Story by: David Wingo
Last week, the Atlanta Police Foundation revealed the renderings for a new state of the art training facility for the Atlanta Police Department. The facility will be located on the grounds of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, a giant green space located just outside of East Atlanta in Southwest DeKalb County. It will be two years before the facility is operational, and is estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars.
The 150-acre state-of-the-art facility will not only be for police, but will also be used to train Atlanta's firefighters and paramedics as well.
There will be indoor and outdoor shooting ranges, a fitness center, classrooms, an amphitheater, and housing for police recruits. Additionally, the center will have a space dedicated to explosion tests (what???), a mock city for real-world training, as well as a burning-building simulator. A 911 emergency center will also be built to provide training to first responders. There will be stables for APD patrol horses, and a kennel for its canine units as well.
They did manage to leave room in the budget for green space that would still be open to the public, including running trails, ballfields and picnic areas.
This comes in the midst of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms' campaign for re-election, as she attempts to make policing more effective, and show that she's serious about public safety.
Following last summer's civil uprisings, dozens of APD officers left the force. Now, APD says that they're understaffed by at least 300 officers. Bottoms is looking for any way to get more officers on the streets, and she's hoping this new state-of-the-art police center will help with recruitment efforts.
Many civic leaders and climate activists have spoken out against the creation of this new facility.
The Save the Old Atlanta Prison Farm Facebook page argues that this type of facility shouldn't be built in a residential neighborhood, pointing out that residents won't be happy with "gunfire filling the air daily right across the street from people's homes."
District 5 City Council candidate Liliana Bakhtiari also spoke out against the new facility on Twitter. She argued that residents and city council should’ve been consulted, before a decision like this was made by the Mayor.
"Clearly if the they want to sink [millions] into this without talking to a single neighbor, they expect it to be unpopular with the community," Bakhtiari wrote. "So they're just going around us rather than conducting proper engagement processes. What kind of governance is this?"
This "public safety training center" will reportedly be financed through a mix of city funds, tax incentives, and philanthropic donations, and is scheduled to open in 2023.