The Atlanta City Council recently approved funding for the city’s new police training facility. This is a win for the city, communities across the metro Atlanta area, and our law enforcement officers and first responders.
Unfortunately, a small but vocal band of radicals — namely the Defend the Atlanta Forest group — have hijacked the narrative. They oppose the facility, hate the police, and have repeatedly used destruction to make their point.
And when state law enforcement arrested individuals who allegedly helped fund the violence, both Georgia's senators and the Biden administration put political allies before the rule of law.
It makes me sick. It’s vital that law enforcement officers and first responders have the best resources and training to do their jobs, and it’s vital they have support from our elected leaders. I know from firsthand experience.
I graduated from the Atlanta Police Department’s Police Academy in 1985. At the time, APD desperately needed a state of the art training center. Our Academy was located in manufactured trailers at the current location on Key Rd between the city dump and the Dekalb County water treatment facility, not in a pristine forest as some of the protesters now claim.
Atlanta was one of the first departments in the state to offer 20 weeks of training, well above the standard six. This shows APD’s longstanding commitment to well-trained officers patrolling our streets. In fact, training classes were taught not just by cops, but Civil Rights leaders and advocates for the LGBTQ community to ensure a positive relationship with all of Atlanta’s diverse residents.
While these students, teachers, and community leaders did the best with the resources available to them at the time, we now have a unique opportunity to continue the tradition in a state of the art facility any city would be jealous of.
Following my time at the Academy, I worked as a police officer in Metro Atlanta — starting as a beat cop in Southeast Atlanta and eventually becoming a police chief in Doraville. I have served with heroes, and I was shot in the line of duty myself.
Today, I’m proud to serve as Georgia’s Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner.
Take it from me — for these heroes to do their jobs the right way and keep communities safe, they need this training facility. Here’s why.
The facility will integrate police, fire, and EMS training — allowing for safer, more effective delivery of emergency services. It will allow police to work with mental health professionals and advocates in a training setting, which will improve de-escalation techniques. It will continue to give trainees access to civil rights advocates. This will help them understand the challenges of modern day policing and allow citizens to have a hand in the training of their police force.
This can only happen in a training facility that is open and accessible, not temporary or substandard, which is what our city has had to use for the last 30 years.
These facts have been ignored by radicals with an ax to grind.
A huge majority of Defend the Atlanta Forest protesters aren’t from Georgia, but they are trained and well-funded. And over the last six months, they’ve chosen destruction, harassment, and violence over peaceful protest.
For example, in March a group breached training facility grounds. They set construction equipment on fire. They launched fireworks and threw bricks, rocks, and even Molotov cocktails at police officers.
Twenty-three were arrested. Only two call Georgia home.
Residency aside, peaceful protest is a fundamental right. Just as our police must receive challenging training to be effective, they must also receive the best training to respect the First Amendment, and all other guaranteed civil rights protections.
But when bricks, rocks, and Molotov cocktails are your way of making a point, you’ve forfeited your claim to peace. You’ve become a domestic terrorist.
Unfortunately, I have a hard time believing Georgia’s two U.S. senators see it that way.
Both Senator Ossoff and Senator Warnock have cast doubt on the process that led to the recent arrests. Further, they refuse to acknowledge why we need the facility. They’ve put their political allies before Georgia LEOs and their families.
I know I’m not the only lawman in Georgia who is incredibly disappointed.
Equally disappointing is President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security. It refuses to give Defend the Atlanta Forest a “violent extremist” label, despite months of coordinated chaos.
Of course, it’s not surprising that DHS is just as clueless at this as it is dealing with the crisis at our southern border.
Fortunately, in Georgia, we believe in the rule of law.
Every act of destruction has been met with arrests. And as mentioned earlier, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation cracked down on the funding source, charging three individuals with money laundering and charity fraud last month.
As Governor Kemp said in response to President Biden’s DHS, “we don’t need the advice from someone in Washington” to identify a domestic terrorist.
What’s reassuring is that — despite destruction, political pressure, and at times botched messaging and media coverage — Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and the City Council stood firm. They know the facility is critical to improving public safety. That’s why it was approved by a Council vote of 11-4. The truth prevailed, and I’m grateful for their courage.
I’m grateful because I know it will better equip and train our LEOs and first responders. In turn, it will make both them and our communities safer.
In the meantime, my challenge to Senators Ossoff and Warnock is to stand with law enforcement, not agitators who don’t know the first thing about the state you both were elected to represent.
My charge to the Department of Homeland Security is pretty simple: do your job.
And my message to Georgia’s police and first responders, and their families, is that I will always have your back.