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Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes a little deeper into topics and segments that originally aired on The Daily Show. This is what you gotta think of this podcast as right, okay, Like you know how you got prom? Right, you go to your senior prom, you have a good time at the dance. This podcast is everything that happens after the prom. We're the party bus, where the tickets to the club. We're the fight at waffle house.
Don't worry, we.
Still gonna get your home by midnight, and your daddy ain't gonna know that you tore up to tuxedo and your ruin his deposit. This week, we're delving a little deeper into a topic that we just recently discussed on the show. I went down to Atlanta to learn about a place called cop City. Cop City is a training facility that's being presented as the new way to train Atlanta's police and fire departments. But Cities brought a lot of controversy.
Give it a clip.
Atlanta's busy downtown descended into chaos over the weekend. Hundreds of protesters marched in the streets in the wake of the death of a twenty six year old environmental activist. The activist was killed on Wednesday as officers cleared protesters from the site of a planned police training center.
The Police Training Center. But these guys are trained, right, This isn't an our militia of interns. Back before things got this bad, I went to Atlanta and met with local activists Jasmine Burnett that.
Atlanta Police Foundation is building a massive urban warfare training facility with bomb testings, tear gas explosions, a shooting range.
Given people march to defund the police. They look like a refunded Bailey did. Activists have dubbed this development cop City, an eighty five acre, ninety million dollar complex including a shooting range, burn buildings, and a mock city that includes apartments at school even a bar.
So this is basically six flags for the police.
Yes, it's a playground.
You can't call it a playground. M hm oh what you read this? Literally a playground. But I had to dream about how they could make this project more appealing to activists. We name it after Mantin Luther Camp doesn't matter. Tyler Perry presents the training facility.
The name doesn't change the impact.
To help us get deeper into the weeds of this conversation, I'm joined by two wonderful Atlanta based journalists, George Cheaty and King Williams. George, King, how you doing today?
We're awesome. I'm awesome.
You're awesome, George.
Thank you for that. Now, King, you got to top that. Make me feel more than awesome.
Please, Hi, you're the greatest of all time.
I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I'll take that that was better than yours, George. George, you gotta work on your greetings too.
I will suck less later.
Before we get into the back and forth controversy that is cop City, let's just define what cop City is, George. I'll start with you break down what it is exactly, so cop city. And by the way, there are people who hate call it at cop city because it's They think it's pejorative and I think it's short. The Atlanta Police Training Center is a replacement for the Atlanta Police departments police training facilities, which are garbage. I'll be honest, like,
that's that's just the truth of it. Problem is it's a ninety million dollar like park, like a fun amusement park for cop training, So like a real world like in the military where they recreate urban warfare in the Middle East and doors and rooms and all of that. Was the fire department training aspect of Cop City always party or was that rolled into it as part of a pr Oh No, it's not all about the police.
No, it's evidently was always part of it. And again, like the current facilities are inadequate, Like that's the truth, Like they're falling apart, there's mold all over everything. It's awful. However, what they're trying to build is expensive and people are not happy about it.
Okay, so then King, give me some examples some of the stuff that's in cop City. I imagine, for a fire department, you need to build a that can catch on fires so you could work on putting out fires.
But for the police aspects of it. At a time where we're talking about defunding the police and taking less resource, taking some resources away from police departments and reallocating them to education and infrastructure and other things that could also help reduce crime, what are some of the things within cop City that has people so riled up?
King, Yeah, so in addition to the price, it's really about the terms of the deal. So the site that Georgia is talking about is three hundred and fifty acres. For perspective, all of six Flags over Georgia, including the parking lots, is two hundred and ninety acres. So this lets you know initially what that was. And the thing that was more egregious was that three hundred and fifty acres was going to be given to the Atlanta Police
at a rate of ten dollars a year. And so you know, that's a part of Atlanta and south southwester of calf County East s.
Per acre per year or ten dollars the whole.
Lot ten dollars a number three at McDonald's. That's how much it was going to be per year. And so when we're talking at half six flags for one, that yes, and so then people got upset, and so then they reduced the acreage down to still to still ten dollars a year, but now at eighty five acres, and so eighty five acres is still a pretty large amount of space for this particular facility shopping mall. It is it
is a very large suburban shopping mall. And so then the other part of the cost that you asked, was there's a couple of things that they're doing that in many ways, this is their they're owed to the Atlanta Police, and so you have everything from a horse training facility which they're already currently trained nearby at Grant Park, which costs them effectively nothing because they're given a lease through the zoo to also have their training facility for their
horses there. They're bringing the burn building in, which is going to be at a cost, which they used to do off of Metropolitan Avenue University Avenue, which coincidentally enough, was not too far from the place where rayshar Brooks was murdered at. They're also bringing in every particular unit that they've had before in one unified facility in that facility. Right now, they're estimating that construction costs will be about
ninety million. There's a high probability due to the insurance that's going to be on it, as what happened yesterday when some processors set fire to some equipment, that that insurance is probably gonna bump this whole project up to twelve over one hundred million dollars when it's all said and done.
How long have the two of you been both covering this development. And you know, like, when did this become a huh that's peculiar because it was seen off the top, George if you say that the training facilities are inadequate, and I would imagine after the race Shard Brooks fiasco and everything that happened with George Floyd in twenty twenty, and then you all had the blue flu thing with the Atlanta PD where droves of officers were calling in sick as a form of silent protest to the officers
being charged in everything that happened there. So I would imagine something like cop City. If the police department has an adequate training and then there is a new facility, there's gonna be multimillion and bells and whistles that would help morale in theory. So when did this become a thing of huh, why is this bad? Beyond the fact that why y'all spending all that money on that and not stuff over here.
So one, you're really well informed. I'm impressed.
And that's the staff that ain't me. I'm to tell you right now, We've got a great team behind the scenes that make me sound intelligent.
Keep going, No, but thank you.
Both of us have been watching this since the beginning, and part of it is that people were in the street in twenty twenty saying we want better cops, we want fewer cops, we want more social workers and fewer people in jail. And then the city turned around and said, we're going to spend thirty million in public money and sixty million in private money to build this sort of playground for cops. And that's not the thing. If that was just it, people would be irritated. It's not the
city who's going to own this thing. It's this Atlanta Police Foundation. The second largest police foundation in the United States is at the Atlanta Police Foundation. It's not the Chicago Cops Foundation. It's not la it's not Baltimore, it's not it's Atlanta, which is crazy to begin with, and it looks like this thing where they're going to be. It's not just the Atlanta police who are going to
train there. Anybody who's got a police force in the whole South Southern United States is going to be able to go there too. And so even if the Atlanta cops are training like we want them to train, some po dunk yogl Town from North Tennessee who wants to learn how to kick the crap out of people more effectively, can come down there and train any way they like, and there's nothing that the city can do to change that because they don't run the facility, and so this
thing can. Instead of propagating the best possible police training you could get, you end up with this thing that could propagate the very worst kind of police training that you could get. All over the times, all over the Southeast, people are comparing this to the School of Americas, where out in at Fort Benning and Columbus, for years, South American dictators would send their troops to learn how to put down riots. You know, that's the comparison that's being made.
Gentlemen, talk to me a little bit about how the construction of this facility is going to affect the surrounding counties and areas like that. Part of it was something within our daily show piece that we did. We weren't able to get into that at the depth that I wanted to in the actual segment, even though I was outside with Jackie Echos on that damn river for about four hours and a kayak and I don't know if y'all ever been in a river and a kayak, and you ain't had breakfast.
And the water is low.
So you keep hitting sandbars, so you got to scoot your booty across the ruined the good Pat Jordan's talk to us about why I was on a damn river miles away from the actual construction site of cop City, and why that part of the story is as equally important as it is about the over policing aspects of it.
All Right, So for people at home who don't know what this is, Atlanta is very unique in the sense that it sits in between two counties, Fulton County and Decab County. And the TLDR version of this is that the site that cop City is in is in a part known as colloquially as Atlanta de caap, so it's
the City of Atlanta property, but within Decab County. And how this plays out is all of the wastewater that comes through both the City of Atlanta and Decab County go along the South River, which is what Rory was paddling on. That river in particular, though, has a lot of people who dump things illegally and a lot of dumps who legally dump into that space. Cop City is now going to be contributing to the South River's pollution
as well. And because of the terms of the deal, there is no oversight for what happens on the site, especially the burn building, and also with everything that's in the sedtiment that's already on the site, So that sediment is going to just be impacted more with the construction and then with the activities on there, and that's going to also be getting back into the river, and that river in particular. It's a piece that I'm working on for something else, is that we think that that may
actually be a cancer alley. And what that means is for a lot of the black people who live in southwest to Cab County and people who live on that side of the City of Atlanta, they're getting inundated with a lot of air pollution and a lot of water pollution, and a lot of ground pollution as well from all the people who are dumping into that. And the police and cop city are also going to be contributing to
that as well. And as a result of that, we have this issue where the place that you were paddling eventually goes back into the South River fully and that thing goes all the way through to Cab County, which has seen an influx of teachers in particular who are teaching along this river path get cancer, die of cancer, and get other related diseases. Now because of all of the environmental things that are happening just from that river in particular.
Then also, George, what Jackie was trying to explain to me, and this is a part of the piece that we ended up cutting out because environmental issues and then environmental racism. It is very hard to make quick and concise, to fit into a thirty minute television show and also will make it funny. But she was trying to explain to me basically, the bill site for cop City is a lot of dirt. Dirt absorbs water. You put concrete over dirt,
the water got to go somewhere. When it rained, the water would now go downstream and tear up most shit. Explain to me. She didn't say it like that, Jackie Eckles.
Is no, she is filled with unimpeachable truth.
But the flooding, the flooding aspects of it as well, any ways to measure that or has that been taken into account?
So yeah, let me talk about that a little bit like Atlanta. Everybody wants to move to Atlanta. Everybody wants to move to Atlanta. Seventy five thousand people end up in Metro Atlanta every year, and we're not building anything for them except that we are like the you look around Atlanta, they're construction cranes everywhere, and they're paving everything. And whenever you pave enough stuff, the water that would
normally go one way goes another. And so like, you get a really good rain in Atlanta and the highway will flood, like that's how bad it is, Like a really solid couple of days of rain and you can't drive on I two eighty five without going through ten inches of water. The worst flooding is happening in decap because we're Our sewer systems are garbage because we didn't overbuild for all the people that have been coming here, and all this runoff is being created, and it's going
into black neighborhoods. It's going to neighborhoods like mine. I live on a creek and we had to do a million dollars worth of remediation on that creek because you know, when we had a good, a good rain, it would floodhouses. So let's drop a mall in the middle of this river essentially, and see how many houses of black people we're gonna flood downstream. And the worst part of this is that area is getrifying, but it's also filled with
black homeowners. Black homeowners are rare, Like, we don't have enough black homeowners. And so you're gonna tell me that people who are actually starting to get equity in their houses are those of the folks you're gonna flood out by building this. Yeah, people are kind of pissed off about that, but they're only kind of pissed off. They're not super pissed off because it hasn't happened yet.
Okay, so we've covered what cop City is. We've covered all of the different ways that it could be bad for the community, be it fiscally, be it environmentally. Now we need to talk about the people and what they're doing to try and stop it. After the break, I want to talk about this group of people I met called the Forest Defenders, who are actually living on the cop City construction site.
And who the hell us for cop City?
If everything that y'all have just laid out it's talking about as bad for this is bad for that is bad for that. Who was the person that wrote a check. I was like, here's forty million, good luck, and go build it. It's beyond the scenes. We'll be right back.
Beyond the scenes. We are back.
We are discussing cop City, or excuse me, George, the Atlanta City of Police Training and Fire Medical Facility Readiness Activity Zone.
That's not call it.
Cop city, calling cops City, Like, don't ever make me put that in a headline. Nobody will read the.
Story we've covered so far, the cons of cop City and the fact that it could become a place to mistrain a lot of offices in a lot of different places, their environmental issues that will come from cop City. It is a fiscal boondoggle as well. Part of the reason cop City is started to cost a lot of money is because there are a group of people that have encamped themselves in the construct, like literally living in this area.
They call themselves to Forest Defenders. And I was able to meet some of these people for my story, and they were extremely secretive because you know, we're getting into like real secret enemy of the state type stuff where they believe their cell phones are being tapped, they're being monitored, by drones. They believe the police are trying to come in undercover and invent themselves with them, Like it is a lot of different things that are being accused from
the Forest Defenders towards the city of Atlanta. And you all's coverage of this from the inception of cop City. When did you start seeing the Forest Defenders start to become a thing and how did that whole movement emerge and when did it start becoming deadly?
So to that point, Atlanta's overall activist ecosystem for the last couple of years have been relatively decimated, and so the few activists who really knew about it almost from the beginning had already started stage in protests either just online or throughout the city and especially around.
That place, were already there almost from day one about the.
Site decimated in what sense like arrest and just kind of torn apart during George Floyd movement or.
Well even before George Floyd. So that's a good point.
So a lot of our activists, there's no infrastructure, So activists can't necessarily go into a heritage foundation, they don't get into law, they don't get into the universities. Even so after a series of crackdowns on various protests, with the last being this thing called Tent City over at the old Turner Field which is now Georgia State Stadium. A lot of them after getting arrested, a lot of them after being fired from their jobs, they just left.
They either left the city or they left the movements all together, and then there was no other people to kind of come in and take over, like that next wave of leadership, which is something you see in most political movements. And so the people who started coming around and started encamping themselves, a lot of them weren't necessarily from Atlanta, but a lot of them were getting news about Atlanta from people on the ground or former activists,
of people sharing things in their social fees. So they felt emboldened to come here because there was nobody to literally defend the force that was there. Because the activists who normally would have been here in most cities just aren't here anymore. We just don't have that ecosystem, not because they are are weak or anything like that, just because there's nothing to support them. There was no way to level up. So that's kind of how we get to that point of the forest defenders. And also the
forest defenders. I want to add into that is that a lot of them also interact with other groups like general historic preservationists, arborous local DICAB residents who didn't like the project. So it was a lot easier for them to start getting familiar with the city, get familiar with the players really fast, because there was a lot of people who just didn't like this project for various reasons.
What was interesting when I was out there king was that locals were like bringing them food and little debbies like legit care packages. You know, George, if we want to get into the military.
You know, they was.
Dropping off the mr kits, They was dropping off the supply, but like they were like straight up supply drops, like from just strangers being sent money a number of different ways. I won't say how, but they had infrastructure set up where they could get that level of support from outsiders. So they get in, they starting camping, and they start doing things to kind of be you know, a pain
to the construction companies. You know, like they may tear up some of the equipment, or they'll set up a blockade so you can't get that particular tree cutting saw down this path or whatever, and the police always come in and try to tear down their barricades, and people have started butting heads more and more as the price of this project increases. George, it seems that tension has also seemed to increase because there's a level of urgency to just get it done that starts coming from people.
When do you think that tensions start? When did things start to turn for the worse with this?
Oh, I want to say maybe fall last year. You started to see like a truck get overturned here or there. You had a few arrests, and the cops have made a big deal about the fact that the folks who are getting arrested are generally from out of town, that they're white people with money, from places like Kitabunkport, Maine. And that's important, I think, because it shows that there's
a national interest in what's going on here. Things really like the But when Tortuguita is an activist who was killed by the police, and there's still some controversy over the circumstances of that they found a gun. The gun was registered to him, but there's a question about how the shooting actually started.
Who shot first, who shot first?
There is some non zero.
Chance you met this guy I met twenty to thirty. They wouldn't all agree to be on camera. The ones that you saw on camera firepiece, that was a small fraction as a Forest defenders I met that day.
Yeah, so that's sort of that energized things. That there were vigils in fifty other cities around the country in the days that followed Tortuguita's death. And I think that's what led to what happened last night, where they've started a week of protest. You know, they had a concert out in the forest, like sort of a festival, and then a bunch of guys dressed up in black and set construction equipment on fire and started throwing fireworks at the cops that came to put it out. They arrested.
Usually it's five or six people, maybe ten. They arrested thirty five last night. I think we're gonna steam more escalation.
Yeah, this was at the beginning of March in twenty twenty three when that happened, like to that point. And I want to be fair to the forest offenders, but I want to kind of pose a question to the two of you, does protest because they love to get into you know, respectability politics. When it's time to protest, right, they go, well, you're protesting, but you have to leave at eight pm. The proper protest, though, is there's time
and stand here, and there's that protest way. Whereas the forest defenders have done what they've done with cop City, and they have effectively delayed construction, they have effectively increased awareness of the issue. They have effectively drawn more attention to the issue. But does the way that they are drawing attention to the issue then give the police and the supporters of this issue justification to go see they are terrorists? Are that guy was shooting fire? I'm a
sworn law enforcement officer. Does that approach to protesting only embolden the people who want cop City to happen?
Yes, directly. Yes.
And in the case of Atlanta is a city built on respectability politics, and especially with black respectability politics. And I think it's interesting, especially in the real world, that the average person in Atlanta still vaguely understands what cop City is. But what they do understand is that, oh know, these weird leftists from Portland are burning police things again, right, And so that's kind of been used as like some
of the copaganda and getting this promoted. And so now you have general other police departments from around the metro area who are starting to show up. Like last night there was a bunch of them who showed up as a show of force to the site for no reason. But now it's becoming like a slight culture war in that respect as well. And Atlanta really doesn't historically doesn't
really budge against authority for the most part. This Alanta way of doing things, of having respectability politics, protests before dark, make sure you're in the house, have you applied for a permit to protest? All those things have played into like the ecosystem of Atlanta. And I do want to add just one other thing, which is it is now becoming more and more difficult to protest. You have to
not only apply for permits to protesting. But we have this thing that happened in the summer of twenty twenty then double down again in this upcoming legislative session about cracking down on protests, and this thing called the police Officer's Bill of Rights, which makes it really hard now for protests.
It's not only protests.
Police directly, but if offer you know, let's say he pushes a person and that person falls on another office of that person could be charged with assault, or if somebody wants to fund the Forest Defenders, that person could be charged with aiding a terrorist organization or aiding an organization against law enforcement. So they're slowly and systematically reducing the parameters of protests to make it seem as if no protests exists in Atlanta.
The other side of this, in a matter of speaking, is that there is a the protest. They may actually have a practical veto here. So this project is looks like ninety million, looks like it's actually going to be more than ninety million. But here's the thing. The Atlanta Police Foundation says that they've got sixty million dollars in pledges, but they're also trying to borrow money in order to
get this thing built. And the longer this takes, with interest rates doing what interest rates are doing, and what construction costs are doing, like, at some point, it's entirely possible that this gets away from the Atlantic pl Police Foundation financially simply because this gets delayed. They if the Forest Defenders can delay this thing for a year or
eighteen months, it may no longer be financially viable. And what they're they may be counting on is that the Atlanta Police Foundation will try to go hat in hand to the City of Atlanta and say, I know that we said that you only needed to spend thirty million, but we really need sixty million. And at that point, the city will have to put this up in a bond referendum and there will be a vote on whether
or not cop City should go forward. And if you're one of the forest defenders, you think you could win that vote. And that's so strategically, it's not Yeah, you're gonna piss off a lot of people, but that's not stupid in that regard.
Sent in to that point, George, what the people that are in support of building cop City? If we know cop City is bad for the environment, we know that they could create a culture of potential over policing, over aggressive policing. If we're not focusing all the on all the other aspects of police training that helped to de escalate. Because it sounds like cop City is one big a When When when should escalate? This is when you come here to learn how to handles it? When should escalate?
How?
Who are the people that are bankrolling this, and why are they still okay with it? There's gotta be something that is big. It's got to be some corporate money behind it. It's gotta be some government money behind it. Like how are these people still how are those organizations still okay with cop City moving forward?
So there's a lot of there's a lot of corporate money here. Uh. The Atlanta Police Foundation has got a bunch of banks, including Wells Fargo, there's Chick fil a, Truest, I think Cox enterprises like Cox Cable, which it includes the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which makes for fun reading about this, like the paper swears on a stack of bibles. No, no, no, no, we're not biased. Even though the corporate owners are leading, they're the guys who are leading the fundraising effort for this.
There's a lot of corporate money involved, and it's suspicious in my opinion. But I think here's the thing, though, those corporations that are contributing to this, all they're doing
is buying influence. I don't think they actually give one damn about copp City as a thing, but they know that the Atlanta Police Foundation can jerk the city council around and potentially cost some city council seats, and as long as that's true, they can influence the city council by funding the Atlanta Police Foundation.
Yeah.
I won't get into the weeds of the things I learned in the state of Alabama when I was trying to shoot my sitcom for Comedy Central in twenty eighteen. But I did learn that if you want to get a politician to do something, you don't talk to the politician. You talk to the politician's bankroll. And so if the Atlanta Police are the people that have the leverage over the politicians, and you do something in their favor, then they are more likely to So yeah, I could, I could.
I could see that. So it's less of a yay police versus sooner or later, we need you to pass the law that's gonna help our company, we Chick Filate. We need the chicken to be cheaper. So if I give you a little money for cop City, make sure the chicken is cheap so I can make a little bit extra proNT just increasing the cost of cop City.
Is that the only effective way to get corporations to go Wait a minute, we got to pull out of this because it sounds like it sounds like money is the only thing that's really getting anything done so far or affecting the cost of it. It doesn't seem like morals have entered the conversation at all.
Yeah, at this point, right now, it's definitely money. And you said something earlier. I do want to add into that, which is that the average person at Lance again and still really doesn't know what cop City is. Like they get their news from either social fees of the five o'clock news for the most part, and when they hear
about this and they're kind of ambivalent. The difference is once you start getting into a lot of like the details of the deal, it goes from like ambivalent to a we should really reconsider a lot of parameters on
this really fast. And the reason why I think there's a lot of money trying to push this ahead of time is because once the average person Atlanta starts to learn a little bit more about it, and especially now with the communities in South to cab who are also now becoming including this conversation about the environmental racism, there's a lot more people now who are really starting to
question the nature of this project. Yeah, they may not necessarily like the out of towners pushing over cars and you know, throwing firecrackers, but they do want to know there's some other things Cop City is representing that they're either not getting directly in directed aid or that's going to affect them really fast. So it's kind of become an issue of time and money is like proceeding faster than the time is allowed for people to really think about it.
Would it have mattered if the protester was from Decatur or whether or not they from Maine. If they're there to fight against something, why is that even a talking point to try and get people to disregard what these people are willing to die for.
It's an old nativest strategy. But I promise you I'm from Decatur. If that person would have been from Decatur, there wouldn't have been no Cops City, there wouldn't been no force. Like people indicator that they operate very differently. And so I do think that people when they bring up this out of talent ey thing, it makes the narrative that you know what, people in Atlanta support this.
These are people.
It's like the good old boy system of like, oh, these outside agitators coming in and really like stirring up the pot. But if it was again, somebody from a Decatur, if it was a nineteen year old from Decatur, I guarantee you not only would COP City not be there.
Andre Dixons is probably not the mayor at this point, right, Like, people in Atlanta move very differently if they feel like one of their own have been disrespected, And I think that's something that they've been leaning on with with regards to cop cities, like, Hey, one of us didn't do this, this was one of them from outside of our state. And that's kind of what we're seeing play out right now.
Does the environmental racism part of this when we talk about, you know, creating care answer alleys from a lot of the burnoff. You know you got a burn building, that means you got smoke, that means you got chemicals going in the water, because they take chemicals to make fake fire, you know, to make control fires. So what about the surrounding cities? Because the river don't stop in the Atlanta metro it keeps running on down the state. Have any of the other states even came in and just has
Lawrenceville checked in? Has making Georgia checked in? Hey, could y'all not send the cancer downstream?
Please?
We would appreciate. Like how much is the rest Where does the rest of surrounding Georgia? You know, I can't God, I can't remember the comedian that made the joke Atlanta is Atlanta, but it's surrounded by Georgia. Has Georgia checked in on what Atlanta is doing?
So for the most part, I don't think Georgia cares. I think part of it is because like the rest of the Georgia hates Atlanta, Like like once you get out of Metro Atlanta, like if they could shoot Atlanta, they would, like there's literally they like they were ready to blow up Atlanta and split off Buckhead from the rest.
Of the city. We don't even have a time to talk about it, trying to secede from the city.
Everybody else every Like if you're a politician from the rest of the state, like you run against those horrible liberals in Atlanta and they could do nothing right and to heck with them, Like that's that is the attitude outside of Metro Atlanta.
But how's it going to affect them? Don't they know that? First off?
Lay out some of the ways this could affect those surrounding areas, and are they gonna just you know, just not gonna say nothing.
So it depends on exactly who you're talking to, Like because if you are in suburban Columbus, you know, and it's a like red state Georgia, uh like you're like, yeah, maybe there's a runoff, but we don't care because it's not gonna hurt us. I would be the attitude. But hey, maybe we can drive our police department up there and go do some fancy training for a lot cheaper than we could do it before, and it'll be better. For
the most part. I think the rest of the state and maybe even surrounding states, like the police narrative controls how they're going to view this. If they're pro cop they're pro cop city. If they want police accountability, then they've heard about why cop city is wrong. But I don't think that they're going to have as much. Like here's the thing Atlanta does not want, Like the city of Atlanta and decap County really don't want the rest of the country and the rest of the state weighing
in on this. They want to be in control of what's happening in their own backyard, because generally speaking, when other people come in like that's that's when you get like our red state Republican governor like taking a dump on the city. And they're afraid of that. And I understand that that's why they're pushing this outside agitators thing,
even though it is this horribly racist callback. I gotta tell you to like nineteen sixties, those northern agitators are coming in here like that's what it sounds like to me because I know these things, but they think that it'll buy them some space.
Well, after the break, we're gonna bring it home and talk about some of the other initiatives that have been going on in and around the city of Atlanta to help rectify a lot of issues that have been happening in Atlanta. Also, after the break, I need to get your recommendations for the best limon pepper wings. That's why seventy five thousand people a year moving to Atlanta. It's them damn wings. Stop having good wings, and then maybe people wouldn't move there. This is beyond the scenes. We'll
be right back beyond the scenes. We round in third and headed for home. We are talking about cop City and the different pros and cons of it. Now, before we got to the break, we were laughing but still being a little serious about some of the different initiatives and referendums that have been put in place in Atlanta in the last couple of years. We talk about the city of Buckhead trying to set like essentially the way
Beverly Hills eate part of Los Angeles. No more like it's still LA but with Beverly Hills, we have our own city hall, we have our own police department. King have there been other initiatives and referendums that have been passed in the last couple of years in Atlanta.
In terms of secession, no, not like the Bucket city hood thing, But in terms of city hood, yes. Everyone right now Metrolanta is trying to create their own fiefdoms.
And Sandy Springs really kicked that off there in North Fulton County, just outside the city limits of Buckhead actually, and in two thousand and five they became the first to really kick off this modern cityhood movement, and since then every municipality has tried to do their own version of Hey, we're not going to allocate our tax dollars to help those people you can infer what that means when every time that comes up. The thing that makes it different now is that we've had since two thousand
and five, we've only had two black ones. One is the city of Stone Crest, and then we also have South Fulton, And so those are two majority black city hood efforts, and they have had a varying degree of success compared to the white ones. But everyone right now is trying to be their own version of a city, and Buckhead being its own version of a city led by people outside of the state, I mean, outside of the metro Atlanta area is the latest in a long chapter in that.
But if these predominantly white areas, which I would assume are probably red parts of town little okay, wealthy, but not necessarily red purplish if you will, Georgia is like kind of sort of why leave Atlanta?
Like?
Is it decisions? Like the cop city thing? Is it decisions like you know, the way that the rayshar Brooks trial of those officers was handled. What are the pros and cons of leaving the city And why can't at Land and just say get the hell on and we don't need you a little fucking little tax dollars.
I'm good. I got Chick fil A in my backpacket.
I'm gonna go off for a second because the whole Buckhet thing was a lot. How much profanity can I use?
Do what you want?
So the whole it's just bullshit that was created by one guy who was a fundraiser for Trump, like this one racist felt straw piece of shit, like it decides I can. Like, there's this untapped group of rich white conservative Tucker Carlson watching people who've got more money than since who the Republican Party has never figured out how
to fundraise off of effectively. And so comes this guy from New York who moves into Buckhead and says we should split Buckhead off because Atlanta sucks, and he's just it's just an excuse to send out newsletters raising money. It was never going to pass. It was never ever ever going.
To arouse to fundraise. And then when you lose, you go see they don't want us to be great. Join me in the fight with the fave down a donation, you're more like a five thousand dollars donation. Oh shit, hang on, hey hey man, it's Buckhead. I mean, you gotta know it's like, that's it. That's all that was, And a lot of this other stuff is like in the same vein. It's this idea that black communities can't
figure out how to govern themselves. At least that's the that's the lie, and so like if you don't like, if you don't like the idea of having a black mayor as a white person, here's a way for you to get up and around that.
Even to that point, though, like what you said about the Buckett city hood thing was interesting because for a host of reasons that was never going to work, which is why Brian Kemp had to come in and kind of put the foot down on that one. But the other issue is cop City was brought to the Buckhead business leaders as a way to keep away secession from Atlanta. It was like, hey, you know, you want police around
the Ray Sharbrooks. Around June of twenty twenty, I mean we have even by August of twenty twenty, they're already in cahoots with a couple of day I'm not going to say certain city council members are already talking to Buckhead leaders about what can they do to support the police, And by December of twenty twenty, we already have like the plan that would eventually become cop City, So it was always always going to be a part of it, and Buckheat was always going to be leading that effort
to have cop City. So the fact that this person in particular wanted to lead a fundraising effort to secede from Atlanta based on the notion of police was just one of the best scans in Atlanta history.
I mean, it's maybe a top five moment.
How much do the police respect the data of how crime is lowered versus simply passing thing that will get them the support of their community. Like if we're talking local politician and you know X y Z reading initiative will help. We know that the connection between literacy and crime rates. The more area can read, the lower the crime rate is in that area. We also know that you could take some of the money for the police tank and create a non weaponized response like they have
in Portland. Portland has a division that is just responding to mental health and minor domestic stuff that the cops normally would be the ones going to, which is less work on your police, which is less stress on your police, which equals a higher morale and a better, better work environment. Those things could all contribute to lowering crime. So why be so dedicatedly invested into the one thing that makes it seem like the only way to be tough on crime is in a punitive way. Because let's be as
three Southerners this on this podcast right now. We all came up in the ass whooping phase of the South. So tough, heavy hand billy club. Do cops and politicians do they really believe that all this and all these other initiatives will really help to lower crime?
And all got a lot to say about this.
Because if that'sn't just selling to the cab and Sandy Springs and fucking Villerica, if that's what you're trying to get them to be a part of, aren't you still lying?
Like a shooter's gonna shoot and drama is still gonna be drama.
So it's funny like the city's got like a Portland style thing. They started it a few years ago. I was actually on the design team for the pre Arrested version initiative in Atlanta. Okay, add the thing is it gets like three or four million dollars a year. It's got like a dozen, maybe two dozen people who are working on it, and it's hamstrung by all of the other things that are broken. The jail is broken, the
courts are broken, the cops are kind of broken. The District Attorney's office doesn't have enough staff to really do all the things they need to do. There aren't enough public defenders to go around. Like it's like there's this gigantic mess in the system. Meanwhile, like they're gonna spend thirty million dollars on Cop City and there their idea
here is okay, so we're spent. They're in their head, they're going, well, we're already spending all this money on all of these other things like bail reform and all the rest, so we should probably spend more money on the cops too. Like in their head, this is a balance, Like this is the balancing point to all of the other stuff that they're doing, even though all the other stuff that they're doing is really not nearly enough, that is a lot less than that they're spending on police.
The problem is, as soon as you say that, somebody comes in and says you want to defund the police, and then ah, and everybody turns into a Muppet.
Yeah, but that's also because before on wasn't the best word because people thought they didn't take all the bunny. It was like, nah, man, just you don't need a tank. Here's an suv instead. Here's a fortified suv instead of a tank. And we're gonna take that tank money, and we're gonna put some Doctor Seuss books in the hood and we're gonna lower crime. That's all we were trying to do. Uh. I'll end with this question for the two of you. How do you all feel the city
of Atlanta is being perceived nationally? How is the perception of the city of Atlanta? Has it evolved or devolved over the last few years with Cop City being a big part of this, and you know Governor Kemp threatening to send in the National Guard, you know, the national Guard on coming in. Let's just say the National Guard. Ifause anybody need to go to Cop City for some training, it's probably the National Guard because they ain't training as often as the cops about how to do cop stuff.
How do you all feel the.
City of Atlanta has been perceived like this? Does this set a bad precedent for the city, you know, in terms of the reputation of it. Does it encourage other cities to build their own cop city? Is Memphis gonna be inspired? Is Miami gonna be inspired?
Oh?
My God?
All right, I swear to God, I hope everyone does not try to make their own cop City. For a host of reason. It's bad for money, bad for Atlanta, he's bad for the environment. That's personally what I do think.
Though.
Over time, Atlanta is gonna win. Atlanta always wins out. That's the beauty of being in Atlanta's no matter what, you always win. Over the last couple of years, though, and in combination with cop City, in the last few years of the previous mayor and just in general, there has been a push of like Atlanta's it's black, but
it's not the Mecca anymore. And I do think that if Atlanta's not working on brand control right now, you could have a scenario in which people really just leave Atlanta right Atlanta doesn't have the infrastructure that Atlanta doesn't have necessarily connective tissue like a New York City does or a Miami that you mentioned even in LA to keep attracting black people.
So I do think the.
Current mayor, after this cop City phase goes over. He's going to try to figure out how to make Atlanta the Black Mecca again or make the Mecca great again, because you can't lose that representation that we have otherwise and we're no different from any other city across the country.
Yeah, the thing I turned my mind is you're asking this question is the twenty twenty four National Democratic National Convention. So the mayor's trying Michel to get the convention in Atlanta, and I think he might actually be successful. It's they're
going to be here in Chicago. Like, the thing is, if Atlanta is perceived as a place where we've got a bunch of protests over stuff like this, that's the image that Atlanta, like this whole cop city has the potential to change the perception of Atlanta across the country depending on what's going on. You know what, year, three or four months from now, I'm with King on the Black Meca thing, Like there's a group of us who
are trying to strangle that in a bathtub somewhere. Like this is a great city, it's a great city to be black. But if you were born black and poor in Atlanta, like you are screwed in a lot of ways like it does not. It is not a happy place for you. We've got less mobility for less economic mobility than almost anywhere else in the United States. Uh, it's hard to get up. It's hard to climb out of poverty in Atlanta, and we don't see that. We see love and hip hop, we see you know, the
Atlanta TV show, We see the Marvel movies. You know we got rappers Eight Ways to Sunday talking about Atlanta. Like, they don't see the hard parts. They don't see why we've got like a crime problem that people think we need to build a cop city to deal with. And I think that's gonna change.
And if it doesn't, you can always sell the city to Tyler Perry and he'll fix it immediately. Gentlemen, I cannot thank you all enough for this wonderful, wonderful conversation. When I get down to Atlanta, I'll let you all take me out to your wing spot of choice. We don't have to name no places right now. They didn't pay us for no endorsements. But just please don't take me to the Varsity. I've had everything on the menu that I've ateed the Varsity forty eight different times.
I just don't. Don't take me to the varsity.
I got I got it.
George King, thank you so much for going beyond the scenes with me.
Thank you, thank you.
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