right, it's inside.
Just barely yeah, kind of like it's actually down the street from Doll's Head Trail. Well, yes, on a positive note, Dollshead Trail is pretty cool. If you like stuff they don't want you to know, you'll enjoy Dollshead Trail, assuming you don't get shot.
It's an industrial part of town to Moorland Avenue Little five Points if anyone is familiar with that area. If you keep going down Moorland, I forget which direction. I'm bad at geography, it does become much more of like a you know, freight depots and stuff like that. There used to be a crazy biker bar called Southern Comfort out there that did karaoke, and there's also an old timey drive in called the Starlight Drive In.
So the city is very the city is very fortunate to have that drive in drive in theaters are amazing, and they are an endangered They are an endangered species. Currently, the nomenclature you will hear describing this area that you just map Forest met is the South River Forest. The issue is that, look, we'll get to the powers that be in a second, but the issue is that there are people who live in this area. They are not the wealthy neighborhoods of the Atlanta metro area. They are
not the people who have good encounters with law enforcement. Okay, And this area has always been a forest, way way back in the day. The original human population Skogie Creek. They called it the Wailndi, which roughly translates to the land of brown water. Not the most impressive name.
Not great.
Not that I don't think it's a poop joke.
I don't think zo either. Maybe it's just got lots of silt in it or something. And the original inhabitants of this land, who lived there thousands of years, were forced out during the Trail of Tears era. Fast forward, Fast forward, Paul, if we get a little of the HS festival perfect.
The proposal for cop City comes on the heels of the nationwide anti law enforcement anti police protest. In twenty twenty, over fifty cities in the United States rose up in some form or another to protest the police murder of George Floyd.
Well, and it's theoretically it's a good thing. Some of the big calls during those protests were we need better trained officers, right, because these officers were literally killing people. So the thought was, at least from the establishment, the law enforcement side, was we need to train our officers better, and maybe this is a solution we offer to the public or something, you know, at least that's the way I'm choosing to view it. Maybe that's the way I see it now.
From a perspective, it does seem.
Like it was there was some pr involved, and they just seem to have slightly miscalculated in terms of what the response would be.
Yeah, yeah, agreed, And lest we be remiss, let's point out that many other innocent people died, each of which triggered another wave of protest. It was not just George Floyd. These were innocent people executed by state power. And the operative definition of any real state is a monopoly on violence. Right,
It's legal when we do it. So in twenty twenty, one, then Mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, teamed up with a weird sort of I don't want to call them avengers, but a weird consortium that is technically a nonprofit called the Atlanta Police Foundation, and Mayor Bottoms hung out with a guy named Dave Wilkinson. Dave Wilkinson is the CEO of this non profit, the Atlanta Police Foundation. They did
something really interesting. They skipped past the idea of whether a training center should be built at all, and instead they immediately said, we can only build it here at the South River part of Atlanta. It is the only option for the site. And then locals living in the area, activists from outside the city. In full disclosure, some of our friends who have been on the show before immediately began collective action. And collective action is the bedrock of
the American experiment. We're talking protests, sit ins, attendants at local hearings. Well.
And it's interesting too because it was a reaction to the facility itself and the plan. But it seems like the early protests were largely about conservation and about the green space and challenging the idea that this was the only sight and they felt that it was a loss of habitat of again green space for people to hang out and camp or whatever it might be. So that was a big part of some of the early protesters was, you know, more of a green kind of attitude.
Yeah. Forest defenders, the loose collective of people occupying now what is a street named cop City, refer to themselves as force defenders, and there is sand to that. It
reminds me this idea of skipping the original question. Like imagine you walked into a car dealership and they said, look, you can only buy a green car, and then you said, well, I don't necessarily want to buy a car, or I don't want to buy this specific car, and they say, well, okay, we're agreed, then you have to buy a green car, and they're just not hearing you, you know. And the response locally was pretty vehement, including surprisingly members of law
enforcement themselves, who are saying, why push this? If the city doesn't want it, why push it? You might make things more dangerous for us, You might make us the enemy.
Yeah.
Uh yeah. It makes you feel like maybe there's some other back room stuff going on even more than just the mayor the former mayor, and you know, the head of this thing called the Atlanta Police Foundation.
I mean also the people living in the neighborhood, like you know, people living off Key Road and Constitution and stuff. They're they're asking a very valid question, why does nimby apply to certain wealthy parts of the city and not to us. Why can't we be the people who say not in my backyard?
Yeah, oh, I completely agree. Well, guys, I'm just looking around and to other parts of the city kind of close to that area, at places that are not they don't look like their official parkland of and it looks like you could probably put a training facility on those. It just I wonder if it's a money problem, if it is a NIMBI problem, like, no matter where you propose to put this thing, it would have gotten crazy backlash.
I don't know. It seems like they would have had some sort of industrial site or something that ladies in the city's portfolio of real estate, even if it was multiple facilities. You know, why does it have to be this massive police mall situation. It feels like they were going for prestige and kind of wow factor with the whole thing, and they just overlooked I think again, what
the pr backlash would be. But to your point, Matt, there also I think has to be some stuff behind the scenes that we're not seeing, because yeah, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Yeah, despite the despite the local protest, and despite the fact that there were people not from Atlanta or not from Georgia who traveled to participate in the ecological side of the protest, despite all that, overwhelmingly the public was against it, and in twenty twenty one, the Atlanta City
Council approved the whole thing. Basically, this was not a surprise because a specific nonprofit quote unquote Atlanta Police Foundation had their back, and the APF has a lot of juice in the city or what are they called the wire section, They have a lot of suction. Yeah, so we'll get to them in a moment. But what you need to know, folks, in May of twenty twenty two,
authorities began clearing up the site. For most of us, you know, if you've ever lived in a forest environment, clearing up means picking up, removing dead fall trees, maintaining trails. For this project, clearing up and this is from them themselves. Clearing up meant their removal of personal property and illegal squatters from the site, as well as the construction of just a big ass fence.
Yeah, they basically occupied it, you know they did.
Huh, they had their occupy movement.
Isn't that interesting because if if people that the state decides are just random squatters are occupying occupying that space, those people have no rights whatsoever. But if but okay, hold on, does the city own that land officially? Yeah, the city does, then I guess, okay, But it.
Was a classified as part of the park system, was it not? Or I don't know exactly what the official designation is, but it is my understanding that it was okay to like camp there or do maybe not. Maybe it was just kind of like a Wild West situation. But that was a part of the whole thing that I always kind of maybe didn't fully get.
Yeah, it's also it's also a matter of convenience. You own the land, you don't want to mess with the people who may be able to raise a rucus in court right to legally respond to your actions. So you want to target the vulnerable. And then also it's not to make these folks sound necessarily malicious, right, We're not automatically saying they're bad faith actors. We are saying that they probably own this land and saw an economic opportunity. Look,
we are folks. I think it's safe to say we are folks who overwhelmingly love and support the place where we live. We also all acknowledge the deep problems it has with corruption. Most American cities past a certain size are riddled with corruption. It's just a function of the process. And our local infrastructure here is riddled with scandal up to and including active homicide. I was when I was looking into this, guys, I remember that time a sheriff
assassinated the other guy who might have become sheriff. That's history.
The wild West have like pace, you know, however, many paces in the town square.
No, that's wild That guy's related back to the Wayne Williams case as well.
His name is Derwyn Brown. That's the guy Sidney Dorseyyah. Derwyn Brown is the victim, and they're supposed to be the people maintaining law and order. Look, in short, if you want to escalate this decades old continual militarization of state power and violence, it's kind of difficult to imagine a better training ground than Atlanta.
You know.
So it's true that this like if we were the people supporting this, obviously we would like it. It would make sense for us to be absolutely fair. It is the right, the privilege, arguably the duty, of all Americans to disagree, to debate to as Charlie Day says to Jimber Jabber, to get at it, go back and forth, chop it up, chop it up. Yeah, the end goal being a betterment for all involved in whatever that conversation may be. Yet it seems here we are witnessing the
other inherent side of American culture. Right here in Atlanta. The powerful wants something the public does not. The police start shooting.
Yeah they do. All right, guys, Let's take a quick break here, word from our sponsor, and then we'll be right back.
Here's where it gets grazy. On January eighteenth, twenty twenty three, a Georgia State Patrol trooper fatally shot Manuel Esteban paz Tran. Paizdaran is a Venezuelan born environmental activist, and the actual details of their death remain a matter of debate. You could say, the official law enforcement version argues that this person shot an officer in the leg, resulting in a non fatal injury, and were they themselves fatally shot in return.
You may hear about this person as tortugita pardon my pronunciation here, little turtle it means.
And that was the version of the story that we heard, you know, here in local news. But the medical investigation results were released not long after and they ran shockingly counter to that narrative about what, you know, the person
being shot in the leg, a weapon, et cetera. This individual was shot fifty seven times, and the autopsy information showed initially I won't get to that, no gunpowder residue, which is obviously a thing if you've watched cop shows, you can see if someone has fired a gun, you know, by doing a test, and there was no visible gunpowder residue on their hands, and it was also clear they weren't wearing gloves, you know, to prevent that.
Well. Yeah, and let's also paint the picture here. Wasn't this person in a tree at the time.
Or occupying Yeah, there were one of those illegal squatters that counts as being cleared out.
But so this person is in a tree and allegedly firing down at officers. That's what the officers were alleging correct, yeah.
And continue to allege and then later you will see contesting autopsy reports. The GBI, which is like the state level version of the FBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, later went back and said, we have found traces of gunshot primer, and they acknowledged that this could have been from Estan, it could have been from the police firearms, or it could have been you know, general contamination. Because they were not first to the plate on that investigation.
So if they were in the tree at the time, what was the inciting event that led to this confrontation?
Was it?
I mean, you hear about these forest defenders and there's bits and TV series the kind of joke about I think there was something in Arrested Development where one of these characters was played by Ron Howard's brother. And usually this type of conflict results like from a bulldozer or something literally ready to tear the tree down, and these folks occupy the tree because they know that they're not going to murder them in order to tear down a tree.
So do you know the details of that aspect of it, like what happened in that regard that led to this confrontation, yet it seems like they were again the law enforcement organizations were attempting to remove squatters or people who are living on city owned land. And we know that, we know that this person did have a firearm, a nine millimeter which they owned legally in acquired in twenty twenty. But this story gets muddy because the official explanation sounds more and more like a narrative.
At least. Critics are saying, you know, picture every picture every fiction cop show where someone says, we've got to make this look right, We've got to make this story fit, you know, like a true detective.
Right. Sure.
Season one The Shield.
I've been watching about corrupt cops in Los Angeles and a lot of we got to get our story straight kind of talk, And I think I totally get this confrontation. It would be a matter of get down from that tree, no, and then it goes from there.
So they weren't just a random person out there in a tree in the forest. They were specifically there to protest, which means this person wasn't gonna leave willingly, right, And as you described that conflict, the officers are like, oh, we got a job to do, We got to get
this person out of the tree. It does seem as though, I don't know how the person in the tree would feel threatened enough to fire down below unless that person was being fired upon first, right in the scenario where a weapon is actually fired, right, why would you fire down?
Yeah?
And the idea is is this friendly fire? That's another that's another concept here. Did did someone on the same team shoot this officer in the leg? And that triggered this egregious thing of shooting someone fifty seven times? One person fifty seven times.
Bonnie and Clyde got shot fifty seven times. That's and that's two people wild. I mean, that's unbelievable.
Do we know how many officers were present? Like how many actual weapons are being fired? It must have been multiple, right, yeah.
Yeah, And it looks like so the family did not accept the official explanation, and they paid for an independent autopsy which confirmed bullet exit wounds in both hands. And this for anyone who has seen like stigmata or something like that, or you know, not to encourage too much martyrdom, but like christ on a cross kind of thing, like shots in the palms through the fingers, you know, probably
in the wrist area. What that means is that is there's a high implication that the person being shot was not holding something.
That's the problem actively surrendering, I mean, put your hands up here they are you know. That's and again I don't know this person. I never knew this person. But when this happened, there were people from the community that released a lot of photographs of this person with friends, and a lot of people speaking out about their experience
with Tehran, and it was all very positive. This wasn't like a militant, you know, militia type organization, you know, I mean, having that weapon would be just for your squatting in like a area it's accessible by all kinds of potentially dangerous people. It's probably smart to protect yourself. I'm just saying yeah, and a lot of us listening this evening can agree with that. No, as we said earlier, any death, even if you don't like the person, any death is a tragedy, and the death of paes Taran
galvanized the movement to stop cop City. Now there is a face right that can be associated with the movement, and there seems to be an active cover up of this death all its own or at the very least, There are a lot of unanswered questions. There is no official conclusion that jibes with the reckoning of people who knew this person or with this person's family. But this
did not stop the push to build this thing. So many local people in Atlanta desperately did not want Whether or not you support the construction of training centers like this, and we do understand training is important, we can all hopefully agree that protesters should not be shot if they pose no dangers to others. That's one of the cool features of America.
On paper. You can just walk out into the commons. You can talk trash right, People can eject you from a place, but by and large, they can't kill you by shooting. Fifty seven times. Even the authorities remain divided on whether this person and actually shot an officer, and that the next question then naturally becomes, if the public does not want this thing to be built, why is
it being built. That's where we go back to the Atlanta Police Foundation, as well as TAKHN Consultants t E. R. R ac o N, the engineering firm that's helping make this happen. So maybe we learn a little bit about the APF again a nonprofit quote unquote.
Yeah, I'm looking at their website right now.
Oh.
Tight.
One of the big things they have coming up. Actually this is tomorrow as we're recording this, on the twenty fifth of September. They've got their Crime is Toast, which is a it's an event, it's a breakfast.
I felt that Toast was worthy of being called criminals. Toast is lovely. I don't understand. That's fun.
It's interesting. I'm just gonna read it says, along with more than a thousand business and community members and attendance, we honor the men and women of APD the Atlanta Police Department by recognizing awards for outstanding service, including Officer of the Year, Purple Heart, and Meritorious.
Service Deserving of Award. Interesting. Yeah, crime is Toast, and at.
This breakfast they're going to get a state of public Safety and State of the Force address from the mayor and the Chief of Police together.
Ah, yes, I see that. Yeah. And this organization is not new. They've been around for right about two decades now. They're founded in two thousand and three, and they describe themselves as employing quote a broad array of twenty first century public safety initiatives to accomplish their mission. These initiatives include community programs designed to provide resources to underserved neighborhoods, as well as training to cultivate a mindset of true
servanthood among the Atlanta Police Department sworn personnel. So they're saying, greater good, We're looking out for you, especially if you are in an historically bad neighborhood.
Hmmm, well, you know they run the crime Stoppers in the Greater Atlanta area we just mentioned in our Strange News episode, which gives everybody the ability to send in an anonymous tip about something which does feel like maybe a good thing, And they do have stuff that. Again, on the surface, when you read it on their website, it looks like positive initiatives to help out the city of Atlanta, but.
Also like even crime Stoppers is like made for a poster, I mean, the the whole term. I mean it's pr Yes, it is a good thing. Being able to give an anonymous tip and feel safe is a good thing. But when you brand it like that, you know, and have it as this like look at what we did, look at the good job that we're doing. It's another way of deflecting some of the bad things that police have been more than accused, have been found to have done over many years.
Oh yeah, I'm not I'm not sure I advocate for it. I guess I just want to make sure I'm being clear on that. The programs do look positive. Let's say, if you're a voter, right and you go to their website and you're like, oh, well, what are they doing? This looks good. The at Promise initiative to help, you know, reduce crime in you shore seems like a great idea.
Yeah yeah. And the board of Directors and the Board of Trustee or the Executive Committee and the Board of Trustees are also very interesting aspects of the website. The APF describes itself as a public private partnership, you know, like the Federal Reserve. Nothing to see here. They're aiming to create a safe and just city for every citizen of Atlanta, driving out crime, enhancing the safety of neighborhoods.
But black Monday murders style. You gotta follow the money, So riddle me this guys who runs the operation big wigs.
Walt Emmer of waffle House. He's just on the executive board or whatever.
Yeah, ty Darlin from Georgia Pacific, got some Equifax, some King and Spaulding, all the hits, all the good ones. In Vesco, which I thought was a cartoon name for a long.
Time, a sign I think in like Alpharetta or something.
It's not a building somewhere. I think it's like Globocam or you know.
Yeah. A lot of legal entities and they're all run by people who surprise, surprise, don't live in the South River area and don't hang out there, you know what I mean, That's not where they get their groceries. It's also kind of a food desert. The Board of Trustees
also and gems. A lot of big wheels in Atlanta, Home Depot, Delta, southebyst JP Morgan, Georgia power Ups, a lot of real estate developers, a lot of the type of folks who build industrial compounds or those live laugh love mixed use developments.
I love those here in Atlanta. I mean, it's kind of almost a joke. If you follow any local Atlanta meme pages, you'll see the joke being made, because it's kind of sad. The city is famous for bulldozing, not just for us, but also a lot of history and just building up condos and these types of things.
Yeah, the old Atlanta Crackers baseball field is a whole foods now so go team. So there's also in case you think we're being hyperbolic here, another member of the board of trustees is Andre Anderson from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. So this is all publicly available information. Again, you can go on the website, you can read this. To your heart's discontent, these companies, the legal entities in particular, they have ties to some of the most powerful corporate
actors in the Atlanta metro area. And they don't want to look threatening, they don't want to look cash grabby, they don't want to look like they're super duper down with fascism. And yet, and yet, it doesn't matter whether you are the biggest fan of these corporations or whether you hate them. The reality is simply that they are already by far the most financially and politically powerful consortiums
in the local game. And look, you know, people respond to buzzwords, right, So you hear words like or phrases like collective action, and you might I think, oh, Marxism, socialism, untrue, your favorite corporations, even the ones you really like. They love collective action so long as it works for them. They are not averse to teaming up.
No, and they also make use of police forces all the time to do things like move money and protect property.
And they employ also. I know it sounds like we're going back and forth. We're not dithering. We're being fair and objective. They employ hundreds of thousands of people in the metro area alone. They are no fooling the economic engine powering the existence of a city that would have been an historical footnote were it not for railroads and an airport.
That's really close by to this this property is.
Yeah, it's easy to fly there if you come from another police force and you need to train.
So that is the idea.
I mean, it's it's so it would be so big that it wouldn't just be the southeast, or is it particularly to serve the southeast.
That's how it starts. It reminds me, and that's a great question.
Though.
It reminds me a little bit of years back when we were talking about sesame credit when it was an opt in thing for the for the public of for the public of China. This is a precedent. At least that's what the critics and opponents of this compound say. They argue that it is only going to accelerate the creation of similar compounds across the United States. I mean, all right, the question always is qui bono, who stands to gain? Who benefits from the construction of a controversial
thing like this. Proponents will tell you the training facility is necessary for men any reasons, improving police morale, improving competence and keeping training up to date, fighting crime, preventing mishaps, preventing danger to innocent people. Additionally, if you're hanging out and just chatting with supporters, they will say, look, recruitment is down for law enforcement and the fire department in Atlanta.
That is true. They will say, this will improve recruitment, this will reduce turnover, and in any industry, a better prepared organization equates to lower burnout rates. So there is some sand to that last part. But again, I don't know about you, guys. I keep sticking on this point where the supporters say there's no alternative location for the site because it has dangerous assumptions. First, they're assuming it
must be built. Second, they're assuming it must be built in Italy Atlanta, right with a lot of private entities holding a sheep's wool, a sheep's wool mask over of nonprofit, over the fact that they are going to make a lot of money, and then they say it has to be built as soon as possible. Yeah, greater good.
Well, you know, okay, So let me just I'm gonna play Devil's advocate for a moment. I was reading some blogs. I think they're just blogs from law enforcement officers who were commenting on this and generally saying things that are very negative towards people who are protesting this building or this establishment facility. And I just wanted to see, like, why would why would an individual officer be into this?
And several of them that I read were about it was usually stories about their own training and how when they were going to academy and being hired as an officer, it was usually the same time, so they got hired and they were actually going out on patrols while they were also going to academy and supposed to be getting their training right and it'll shake and bake stuff, yeah, exactly, like good luck and literally going out at night in the first week you know, on patrol, which to me
is just egregious and insane.
That puts them in unsafe situations.
Absolutely puts them in unsafe situations. But every single person they interact with then is in an unsafe situation. And it's not because that's a bad person. It's because they aren't properly trained for the work they're supposed to be doing.
Which so in my mind, I kind of got a shape of a picture of Oh, I can see why maybe an officer would want to go to ten weeks of training or you know how however long it would take to become an officer at a specialized place, so I can see that as an actual positive, but then putting it in this specific place, making it this large, it's just it. I'd like you were saying. It doesn't match up to me.
Teaching military tactics as well. There is a reason those are supposed to be separate skill sets.
No, and that's the part we haven't really gotten into that we will soon. But the other side of the protest, outside of just the you know, the forest demolition, is that a facility of this size is can potentially be dangerous because of the idea of militarization of the police, that concept that you were just talking about.
Yeah, well yeah, and on that you will hear rumors, so like you'll hear rumors that they're gonna be black Hawk helicopters at this place. They're gonna be tanks rolling around this sucker. There's gonna be like full on military, right, which is often an exaggeration of what's actually going to be there. But it won't be a Blackhawk necessarily, but there will be helicopters involved for sure, and it won't be a tank, but there might be an APC or two.
And I might sound like a jerk here, but kind of fun, right to play around on one of those like kind of fun. You know, like there's a place up in La j Georgia, a bit north of Atlanta where you can drive a tank recreationally, could run over cars and stuff like that, and it's very It might sound like, uh, like we're being rednecks when we say that's kind of fun, but that's kind of fun. We're still trying to get a budget approved for us to do that. Yeah, we were.
Gonna do that at some point. We're gonna fill that. We're gonna yeah, yeah, I think we're gonna shoot video, Paul, Well, we're gonna.
Take turns with the hero shots. They're called of us driving the tank. Yeah. But but aside from that, what what you hear? Please don't please don't confuse that with us being clib or dismissive. We're attempting to practice empathy and objectivity, and we with that in mind, we also have to look at the financial motivations. That is the most provable conspiracy of foot in this situation, and again
is ideologically agnostic. I think it was June sixth, twenty twenty three this year as we record the Atlantic City, I keep saying in Atlantic, not Atlantic City. But the Atlanta City Council approved thirty one million dollars of construction funds for this training center street named cop City, and they also provided this caveat. And they said, we as the city of Atlanta, which means that if you live, visit,
or shop here, you're helping pay this. The city's going to pay one point two million dollars per year for the right to use this thing that your tax dollars are paying for. But wait, as a Hellish Billy Mays was wont to say, that's not the bulk of the funding, Most of the money ninety million dollars is coming from private donations to our buddies at Atlanta's favorite nonprofit, the Atlanta Police Foundation. That's kind of posh, right for nonprofit, But like do.
Private donations mean like anonymous donor, We don't get to know where the money comes from.
But look at the board members and the trustees and come on, that's got to be where the money is coming from, right, all those corporations we mentioned, well, but that's.
But I guess the point is this is like a smart way to disguise some more specifics.
Right, I'm just saying, Paul cleaned up at Blackjack. Oh no, So yeah, you're right. It's a good com It's an important question. It's mission critical. This is a nonprofit ostensibly, yet it is founded by a complex shell game of thoroughly private for profit entities, and philanthropy is an umbrella that a lot of people can stand under. And each of these industries, each of these for profit entities, they stand to make a killing financially and arguably literally from
sweetheart infrastructure deals. Somebody's got to build this stuff, got some company has to Haliburton over an overpriced lunch program. Right, Someone's got to provide different funding vehicles. Someone's got to have the maintenance where you're gonna have the janitors, right, Who is who is going to be support work for this?
I mean, I mean you could argue that that side of it is positive as well, because it does make jobs. It's new deal type stuff construction project. We were just of the Hoover Dam. I mean, again, the video was quite propagandistic, but it employed thousands of people, you know, at a time when the Great Depression had really ravaged a lot of folks and their ability to earn a
living to you know, support their family. But that's a pr spin as well, you know, I think that's the least important part, and the most important part, Ben is like the actual businesses that will be benefiting, whether it be construction, whether it be like you said, the food hall,
whatever it is, the mischi. I mean, I'm sure these shooting ranges don't come cheap, and they're proprietary made by technology, you know, weapons technology type companies and all of these facilities that will be the cutting edge.
Yeah, and that's a great point. We also, let's be honest, these folks are the rulers of the city. The folks who are found are funding the Atlanta Police Foundation also make a lot of money if things don't burn down. They may be very well intentioned. Likely they are. They don't see themselves as villains. They may want to prevent things like the two thousand and six police murder of
a ninety two year old woman in her home. That incident, in particular, changed the way that APD Atlanta Police Department operates, and if you are friends with folks in law enforcement, you know everyone heard about that, and everyone knew that things had gone terribly, fatally wrong. So there is the argument that this will increase the safety of both the
police force, the fire department, and civilians. And the Atlanta Police Foundation's puppet masters they may mean that as well, but they also want to make a profit every step of the way, kind of like how Vegas wants you to have fun.
Yeah, it really sucks because I totally do see the need for it and the possible good things of a facility like that. But you're absolutely right this thing, the way it's coming together, and especially when you think about what actions have been taken when it comes to hey, we'd love to get your opinion public about what's going on. Why don't you tell us, We'll incorporate your thoughts and you know, we'll really think about what you have to say, and then what actually happened.
Oh man, there's so much more to come, y'all. We're going to get into an example of how that opportunity was presented, and the powers that be said, Nope, we don't want to hear that, and we're going to do everything we can to ice you out the public.
You know, we hear you. We're listening. That's the vibe from folks like Kelsey Hull, a spokesperson for the APF. Whull objects to claims that these organizations are not listening to the people of Atlanta and points out this is true that APF provided a draft plan of the training center to Atlanta City officials to different committees on the Atlanta City Council. I'm sure no one shook hands in a back room or got any money, of course, and
there's a specific quote we wanted to share here, Hull said. Quote. More than four hundred comments, some twenty plus hours of comments were received by the council, which then voted overwhelmingly to approve building the Public Safety Training Center. Seventy percent of the comments were absolutely opposed to the new facility, and guys, full disclosure, We the four of us know people who went not just to that hearing, but to other hearings created one of the longest running hearings in
the history of the city. Everyone was saying, beat me here, Paul. Everyone speaking at that hearing was saying this, and the Atlanta City Council said, tight, we hear you.
We're doing it approved.
But I mean they did hear them. They they gave them audience, you know what I mean, And they streamed this or at least portions of it. I think it was live. But I certainly saw some friends of ours do their you know, give their testimony or whatever you want to call it. And yeah, it was wild. People were camping out in the lobby of the building, and like you know, free pizzas were being brought in. I've never seen anything.
Like it, and you get in trouble for the pizza, you know.
That's I just what result would have led to them changing course, I would argue none. So it's all just lip service, and it's also a giant waste of people's time. You know, it's insulting.
Really, you know what would have changed their minds? A random billionaire from Atlanta shows up and says, Hey, I've got eighty five acres of land you can have for free.
Yeah, that's kind of on our city. Atlanta needs more billionaires. They're just great.
Think about the amazing thing you could have done here, billionaire from Atlanta.
Just no, seriously, think about it, dude. We know you listen to this show. So we're giving the supporter claims. You can tell that we, being locals, we have a bit of a horse in the race because we have lived here for some time. Let's go to the claims of the detractors. You made an excellent point about some of the original aspects of the protests. Not for nothing
are people calling themselves ourselves force defenders. There is a huge potential ecological consequence for the construction of this thing.
That's right. The South River Forest is one of what's referred to as the city's four lungs, which is part of an ecosystem. You know, it serves as a very important part of our climate infrastructure that keeps surface temperatures cooler, cleans the air, you know, through the trees you know, that's a thing. We also did hear that climate change might prevent like like stop trees from processing oxygen or something like that bad stuff on the horizon, But when
you cut them down, they're definitely going to stop. So that's a big part of it, not to mention regulating temperatures and preventing flooding.
Yet prevents flooding, keeps things from overheating, cleans up the air. Those are yeah, those are things everyone likes, every human at least. And there's a great investigation by Brookings. The Brookings Institution might not be everybody's cup of tea, but nevertheless they do have some excellent research on this ecological
impact that you're referring to NOL. They use data from Atlanta, Chicago, and New York and what they found was, time and time again, disadvantaged neighborhoods are disproportionately exposed to climate impacts and to higher rates of policing relative to other neighborhoods. We talked about this in San Francisco and the Bay Area, talked about it in Afrikville. You know as well up north it's happening. So you know, to that point, you don't have to get into the bow tie world of
policy wonks. You don't have to be one of those one of those nerds to understand the reality on the ground. History is cyclical, just like the way back in the Trail of Tears days. This greater good rationalization is arguably an iteration of manifest destiny, which means that whatever the intention may be, it will result in damage to a majority Black community of innocent people who are inevitably getting punished for the crime of existing in an inconvenient place. And that's gross.
Man.
Lets let's take another break, guys, We need to take a break. We'll hear word from our sponsor, will be right back, and let's keep going down some of this track, because I think there's more to uncover, guys, before we get in the next part. How does this Blackhall Studios slash Shadow Box Studios work into this whole thing, because it's a I think they own some of the land or something, and then they ended up selling the land or doing some kind of handshake deal for some of
the land. And this is a huge movie production studio thing, which is the whole like another wave of money coming into the city, which is another reason why this is probably I don't know how it's tied in, but I.
Know I hadn't heard a bit of this. This is interesting.
I just had no idea that this new film production, television production in Atlanta touched this subject at all.
No, I definitely didn't.
This is the angle. It gets into the black I love these black box of course, but it gets into the true black box of private equity funding.
Oh yeah, Oh well, sorry, Ben, I said, black hole studio.
Oh yes, sorry, black hall. Yes, is just black box funding? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. That's a that's a good called. There are also things like what is it Rourke Capital, which is private equity for here in Atlanta. You know, guys, I'm starting to think that we're going to be pulled over more often for this one in particular.
Yes, yeah, I just figured with a giant, you know, police training facility nearby, we just start getting pulled over more in general, which I think is maybe part of the argument, you know, the idea that, like you know, on paper, this thing shouldn't necessarily be a like home base for militarized police, but the very existence of it just implies a higher concentration of police that in a way that some people don't trust understandably.
So all right, this is maybe a hot take, but anybody who's experienced it can agree. What is the typical neighborhood like around a US military base in the domestic in the contiguous United States?
Impoverished?
Ish, it's they're not the nicest places often, and that that is another function of NIMBI. That's another function. That's what people are worried about, Right, will this make our neighborhood worse? Whatever the intentions, because you know, people will still live there unless they are driven out and unless they are you know, imminent domained out to some other part of the area, whatever you want to call this
training center or a cop city. The critics are saying that this is to your earlier point, this is a blueprint for future iterations of militarization. The militarization of the police is a known ongoing issue in the United States, and it has provably resulted in rising socioeconomic inequality, intergenerational trauma, and perhaps most importantly, the erosion of democracy. And the whole reason that you hang out in the US at
all is because you thought democracy was dope. Right, If that's the whole reason you choose to stay if you have the opportunity to leave.
The militarization of police has been one of those actual slippery slope, actual ones that have been occurring since police forces were out gunned. I think it was in the late eighties early nineties when there were several major instances of police being outgunned by like bank robbers in a couple instances and a couple other instances, Yeah, where there were heavy weapons being used against police officers that generally
had revolvers and shotguns and that's all they had. Then you know, started going into bigger weaponry that they carried, and then went into other forms of not I was gonna say, toys. We were just talking about on Strange News the what was that fighter jet? We called it like a toy, a military toy toy. Yeah, but like police officers gaining access to those things under the the banner of we're going to keep you safer by making sure our police have the the tools they.
Need, and that's valid. I agree with you that that is absolutely valid, because otherwise you're looking at a situation where the legitimacy of rule of law could be compromised. Right now, now you're in an Escobar situation, you know.
So you almost need it to some extent.
Well, it's a microcosm of like military spending. You know, we got to keep the wolves at bay, you know, we've got to keep the bad guys that want to ruin our democracy, challenge our democracy. We've got to outgun them. So that's why, you know, war spending just gets the green light every time.
It's easy to say yes to m right, yeah, And the other the other aspect of this is that when opponents are arguing these facilities amount to a war base functionally right, and they're saying the police will be learning things that are less public safety and more sort of active operation of broad type stuff. When they talk about that, they're talking about explosive or demolition testing sites like like we pointed out earlier, very fancy, objectively very cool shooting ranges,
helicopter pads designed for military aircraft. And where does it stop in pursuit of preventing the collapse of a state? Could you create the collapse of a state in practice? Right? That's a question that is very easy to ignore if you are going to make millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars off creating this thing, and so the local folks organized. I don't want to sound too Pixar to like Captain Planet about it or what was that
one thing. There's so many forest people banding against bad folks there.
Avatar.
Fer and Bully last r YEA yeah, yeah, Princess Mononoke, etc. Your mileage may vary, but there's a reason those things are tropes, you know. These these folks are not sent by Russia to protest. Although Russia, when Russia was doing better with their foreign des info, they were not adverse to putting a hand on any social movement. These folks are local people fighting to save their neighborhoods, like your bubby,
your grandma, whatever. There are activists who did travel from outside of Georgia, that is true, who believe that this is a dangerous precedent, either for further militarization or for further ecological damage, and they leveraged the system or are attempting to the constitution of the State of Georgia. Says that residents can force the decision on local governments if fifteen percent of registered vote sign a petition. And I think we've all seen the petition by now, right.
Oh yeah, well, and it got a ton of signatures, didn't it.
Well, originally you had to be a resident of Fulton County to sign the petition. So I was approached and I very much wanted to sign it, and I'm a resident of Dacab County, and they said I couldn't sign it. But then that changed. There was an order from a judge I believe that allowed that opened it up to anybody in the community, which I think is totally fair. I mean, you know, Decab County is just a hopskip and a jump away from all this stuff. It's all
pretty centralized. And yes, they got to my understanding the appropriate number of signatures needed to force a ballot measure.
M yeah, I don't think it is a crazy wack a do idea to allow the people who live in a place to vote on what happens in that place and their money.
That's using their money.
Oh that's right. Yeah, yeah, you're paid for it, even if you just buy a sandwich in the airport. Congratulations. You're part of a larger effort and you're absolutely right. Guys. The protester networks, the stop Coop City movement has obtained more than one hundred and sixteen thousand petition signatures that legally forces the city government to allow people to vote on what happens in their city. And that's supposed to be how democracy works. In fact, a great many people
died to make that the case. And yet, and yet, as we record this evening, the letter of the law
does not seem to manifest in practice. Just two weeks ago, AP News reported that Atlanta officials are saying they're legally barred from even beginning to verify the forms, and they said the organizers missed this deadline from August twenty first, the deadline have been extended until September by a federal judge, but then an appellate court came in and they were like, hold the phone, scratch the record, and now this whole thing, this whole petition process, is in a legal limbo, which
is nuts because this is one of the biggest ostensibly, this is one of the biggest grassroots movements in the history of the state of Georgia. And if you hear the supporters, they're saying, look, we're not here to overthrow the United States, we're not terrorists. We want to defend this city. We want to keep this forest around, and we want to stick up for these neighborhoods. And they also, yeah, the people who support this training center or Copcity, they
alleged the protesters are part of a conspiracy. The protesters alleged that the powers that be are part of a conspiracy.
Well, I mean, when I was approached to sign the pot, and I'm sure y'all may have been as well and had similar experience, they're so buttoned up, like it's got to be blue ink, it's got to be this. You got to make sure that they're looking behind you, to make sure you tick all the right boxes, your addresses right. And that's because situations like this and systems like this are the red tape is outrageous, and these protesters are,
these activists. They achieved it, they followed the rules, they did it right, and still somehow this bull comes down to, just like you know, stemy, the whole thing, just like the public comment was ignored. And this is even worse because it seems like they found it's very smartly not a loophole, an actual part of the law that's designed to do this very thing, and somehow they were still had the rug pulled out from under them. I don't
get it. I mean, I do get it. It's just because people influence people, and you're gonna have another lawyer or somebody that's employed by one of these entities, perhaps these corporate entities pushing and figuring out the real loophole to get rid of this whole process, because it's it's inconvenient to say the least.
What I don't get is how can the people who want to build this facility, how are what is the mechanism of conspiracy that they're leveraging against detractors and people who don't want it?
Like, yeah, the heavy implication is that there are foreign actors called everything but domestic terrorists who are attempting to subvert the rule of law and sow chaos, exploiting a vulnerability exposed during the protest of the pandemic. However, that logic doesn't quite carry the water, because if you look at quote unquote conspiratorial actions, you need to look no further than of course, Rico law. Earlier this year, it
was unprecedented retaliation. On the twenty ninth of August this year, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr indicted sixty one protesters on racketeering charges. Rico law, if you're not familiar, is we talked about it a little bit because a former president is getting in trouble with this one too. The Rico law is meant for organized crime. It's meant to further punish and penalize people who participate in things like running guns,
human trafficking, the cocaine or heroin, opiums. That opiums that I said, old, look at the internet's over here.
Well, I mean, yeah, this is a gross misuse. I mean, I think it's clear what you're talking about and what this is. These people are making Instagram posts, they're like running Twitter campaigns like it is.
Ah, yeah, but what's being alleged that they're doing. Are We have to keep an open mind here because I know, we know in some of the instances of protests there have been there have been stuff like a couple one or two little peppered things that may have been a little violent, right, A little bit a tiny bit.
I think we can imagine that, I mean more than a little bit of tiny bit. Okay, we're talking molotovs.
Yeah, yes, because there were actually molotovs. But when you're charging sixty one people with, you know, possessing the accelerant to build molotovs to then be used as weapons basically against police officers.
Or getting venmode for going in on food for your crew. You know that's that's if that's Rico law, then you're guilty.
Bro, Do you have both of those things?
You know?
I mean, it's just it doesn't I don't know.
This person paid for some glue for protest side. We're in a viv for vendetta situation. Burn it down. That's like, okay. Current Governor Brian Kemp, you know, I'm you know, I'm is described as described the accused in this Rico case as quote, out of state radicals.
Got a bunch of agitators on our hands.
As he SIPs his julip in his linen suit, I can't talk trash on linen suits. I love him, but right now we are not sure how things will proceed. It is here in the city. It is abundantly clear that there are a lot of problems. Okay, and it's a beautiful city, but it is not by any means a perfect city. And the city itself, at least according to the petitions, according to things you will hear if you talk to the averag person, the city itself doesn't really want this thing built, at least not the way
it's proceeding. Yet the city's power structure has already decided this will occur. It is a foregone conclusion. Both sides say the other is conspiring. It will continue to escalate. And you know, an ugly truth is better than a beautiful lie. To be honest, your average cop, your average police is not staying awake at night going oh gosh, I can't wait to go to like the New School of America's. They're people just like you. They are often in dangerous situations, and they, just like you, do not
want to die. So anything that can help prevent that is a net positive. And then you know, again, like I'm soapboxing here, guys, I know we're running long, But the US, the whole experiment is founded on this idea that people can decide what they do or do not like. And I would argue that, I think we'd all argue that to ignore that principle is to delegitimize the entire foundation upon which this experiment rests.
You know, well, and we haven't talked much about like abolitionist movements in terms of like defunding the police and calls for stuff like that in the wake of a lot of these, you know, horrific incidents involving police killing civilians. But I don't fully understand what the alternative is. There is part of me that says, let's be more transparent about the training, let's learn from these mistakes, let's train the right people to do the job correctly so they
don't kill people. But I think folks on the other side of that are saying, it's not possible. These people are inherently targeting these underserved communities and populations and there's no amount of training that will ever change that. I think that might be too extreme on one side of the pendulum. And then obviously the folks on the other side that want to build this and think it's the only way to do it. I think there's this is
not quite right there either. I don't know the answer, you know, I don't have the solution, but it certainly seems like there's definitely something going on in terms of why this is happening, where it's happening, who's involved, and why they just seem just absolutely disinterested in what the community thinks about it, those Q.
Four numbers are going to be dope though. If that goes through those folks, Yeah, this is I mean, this is the question, right, and I think that's a great way for us to wrap this the dilemma here. Various powerful entities will can attempt to convince you that the statements of the public do not matter, or that the public is uninformed. While the latter is arguably true, in
many cases, the former is false. The public does deserve a voice, and to argue otherwise is to be purposely malevolent, to be purposely dest and it goes against the United States. If the people of a place do not want a kind of a training center like this, if they don't want a cop city, if they want a nimby, then you know it's a country where you can nimby, right, But the powerful people do want it. And then the question becomes why you know.
Well, it becomes how does a democracy actually function? Does it matter that those who live in the place who also vote don't want a thing? Or do the people who represent those folks do they get what they want?
Well?
And the last little thing I just wanted to add is the truly conspiratorial side of this, and I don't I'm not saying there's any sand to this, but it's it's it's a place that the mind could go is that these corporations are training soldiers to defend their interests and their interests alone. This is extreme militarization of the police, and they will be under the thumb of these corporate entities to some degree, could be mobilized to occupy communities,
to create, you know, martial law. I mean, I think I don't think I'm wrong in thinking that some people are going that far with their concerns about this type of thing.
Sure, the evolution of corptocracy, corporatocracy, or whatever you want to call it, right, oligarchy and oligarchy by any other name, neo feudalism would be the uncomfortable armored elephant in that room. Just before we end, I want to reiterate this is important for this to be the final word. The ideology is being weaponized against people and in US versus them
situation that is misleading. The United States is founded in theory on the concept of people deciding what they do or do not like and to agree with to aid and a bet anything in contradiction of that fundamental principle is to delegitimize the bedrock upon which this place is supposed to be built. It's something to think about. It's we would love to hear your opinions. You know, as we said, we do not have the answers. We do see some suspicious shenanigans play. But what should the solution be?
What is to your point, Noel, what is the spectrum here? To your point, Matt, what is the what is the motivation? What is the end result for the people who live with the long tail consequences of this? We try to be easy to find online.
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