True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 267: Cop City
Aired: 2023-01-30
Duration: 01:05:22


=== Four Arrests, San Francisco Style (04:17) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey, Brace.
[00:00:01]  Hello, Liz.
[00:00:03]  Wait, I have a question.
[00:00:04]  Yes.
[00:00:05]  How many times have you been arrested?
[00:00:07]  Well, okay, that's giving the game away a little bit.
[00:00:09]  We met in jail.
[00:00:10]  That's not true.
[00:00:11]  The famous co-ed jail in San Francisco.
[00:00:13]  Oh, my God.
[00:00:14]  I've been arrested like four or five times.
[00:00:19]  Yes.
[00:00:20]  One theft, which is the fault of Max.
[00:00:25]  If you're listening to this, it is your fault that that happened.
[00:00:30]  Twice for assault and battery, although all the charges, by the way, dropped in all of these, except for some of them.
[00:00:39]  Once for vandalism when I was a kid, the destruction of property and stuff like that.
[00:00:45]  And then once for possession of meth, amphetamine.
[00:00:50]  And I got to tell you, something about jail.
[00:00:53]  I've said this before in the show, nicest thing anyone ever did to me was they baby birded some liquid Viconin into my mouth.
[00:00:59]  But I had heard about the fight clubs at the San Francisco jail that the sheriffs did.
[00:01:05]  And I was like, oh my God, like, what if they make me fight in one of them?
[00:01:09]  And then when I got in there, they're not going to make you fight.
[00:01:11]  I don't think there's a chance.
[00:01:12]  Maybe they'll do a read-off with me.
[00:01:15]  They're going to be like, oh, yeah, let's get this one in there.
[00:01:16]  Yeah, I weighed probably at 90 pounds.
[00:01:19]  They'd be like, oh, I'm going to make the other guy that I'm fighting by proxy take on Brace.
[00:01:23]  But yeah, every time you're talking about that, that's like reverse dodgeball thinking.
[00:01:26]  Every time I go in, I always try to find the Jewish gang and get with them.
[00:01:31]  And so I just go around asking everyone if they're Jewish or looking at their penis to see if they're circumcised.
[00:01:36]  And that makes you some different new friends.
[00:01:38]  It's crazy.
[00:01:39]  I am one of the, I am, I would say, probably the most multi-racial prison boss, jail boss in America at this point.
[00:01:46]  And I'd like to say it all my friends in there.
[00:01:48]  Laha'i'm.
[00:02:11]  Hello, everyone. Hello.
[00:02:13]  Hello.
[00:02:13]  I'm Liz.
[00:02:14]  My name is Brace.
[00:02:16]  Sleepy Brace.
[00:02:17]  Are you Sleepy Brace?
[00:02:18]  I'm Sleepy Brace.
[00:02:19]  I didn't sleep well.
[00:02:20]  I had a long 24 hours and was stressed out this morning.
[00:02:24]  I had to wake up and deal with bureaucrats.
[00:02:26]  Oh, my God.
[00:02:27]  You're favorite.
[00:02:28]  You know, Liz, B.
[00:02:29]  No one I hate.
[00:02:30]  I hate bureaucrats.
[00:02:31]  You really do.
[00:02:32]  I fucking hate.
[00:02:33]  You know what, though?
[00:02:34]  You're not wrong.
[00:02:35]  I'm not wrong.
[00:02:36]  You know Islam?
[00:02:37]  They are wrong.
[00:02:39]  They are wrong.
[00:02:40]  Remember the Sponge incident?
[00:02:41]  Oh, my God.
[00:02:42]  Oh, my God.
[00:02:42]  Don't get me started on the Smudge.
[00:02:44]  Don't get me started on the Sponge.
[00:02:45]  We, of course, joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[00:02:48]  And this is called Trunon.
[00:02:50]  Hello.
[00:02:51]  There we go.
[00:02:51]  Yeah.
[00:02:52]  You don't have to be doing a lot of that today because I am.
[00:02:54]  He's sleepy.
[00:02:56]  I'm running probably about.
[00:02:58]  You should stop wearing your sleeping dressing gown in the studio.
[00:03:03]  It's menswear.
[00:03:04]  All right.
[00:03:04]  Yes.
[00:03:05]  I am wearing a silk striped light blue.
[00:03:10]  It's actually like Japanese shiburi print, block print.
[00:03:14]  That's it.
[00:03:15]  And then like indigo.
[00:03:16]  Yes.
[00:03:17]  Menswear style.
[00:03:18]  I am also visibly wearing a tight red underwear, not boxers.
[00:03:26]  I guess you would call them briefs.
[00:03:29]  And of course, I am wearing a kimono unleashed.
[00:03:33]  Oh, my God.
[00:03:35]  And of course, a big sleepy time hat as well.
[00:03:37]  You always the sleepy time hat.
[00:03:39]  No, I wear crazy shit to bed.
[00:03:41]  I wear pretty much all denim to bed, just in case there's a fire.
[00:03:45]  Yeah.
[00:03:46]  And you got to wake yourself up with how loud you are.
[00:03:48]  Oh, God.
[00:03:49]  Yeah.
[00:03:49]  And how itchy I am.
[00:03:52]  Just constantly trying to break in that raw denim.
[00:03:54]  You see my Japanese selvedge denim?
[00:03:57]  You should stop sleeping in raw denim sheets.
[00:04:00]  What the fuck is raw denim?
[00:04:01]  I'm not trying to wear no raw denim.
[00:04:03]  Process it.
[00:04:04]  Put it, make it self-pasteurize it.
[00:04:06]  I'm not understanding.
[00:04:07]  Denim people are crazy to me.
[00:04:11]  I am wearing denim.
[00:04:14]  We are talking today.
[00:04:16]  About our favorite.

=== A Pitched Tent Firefight (15:20) ===

[00:04:17]  The police.
[00:04:18]  Yeah, our favorite topic.
[00:04:20]  And I got to tell you, to preface this episode off, I'm sure many of you remember a couple of years ago.
[00:04:29]  Actually, maybe you don't because the whole year was a blur.
[00:04:31]  But do you remember the, I don't know how to pronounce this word, Halcyon?
[00:04:35]  Am I doing that right?
[00:04:37]  Young Chomsky gave it a snort, but I was right.
[00:04:40]  No, I was a nod.
[00:04:41]  But you snorted while you nodded.
[00:04:43]  It was a snort of agreement.
[00:04:45]  Okay.
[00:04:45]  I'd have preferred if you retracted the snort by inhaling.
[00:04:50]  You know, back to the Halcyon days of 2020 when everybody hated the police.
[00:04:54]  Do you remember that, Liz?
[00:04:55]  Oh, yeah.
[00:04:56]  People hated them.
[00:04:57]  I mean, with good reason.
[00:04:58]  Yeah, cops, we don't like them.
[00:05:00]  No.
[00:05:02]  But things began to change.
[00:05:05]  And I think sort of the public perception of the police among liberals, I don't think it really changed much for conservatives, but among liberals has sort of retreated back into, well, you know, it's just a few bad apples in the book.
[00:05:18]  Right.
[00:05:18]  Et cetera.
[00:05:19]  Maybe we should hear both sides.
[00:05:20]  Exactly.
[00:05:20]  Like the sort of popular anger against police has definitely receded in general.
[00:05:27]  Right.
[00:05:28]  And so it's sort of unusual to have, I think something that struck me about this is there was a big, well, I don't know, big in terms of people, although there was a number of people there, but there was a riot, I would say, in Atlanta the other day.
[00:05:45]  Yeah, over the weekend, last weekend.
[00:05:47]  Though, I mean, I think that the news covered it a little bit more fantastically than what was actually happening on the ground.
[00:05:54]  There was a lot of footage of one burned cop car that I think gave the impression that there were other buildings on fire.
[00:06:02]  It was at night, so it was like a lot more insane looking.
[00:06:07]  And I think was being put on the nightly news in such a way to recall memories of the summer of 2020.
[00:06:17]  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:06:19]  And I think it was sort of like a flashback for a lot of people.
[00:06:22]  Like, oh, yeah, I remember when like people did that in general.
[00:06:26]  And so it was sort of, I don't know, it was a, it just struck with me.
[00:06:30]  And you saw a lot of the old narratives trotted out, like Antifa is taking over downtown Seattle or excuse me, downtown Atlanta and all these kind of things.
[00:06:38]  Although that kind of died down, but people were protesting because someone was killed.
[00:06:44]  Yeah, so let's back up a little bit.
[00:06:46]  So over the weekend, like you said, there was a riot in Atlanta.
[00:06:52]  Broken windows, classic move at police headquarters.
[00:06:55]  There was the cruiser set on fire.
[00:06:57]  There was like a bunch of banks that I think had their windows smashed in, kind of the usual stuff.
[00:07:02]  And it was in response to the killing of a 26-year-old environmental protester named Manuel Esteban Paez Tehran, aka Tortuguita.
[00:07:14]  Tortuguita, yeah, which is, it took me a little practice to get that right.
[00:07:19]  They're from Panama City, Panama.
[00:07:21]  So they're actually not from Atlanta, but they've been in the Atlanta area for, I don't know, more than a year, I think.
[00:07:27]  About a year, yeah, as far as I know.
[00:07:30]  And they were in Atlanta protesting the proposed gigantor $90 million police training facility that has been nicknamed, but really I think should be the official name, Cop City.
[00:07:46]  Yeah, and I got to tell you, shout out to whoever came out with that.
[00:07:50]  What a name.
[00:07:52]  The actual name that the police have given it is the Institute for Social Justice.
[00:08:00]  Which is a funny thing because now we've got a little flipsies, right?
[00:08:03]  You got full flipsies here.
[00:08:04]  You've got a full flip sees because, you know, on the one hand, you'd think activists, activists theoretically, would love an Institute for Social Justice.
[00:08:12]  Yeah.
[00:08:12]  I don't know about these activists, but yeah.
[00:08:14]  No, no, but the name.
[00:08:16]  Like in broad, like vague terms.
[00:08:18]  Absolutely.
[00:08:18]  Institute for social justice sounds like we're activists saying.
[00:08:21]  I love it.
[00:08:22]  Cop City, definitely a place police would want.
[00:08:25]  Exactly.
[00:08:25]  So we've got a full reverso here.
[00:08:26]  We've got a full reverso here.
[00:08:28]  Yeah, I will say it is a sort of astounding project that they're working on there.
[00:08:33]  They are literally making a city for the police in the woods, a mock city to train in, which we'll get to in a little bit.
[00:08:42]  I think we should actually start maybe with what happened to, in broad strokes, what happened on the day that Tortuguita was shot and that set off these protests over the weekend.
[00:08:53]  For sure.
[00:08:53]  So as far as we know, you know, and this is from obviously the popular reporting, but we've also spoken to people who were there, who were living, who were living there and who were there that day.
[00:09:07]  The police were basically doing a sweep.
[00:09:11]  And they had done one about a month prior in mid-December.
[00:09:15]  Hold on.
[00:09:16]  Just to clarify, they're doing a sweep of the area where activists have been kind of camped out.
[00:09:22]  Yeah.
[00:09:23]  In protest of the building of this facility on basically a, I believe it's like 200, 300 acre.
[00:09:32]  Almost 400, actually.
[00:09:33]  Well, there you go.
[00:09:34]  200, 300, 400, you know, around that area.
[00:09:36]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:09:37]  Acre forest.
[00:09:39]  Yes.
[00:09:39]  Just outside of Atlanta.
[00:09:40]  One of the biggest urban forests in America.
[00:09:42]  And in fact, you know, I asked this question.
[00:09:45]  I was like, how come it's not the biggest one?
[00:09:47]  Apparently Jacksonville, the city limits of Jacksonville.
[00:09:51]  No way.
[00:09:51]  Are too big, right?
[00:09:53]  They like got a little too big for their bridges.
[00:09:55]  Maybe they're planning on a bigger city.
[00:09:56]  And so Jacksonville, even outside of where you would consider the city, it's still technically Jacksonville.
[00:10:01]  And they got a big ass forest there.
[00:10:02]  But that doesn't count.
[00:10:03]  This is an actual urban forest surrounded by neighborhoods.
[00:10:06]  Their football team also getting a little too big for their bridges.
[00:10:09]  Who is that?
[00:10:10]  Don't worry about it.
[00:10:11]  Okay, I won't.
[00:10:13]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:10:14]  Yeah.
[00:10:14]  And we'll get into the timeline there too a little bit about how that went down.
[00:10:18]  But basically, the broad strokes of what happened recently is that the police went in there on a big multi-agency, like really sweep and clear campaign.
[00:10:28]  Like we're getting these protesters out of there.
[00:10:30]  These people have been living, some of them in trees.
[00:10:33]  Some of them have been living in tents in the ground.
[00:10:35]  But people living in the forest essentially blockading any kind of construction.
[00:10:40]  And when you say multi-agency, we're talking local cops, state cops, and now it sounds like federal cops.
[00:10:46]  Yeah.
[00:10:47]  Oh, definitely they're getting involved, I'm sure.
[00:10:49]  But yeah, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, fucking, you know, the Georgia State Patrol, I think they're called.
[00:10:56]  And of course, local police forces and the sheriff and all that.
[00:11:01]  The official story is, and we don't have a ton to go on besides this.
[00:11:06]  The official story is that the police went in there, they approached what was, they said was a tent, and a cop approached that and was met with gunfire.
[00:11:17]  This is what the police say.
[00:11:19]  Was wounded.
[00:11:20]  The police returned fire on the tent and killed the person, Tordaguita, that was in there.
[00:11:26]  And basically swept a bunch of other people out of the camp.
[00:11:31]  They didn't get everybody out of the forest.
[00:11:33]  They got a bunch of people out there that day.
[00:11:36]  And then this set off a sort of chain reaction of protests and things like that.
[00:11:42]  I will say, originally it looked like the police, the way this was reported in the New York Times, for instance, was there was a firefight between protesters and the police.
[00:11:52]  Really?
[00:11:52]  Yes, that's what they're used to.
[00:11:54]  The word they use in the headline is firefight.
[00:11:56]  Yeah, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which we'll talk about too, which I also got to say, they have one of the worst paywalls of all the local papers.
[00:12:07]  SF Chronicle too, same thing.
[00:12:08]  I know.
[00:12:09]  The SF Chronicle one is.
[00:12:10]  SF Chronicle paywall.
[00:12:11]  Give me one fucking free article.
[00:12:13]  LA Times gives you a couple free, I think.
[00:12:15]  Yeah.
[00:12:15]  But anyway, Atlanta Journal Constitution all over this saying that it was, yeah, I mean, that there was basically a shootout in the forest.
[00:12:25]  You know, I don't know what the official definition of a firefight is, right?
[00:12:29]  It's kind of one of those things where it's like, you know it when you see it.
[00:12:32]  I don't think that this would, by any popular definition of the word, qualify as a firefight.
[00:12:40]  And I also, you know, looking up a picture of Tortuguita's tent, too, I mean, you know, you hear the word tent and you expect sort of like a structure on the ground, maybe a zip-up cover, a tent, right?
[00:12:50]  Yeah, pitched.
[00:12:51]  A pitched, exactly, a pitched tent.
[00:12:54]  What the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is calling a tent was actually, and I'm looking at a picture of it right now, a hammock strung between two sort of sad-looking trees with a small tarp covering it from rainfall.
[00:13:06]  Yeah.
[00:13:07]  So not a tent.
[00:13:08]  And also, I think the word tent is meant to, you know, give you the impression.
[00:13:12]  It certainly gave me the impression that it would prevent the officers from seeing right through this thing because it's just a little tarp wearing a hand that you could literally see, this does not block any view of the person at all.
[00:13:23]  No, I think the idea of a shootout from a tent gives you, this is the image you see.
[00:13:28]  Yeah.
[00:13:29]  Torda Guita is there, you know, completely covered, shielded by the tent and able to like conceal themselves and hide themselves from any, from the police like ever returning any fire.
[00:13:43]  Absolutely.
[00:13:44]  And in fact, that is how the GBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, at first presented this as happening as a sort of ambush attack on officers, which they later walked back into like a surprise attack on officers and then later walked back further by just being like, oh, it was fire from a tent.
[00:14:05]  This is, of course, also set off sort of a nationwide campaign, a clandestine campaign, I guess you could say, against people who are involved, contractors, subcontractors, and corporations involved with the construction of Cop City.
[00:14:18]  We'll get into who those are in a second.
[00:14:22]  But yeah, suffice to say, it has actually gotten a lot more attention on this campaign than I think there had been by any means prior.
[00:14:32]  It's now a pretty big national story.
[00:14:35]  And it's a pretty interesting story about how this kind of all came to be.
[00:14:39]  We should say, too, I just want to say that Tortogueto's mom, who is in Panama City, does not believe that, like does not believe the official story and believes that the cops just shot and killed Torguita.
[00:14:57]  It is like without there being fire like you know well you know having you know having having spoken to people that know Torgueta and having read a piece that came out about a month ago with quotes from Torguita it was interesting because one thing that you hear consistently is Torgueta you know expressing discomfort against violence towards people.
[00:15:18]  Yeah.
[00:15:19]  Right.
[00:15:20]  In fact, I believe that I don't have the quote in front of me right now, but I think the magazine's called like Thistle or something.
[00:15:27]  Torgita gives a quote to them to this person profiling people at the camp about a commitment to nonviolence.
[00:15:34]  And it does, you know, obviously we don't know what happened right there.
[00:15:38]  There aren't any witnesses that have come forward yet, although there is an independent investigation looking for them.
[00:15:44]  It is interesting that, you know, Torgira was apparently killed where the shooting happened.
[00:15:49]  It took the police 36 hours to produce images of a weapon, which is a lot longer.
[00:15:57]  They put out images of the tent and all that stuff long prior to that.
[00:16:02]  And, you know, again, I don't know what happened here.
[00:16:05]  I don't know if it's friendly fire.
[00:16:07]  Yeah, I mean, that's a question for sure.
[00:16:11]  One question I would have is, you got a bunch of different agencies coming in at all different directions.
[00:16:17]  You got a lot of happy cops of all stripes.
[00:16:21]  Perhaps someone got caught in the middle.
[00:16:23]  I mean, yeah, you know, we don't know.
[00:16:24]  But again, these cops are, these cops are basically conducting a forest-based counterinsurgency campaign right here, right?
[00:16:31]  Yeah.
[00:16:31]  And so they're soldiers, essentially, at this moment.
[00:16:36]  And, you know, something that does happen is there's a lot of confusion in those situations.
[00:16:41]  Sometimes you see something, maybe you see someone with a gun, maybe you shoot, and maybe that person with a gun is on your side and fires are turned.
[00:16:50]  You know, sometimes these can be rather hairy situations.
[00:16:54]  The GBI, who was involved with that raid in the first place, is now investigating it.
[00:16:59]  So it's sort of the police are now investigating themselves.
[00:17:02]  That always goes well.
[00:17:03]  Always goes well.
[00:17:04]  It's always a great way to find out what happened.
[00:17:06]  Exactly.
[00:17:06]  And so we know, you know, and I was actually waiting for the police to be like, well, maybe with better training, this wouldn't have happened.
[00:17:16]  I'm surprised they didn't pivot to that.
[00:17:17]  I know.
[00:17:18]  I'm actually shocked that they haven't.
[00:17:19]  But you know what?
[00:17:20]  We are going to pivot to that because we should go back to the beginning and talk a little bit about this place, Cop City.
[00:17:27]  So Atlanta, right?
[00:17:28]  Have you ever been there, Liz?
[00:17:29]  Hotlanta?
[00:17:30]  Hotlanta.
[00:17:30]  I have not.
[00:17:31]  Really?
[00:17:32]  No.
[00:17:32]  Interesting.
[00:17:33]  Shout out to Jordan.
[00:17:35]  What's that?
[00:17:36]  Yeah.
[00:17:36]  Yeah.
[00:17:37]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:37]  Shout out to Jordan.
[00:17:38]  And, you know, shout out.
[00:17:41]  Well, we don't need to get into certain facilities there.
[00:17:44]  You got hoes in different area codes?
[00:17:46]  I'm just saying that there's a lot of really talented dancers there.
[00:17:51]  But I've been to Atlanta a few times.
[00:17:53]  Love Atlanta.
[00:17:55]  It's a great city.
[00:17:56]  Shout out to Anthony.
[00:17:58]  And Atlanta is also a place where they film a lot of movies now.
[00:18:02]  They do.
[00:18:03]  They do.
[00:18:04]  Marvel.
[00:18:05]  Is that where that happens?
[00:18:07]  I don't know why I've recorded it like that, but they have huge.
[00:18:10]  Can we clip that woman saying Marvel like that?
[00:18:13]  Put that in the background.
[00:18:14]  No, there's a ton of, there's a ton of like huge, I think they shot a lot of Marvel movies there.
[00:18:21]  Really?
[00:18:21]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:22]  I would assume those were kind of just a computer thing, but yeah, I guess that makes sense at Soundstage.
[00:18:27]  But, you know, there's cheap, that's the thing.
[00:18:29]  It's like, it's the same reason they shoot in like Canada and stuff.
[00:18:33]  There's cheaper labor.
[00:18:35]  And like, I'm sure that there's insane tax breaks and stuff like that.
[00:18:38]  I haven't looked into the tax breaks aspect, but I know Hollywood.
[00:18:41]  I know my people.
[00:18:42]  There's tax breaks.
[00:18:44]  So lots of studios have moved there recently, including, well, this wasn't exactly recent, but a studio that does have a lot there was Black Hall Studios.
[00:18:52]  Yes.
[00:18:53]  And they owned a parcel of land in what is called the Atlanta Forest.
[00:18:58]  And the city of Atlanta went to them and was like, let's make a deal.
[00:19:04]  We'll give you some publicly owned land if you give us this lot so we can make Cop City.
[00:19:11]  Yeah.
[00:19:11]  Little switcheroo.
[00:19:12]  Little switcheroo.
[00:19:13]  This happened in, I believe, early 2021.
[00:19:17]  So the Atlanta Forest, like we were saying, is a pretty big area, big urban forest.
[00:19:23]  And there'd actually been some plans prior, including plans drawn up for the city to make it into sort of like a wildlife sanctuary, like an urban green space, basically.
[00:19:36]  Yeah, so you mentioned that it's a big forest.

=== City Council's Green Plans (15:51) ===

[00:19:38]  It's a large forest.
[00:19:40]  It actually has like the highest percentage of what you'd call like urban tree canopy in the U.S., which makes it very valuable, not just as like for our lovely lungs and creating good clean air, but also like for developers.
[00:19:56]  Yeah.
[00:19:58]  This is like a very rich and dense forest, and it's been fought over by developers for decades and decades and decades.
[00:20:05]  The South River Forest, which is its name, was designated basically by Atlanta, like one of the city's lungs.
[00:20:13]  And back in like earlier, back in 2017, the city planning department had basically, they put a proposal forward to turn most of the park into a huge conservation corridor.
[00:20:27]  And they got the city council to adopt that plan, which I think they themselves were shocked by because, I mean, no offense, but I think like, you know, city planners, they don't think that their conservation plans are going to, you know, they're Good-hearted people that are always used to the stinky bureaucrats getting in their way.
[00:20:47]  You know how to appeal to me.
[00:20:48]  Yeah, I hate bureaucrats.
[00:20:49]  Yeah.
[00:20:50]  So the city council got that, they like agreed to adopt the plan, and 200 acres were basically approved for permanent preservation.
[00:20:58]  But then something strange happened.
[00:21:03]  Remember, Keisha Lance Bottoms?
[00:21:06]  That was a name I hadn't heard in a long time prior to doing the notes for this episode.
[00:21:11]  And I got to tell you, one of the craziest last names any human being has ever been.
[00:21:15]  Especially when you go into politics.
[00:21:18]  It's one of those things where you think, maybe change the name.
[00:21:21]  You get a hyphen in there.
[00:21:22]  Here's my thing, baby.
[00:21:23]  So you always go by Lance Bottoms?
[00:21:25]  You got, no, no.
[00:21:26]  There is a hyphen for Lance Bottoms, right?
[00:21:28]  There is.
[00:21:28]  Yes.
[00:21:29]  Oh, I don't have it in here.
[00:21:30]  Yeah, you're right.
[00:21:30]  You wrote it unhyphenated, but you know what?
[00:21:32]  there is a hyphen.
[00:21:34]  My thing is- So it's not Mare Bottoms?
[00:21:36]  It's- Well, you don't have to go by, if you've got a hyphenated last name, here's the thing.
[00:21:41]  And one of those ones is Bottoms.
[00:21:43]  You can drop that one.
[00:21:44]  Just go by Keisha.
[00:21:45]  Keisha Lance is a good name.
[00:21:47]  Yes.
[00:21:48]  That's a good mayor name.
[00:21:49]  Lance Bottoms?
[00:21:51]  Imagine I roll up to the studio.
[00:21:52]  I was like, guys, my name is Brace Bottoms.
[00:21:56]  That'd be fucking insane.
[00:21:58]  Your name is Mayor Ass.
[00:22:00]  Your mayor is Lance, Mayor Lance Ass.
[00:22:02]  And so I remember reading her name back in 2020.
[00:22:04]  Lance Bottoms.
[00:22:05]  Brace Bottoms.
[00:22:06]  I remember, that's what they used to call me at least.
[00:22:09]  Well, in jail.
[00:22:11]  And it's sort of a verb, too.
[00:22:13]  But, you know, Lance Bottoms always reminded me of somebody Lancing a, frankly, Lancing assist on their ass.
[00:22:23]  That's always what came to my mind.
[00:22:25]  Well, you're Mr. Boyles.
[00:22:26]  Mr. Boyles, that's true.
[00:22:28]  Susan Boyles, they call me.
[00:22:29]  But that's so whenever like she was, you know, giving this speech in 2020 about, oh, people are being mean to CNN in front of the headquarters, whatever.
[00:22:36]  Oh, right.
[00:22:37]  You know, that's what it always reminded me of.
[00:22:40]  Anyway, the lovely urban planners in the city planning department who were like, we're going to make this a conservation corridor and it's going to be a great park for everyone to enjoy.
[00:22:53]  Rongo, because Mayor Bottoms came in, swung her big ass around, and was like, no way, we're going to make a huge university for cops.
[00:23:04]  And this was still secret, right?
[00:23:06]  Basically until 2021.
[00:23:07]  They're like drawing up the plans.
[00:23:09]  They're like, and the plans are, by the way, outrageous.
[00:23:12]  I've seen them.
[00:23:12]  They're insane.
[00:23:14]  It literally has pictures of a school bus dropping off police to like a big campus.
[00:23:18]  It looks like the place where like, it's like where they, it looks like a community college for cops.
[00:23:23]  Yeah.
[00:23:24]  But in April of 2021, some activists, and this is, you know, who knows how they did it, but they basically discovered that these plans were in the works.
[00:23:32]  Yes.
[00:23:33]  Through either a leak or, you know, something happened, but they figured out that this was going to happen.
[00:23:39]  There are actually like excavators and stuff being taken there.
[00:23:44]  Like they're really setting up, this is before city council even votes on it.
[00:23:48]  But they're already setting up construction equipment.
[00:23:50]  Some of that construction.
[00:23:51]  Throughout the forest.
[00:23:52]  Throughout the forest, excavators and all that kind of stuff, fern gully shit.
[00:23:57]  And some of those things unfortunately spontaneously combust.
[00:24:03]  And about seven excavators are destroyed.
[00:24:06]  You're saying a bunch of machinery was destroyed.
[00:24:08]  Fern Gully style.
[00:24:09]  A bunch of forest animals came together and destroyed a bunch of machinery.
[00:24:12]  Sure.
[00:24:12]  But yeah, a bunch of machinery is destroyed.
[00:24:14]  And there's some signs that there will be some resistance to destroying large portions of this forest to put a police training academy in.
[00:24:23]  Right.
[00:24:25]  And, you know, there's also a communique that comes out called Whistling in the Forest that says that trees are being spiked, that there will be resistance to these sort of things.
[00:24:37]  And then there starts to be this sort of like campaign at farmers markets, et cetera, like people handing out flyers, being like, hey, did you know that they're planning on doing this like big cop city and they haven't really even announced it yet?
[00:24:49]  And in that June, city council member Joyce Shepard, which sounds like a video game character name, introduces legislation to build Cop City.
[00:24:59]  So basically she's like, all right, city council, we're going to vote on it.
[00:25:02]  We're going to make it official.
[00:25:03]  Yeah.
[00:25:04]  Most of the activism at this point is like dedicated to like swaying votes and being like, you know, it's the typical thing.
[00:25:09]  Like, you know, people don't want, you know, you're trying to pressure your city council member to basically take, to know, to vote no on this.
[00:25:18]  Yeah.
[00:25:18]  And usually, you know, when something like this comes up to city council, now you have some experience dealing with, you know, city council members of a different name, we'll say supervisors, supervisors and central scope.
[00:25:31]  But usually when big plans are put forth like this, there's a lot of, much to the chagrin of politicos because they hate the public, but there's usually a period of robust debate where the public can come in and comment and can say like actually how they feel about it and can try and sway a little bit some of these, you know, some of these council members.
[00:25:58]  They only allowed 17 hours of public comment for the Cop City before the Cop City vote.
[00:26:04]  And hold your horses there, foreigners, because I know some guy in Germany is like, 17 hours, that sounds like so long.
[00:26:12]  Let me tell you, you ever been to a public comment on something?
[00:26:16]  17 hours is fucking nothing.
[00:26:19]  That's nothing.
[00:26:20]  Sometimes in the redistricting in San Francisco, days.
[00:26:23]  Sheila can go for just 17 hours.
[00:26:26]  Yeah, there's people who all they do is public comment.
[00:26:28]  And so once you get those people out of the way and have actual regular people in there publicly commenting, I mean, listen, a lot of those public comments, in fact, I would say it was something like 70% were against Cop City.
[00:26:41]  Yeah, 70% were negative.
[00:26:43]  And they came from over 1,100 individual Atlanta residents.
[00:26:46]  Joyce Shepard said, listen, I'm voting yes on this no matter fucking what.
[00:26:50]  This is my bill.
[00:26:51]  I don't care if my constituents are against this.
[00:26:53]  She is no longer in office.
[00:26:55]  And it ends up passing in September on a 10 to 4 vote.
[00:26:59]  Yeah.
[00:27:00]  So it's 4 against, 10, 4.
[00:27:02]  We got to say, this was supported heavily, heavily by Ms. Mayor Bottoms.
[00:27:08]  Oh, yeah.
[00:27:08]  So, I mean, all right.
[00:27:10]  Again, this is happening in September of 2021.
[00:27:13]  Recall 2020, right?
[00:27:16]  Big protests, you know, George Floyd murals everywhere.
[00:27:19]  Everyone's, you know, like, we're going to defund the police and all this stuff.
[00:27:22]  This led me to, or this not led me to, this led a lot of mayors to making promises that in retrospect, and frankly at the time also seemed absurd, right?
[00:27:36]  So anytime we ever read like, or we do a story on anywhere that has like a Democrat mayor is like, if you look back to like a statement they would have made in June 2020, all of them say that they're pledging to defund the police.
[00:27:51]  Right, right, right.
[00:27:51]  Mayor Kesha Lance Bottoms, no different.
[00:27:53]  Not only was she going to defund the police, they were going to close the jail.
[00:27:58]  You know what?
[00:27:58]  I don't even have to look at the notes for this.
[00:28:00]  Didn't fucking happen.
[00:28:01]  No, no.
[00:28:02]  Not only did they increase the police budget by 15% that very month, the jail is, of course, three years later, still not closed, but they did say that they're on their way to closing it by adding a diversion program to the ground floor, which diversion programs are present in many jails.
[00:28:21]  So I'm not sure why that is.
[00:28:24]  You're still going to jail.
[00:28:27]  Anyways, after that happens, the vote loses.
[00:28:30]  A bunch of people are like, well, fuck, I don't know what to do next.
[00:28:32]  Now, one thing I want to mention to you is that, so technically, where Cop City will be is actually in unincorporated DeKalb County, which is a very small county, which means it's like not within Atlanta city limits.
[00:28:49]  But because of the quirk of the law, they don't, and because they're unincorporated, they don't actually get any say in the development.
[00:28:56]  Yeah.
[00:28:57]  So the development wasn't actually subject to any local approval by anyone in DeKalb County.
[00:29:04]  Yeah, I know.
[00:29:05]  That's the kind of, that's the kind of funny little loophole about it.
[00:29:08]  Unincorporated areas are so weird.
[00:29:10]  I don't understand how that works.
[00:29:11]  It's total bullshit.
[00:29:12]  Yeah.
[00:29:12]  Yeah.
[00:29:13]  I mean, it's a poor county that's 70% black.
[00:29:16]  I mean, it's just total bullshit.
[00:29:17]  They don't have any representation.
[00:29:18]  From what I understand is that around the forest too, I mean, because like this is like, you know, this is an area that's like actually has a bunch of people living around it.
[00:29:28]  Like we were saying.
[00:29:29]  Yeah, there's like poor black neighborhoods, poor white neighborhoods, but it's mostly just poor neighborhoods, except for one section, I think.
[00:29:36]  Yeah, and because like this is how this is all structured and because of this like odd quirk in local law, like the residents of the county that this is in actually have no legal recourse to stop this.
[00:29:47]  It's pretty, it's pretty absurd.
[00:29:49]  Yeah.
[00:29:50]  I mean, there are people who are putting up a lot of roadblocks because anybody involved in city politics knows that you can actually get things delayed.
[00:29:58]  That's one thing that you can do as an activist is delay things a lot of the time.
[00:30:15]  Anyway, so it's going to go ahead and this sort of starts phase two of kind of the campaign against Cop City.
[00:30:23]  Yeah, protesters have basically been demonstrating against all this development.
[00:30:29]  I mean, I'd say since like July, June, July of 2021, the members of the Atlanta forest movement kind of start also getting involved.
[00:30:40]  And they start building treehouses, they start climbing trees, they're building like, you know, structures, encampments to stop developers from coming in and cutting down the forest to make way for the, what was it called?
[00:30:54]  The Diversity Center?
[00:30:56]  What is it?
[00:30:56]  No, the Institute for Social Justice lives.
[00:30:59]  Jesus fucking Christ.
[00:31:00]  You and I went there.
[00:31:02]  We went to the Tennessee modern.
[00:31:03]  We went to the Memphis branch.
[00:31:06]  Yeah, and they start spiking trees too.
[00:31:08]  And for those of you, and that's why, like, you and I were talking about this a few days ago, a lot of the environmental activism in this really brings back a lot of sort of stuff.
[00:31:20]  I'm not going to say memories because I wasn't there, but like a historical memory of like the 80s and 90s and sort of late 70s and that sort of heyday of really like boots on the ground, like hardcore environmental activism.
[00:31:35]  Because there wasn't really a green movement back then.
[00:31:37]  There was like people, you know, there was like environmentalists and then there was like ELF kind of people.
[00:31:43]  I mean, I think in the past couple of decades or a decade or so, you've seen more and more of this, right?
[00:31:47]  We've had obviously Standing Rock.
[00:31:50]  Yeah.
[00:31:51]  Line 3, there was the Bayou Bridge actions.
[00:31:55]  So there's been more of this kind of occupation-led or like occupation-type actions and stuff like that.
[00:32:04]  That's been happening.
[00:32:05]  Yeah, I mean, there was also the Zod protests in France that were pretty big with the encampments.
[00:32:12]  And actually, there was a kid there who was killed.
[00:32:16]  It was a huge scandal.
[00:32:20]  I was telling you about it the other day.
[00:32:21]  Was like one of the you know the French, they of course the Gendarmerie, they used those fucking shrapnel yeah grenades, and one was thrown and got caught in his hoodie yeah, and I'm just gonna end it there and I mean protests erupted all throughout France.
[00:32:42]  This is during the Hollande presidency, but I mean but.
[00:32:48]  But something that I've always known and sort of grown up knowing is that, like there's a certain hardcore of like of environmental activists that are like guys you do not mess with you know what I mean like people who will like go do stuff that like there is almost no other equivalent in, like American activism or whatever, and tree spiking is a part of that.
[00:33:10]  I mean, tree spiking is where you put either like some piece of metal or some ceramic or something like that into a tree, basically at the level that it would be cut down in, and the intention there isn't to injure somebody cutting it down.
[00:33:23]  The intent there is to basically put up a sign and be like this, these trees are basically mined.
[00:33:29]  You can't cut these motherfuckers down.
[00:33:31]  Yeah, because when you cut them down, like there's a chance that it will fuck up your saw or fuck you up, and then okay, even if you do get it down and you're fucking, you're sending it to the.
[00:33:40]  You know, the sawmill like that will fuck up the operation there because it'll hit a piece of metal.
[00:33:46]  Um, you know, you're putting yourself in trees.
[00:33:48]  I think there was something like this in the Pacific Northwest actually a couple of years ago too but, like you know, people chain themselves to trees and stuff like that.
[00:33:54]  That wasn't what was happening here at the chaining but, like you know environmental, that sort of that, that tendency of environmental action uh, was a really big deal to the FBI too.
[00:34:05]  Yeah, for sure.
[00:34:06]  Uh, and those people famously yeah, and like, those people were sort of really branded as, like these are like actual domestic terrorists and all that sort of things.
[00:34:15]  You know there was raids on a lot of makeup facilities too, a lot of animal testing facilities.
[00:34:21]  Uh, you know well, I guess that would be the a LF freeing of bunnies, exactly I know which is what a noble type of terrorism right, you know, getting those little guys out of there, but yeah so, like you're saying, people move into the forest right yeah, and so they've got that kind of base of operations there, but then they really start kind of going after the contractors, Contractors that are involved in all this.
[00:34:48]  Because something to keep in mind is like the cops, I mean, they're cops.
[00:34:51]  Like, they can't dig a hole and like put a stake in.
[00:34:55]  You know what I mean?
[00:34:56]  Like, they obviously are contracting these services out.
[00:34:59]  Right.
[00:35:00]  And one of the big ones was called Reeves Young.
[00:35:03]  And after about five actions, including going to the CEO's house and all that kind of stuff, Reeves Young actually drops out of the project.
[00:35:11]  And they're like, you know what?
[00:35:12]  This is too much to deal with.
[00:35:14]  We don't want to fuck with this anymore.
[00:35:16]  Too much of a headache.
[00:35:18]  And this sets into motion a lot of stuff.
[00:35:21]  You know, the movement grows a lot at this point.
[00:35:24]  And they start going after subcontractors, trying to get them to drop off, you know, convincing them through various means.

=== Axios and the Chamber of Commerce (04:49) ===

[00:35:30]  And eventually a new construction company called Brassville and Gori comes in.
[00:35:34]  They're less easily cowed, but the board of directors, docs, and all that kind of stuff.
[00:35:39]  And at this point, cops are escorting in construction workers.
[00:35:42]  And so this is really sort of reminiscent of like Iraq or something like that.
[00:35:45]  You know what I mean?
[00:35:46]  Like armed patrols, basically with construction workers.
[00:35:50]  And when those armed patrols would come in the forest, people would throw, like basically would ambush the police during those.
[00:35:55]  They would throw rocks at them and shoot fireworks off at them.
[00:35:58]  And then when the police would come in without construction workers, just as like to do patrols, like, you know, basically arrest people or snatch people, they didn't end up, there was no ambush or anything like that.
[00:36:09]  People would just like hang back.
[00:36:12]  And all construction essentially stops.
[00:36:15]  But at the same time, the people who are actually building Cop City, the organization behind it, really starts ramping up this sort of propaganda campaign.
[00:36:26]  So can you tell me about the people who are building Cop City?
[00:36:29]  Well, one of the big shadowy nonprofits, we'll say, that we know that's really behind pushing this is the Atlanta Police Foundation, which was established in 2003 and is basically, you know, backed and funded by, I would say, a who's who of Georgia Corporate Power.
[00:36:51]  So you've got UPS, Home Depot, Equifax, Delta, of course, Bank of America.
[00:36:56]  I think the CEO of Waffle House is on there too.
[00:36:58]  He is, or she is.
[00:37:00]  They are.
[00:37:02]  Yeah.
[00:37:02]  I mean, it's just, you know, there's a lot of corporate power in Georgia itself, right?
[00:37:07]  Yeah.
[00:37:09]  There is, it seems like it is just one of many different nonprofits that are shells of other nonprofits that are shells of other nonprofits that if you were to kind of connect all of them, go back to very just sinister billionaires, basically what we're saying.
[00:37:27]  Yeah, totally.
[00:37:27]  I mean, these like foundations and like every, I feel like every big police department or medium police department has them or even small police department has them.
[00:37:35]  And it's also just like a way for corporations to just give money to the cops.
[00:37:38]  Yeah.
[00:37:39]  They also, I mean, as just like a public-facing thing, they've written op-eds in the Atlanta Journal Constitution like over and over.
[00:37:46]  There was one that was like the sometimes messy but inexorable march to public safety.
[00:37:53]  And my understanding with Atlanta is that the kind of north neighborhoods, I believe it's the north neighborhoods, are very wealthy.
[00:38:02]  So much so that they have been petitioning to like be removed from the city, basically.
[00:38:10]  I remember reading something about that a while ago.
[00:38:12]  Yeah, that they're like kind of like, you got to let us, you know, secede, basically.
[00:38:17]  There's never something you want to hear from anyone in the South.
[00:38:20]  You guys are done seceding.
[00:38:21]  They should make you into one big state down there.
[00:38:24]  But the South is very different.
[00:38:26]  The southern part of the city is then very different.
[00:38:29]  And so the kind of reactions to this stuff and who wants this stuff and who is against, you know, against the building of Cop City and who's more like, well, I'm just for like sensible law and order, aka more cops, more prisons, more money to these, you know, disgusting organizations.
[00:38:45]  That's like in the North.
[00:38:47]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:47]  And in the wealthy middle class.
[00:38:49]  Something that I also have kind of read about a little bit and has been explained to me a little bit about sort of the, what's called the Atlanta Way, which is like there is a pretty like distinct political machine in that town as well that like is sort of sees itself.
[00:39:06]  And you know what?
[00:39:06]  I got to be honest with you guys.
[00:39:07]  Atlanta, love you, love the Carbonas, but this is not unique to Atlanta.
[00:39:13]  I feel like every major and medium city has this and probably small city as well.
[00:39:17]  Every city has this, which is like a group of like political leaders who maybe have some foundations, you know, or, you know, the, what are those, what are those clubs they always used to have?
[00:39:27]  You know what I'm talking about?
[00:39:28]  Rotary clubs?
[00:39:29]  It's not the fucking Rotary Club.
[00:39:31]  It's like the financial thing.
[00:39:32]  Why can't I remember this?
[00:39:33]  I slept two hours last night.
[00:39:35]  Chamber of Commerce?
[00:39:35]  Chamber of Goddamn Commerce type of people.
[00:39:37]  Oh, there's lots of those.
[00:39:39]  But like, you know, it's like they sort of view themselves as like the people who sort of keep the peace and keep the town run, right?
[00:39:45]  And that's a big part of this as well.
[00:39:47]  Yeah.
[00:39:48]  It should be noted, too, that one of the people or one of the organizations involved with Cop City and with the Atlanta Police Foundation is Cox Enterprises.
[00:40:02]  Yeah.
[00:40:03]  Too, which is, you'll never catch me fucking name my company that.
[00:40:06]  That's crazy.
[00:40:07]  Yeah.
[00:40:08]  They also own, they own the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
[00:40:10]  Yes.
[00:40:11]  So they own the local newspaper there.
[00:40:13]  Yes.
[00:40:13]  Not always expressed when running stories about Cop City or op-eds about Cop City.

=== Axios Paints Forest Dwellers as Criminals (03:35) ===

[00:40:20]  Sometimes they do.
[00:40:21]  Sometimes they do not.
[00:40:23]  And they also own, what is this?
[00:40:27]  Axios, Liz?
[00:40:29]  Yeah, they own Axios.
[00:40:30]  Who is Axios for?
[00:40:32]  I don't know.
[00:40:33]  It's for people who are like, just give me the headlines.
[00:40:35]  It's just the headline.
[00:40:36]  No, you know what?
[00:40:37]  But then also they have a show in HBO, I think.
[00:40:40]  They used to.
[00:40:40]  That one British fella, or maybe he's Australian, but it's, I will say, Axios isn't just the headlines.
[00:40:47]  It's also the headlines and then the subheader.
[00:40:49]  That's all Axios stories are just a series of subheaders.
[00:40:53]  Yeah, I'm not sure who that's for.
[00:40:55]  Anyways, cut to December, about a month ago, right?
[00:40:59]  And the police start giving press conferences and putting out statements describing a whole host of really insane activities that they're saying that the forest dwellers are getting up to.
[00:41:11]  So, as something I have been, you know, in my independent investigations have found, is that a lot of what the forest dwellers were getting up to is they were living in the forest and they were having like preschool teachers come out and like bring kids around and like they were kind of just like living there and then when they would cops would come in, they would hide, or if the cops came in with contractors, they would attack the cops but not really doing much outside of the forest.
[00:41:38]  There the police are like they're burning down people's houses, you know they're.
[00:41:42]  They're breaking into cars.
[00:41:44]  Uh, they're.
[00:41:45]  Essentially what they're doing is they're laying the foundation to paint this as a as a criminal conspiracy of domestic terrorism.
[00:41:51]  Right, and so they're actually like they're being smart right there because they're they're trying to paint this in the public eye as being like these are crazy motherfuckers out in the woods right here who will burn down your house because they love trees.
[00:42:04]  Um, mid-december they raid the camp and arrest five people and charge them with domestic terrorism.
[00:42:11]  That's pretty major.
[00:42:12]  Yeah, those are big charges.
[00:42:14]  Big charges, um and uh.
[00:42:17]  That I would say was probably to scare people into leaving the camp.
[00:42:22]  Sure you know what I mean.
[00:42:23]  Like that would separate like sort of anybody who's like well, I don't know if I really want to get arrested for domestic terrorism into into splitting and then um cut to uh last week and the raid uh where where the police shot Torteguita um, and now they have basically cleared many people out of the forest, although there are still people living there, sort of definitely the more like hardcore, very militant people that are living there uh,
[00:42:52]  and they also released a list of weapons that they confiscated from the forest, which are absurd, multi-edged weapons kerosene, gas masks, etc.
[00:43:04]  And the lawyers uh involved in this uh on the forest uh, the forest people side uh were able to find out that multi-wedged, multi-edged weapon did not in fact mean shrieken or ninja star uh, but meant scissors uh and kerosene uh, which you would expect.
[00:43:22]  You know sort of the expectation there is, they're building explosives or they have gas to let people's house on fire.
[00:43:27]  That was a camp stove, And so here we are.
[00:43:32]  There's still been no ground broken really on Cop City, but it is, they are planning on putting this state-of-the-art $90 million training center right in these urban woods.

=== Policing's Training Ground (15:08) ===

[00:43:55]  Well, let's talk about what this place is, because we've been kind of talking around it, right?
[00:44:00]  It's basically a fake city.
[00:44:02]  Oh, yeah.
[00:44:03]  Like you said, kind of like a Google campus.
[00:44:07]  Like a Google campus.
[00:44:09]  For cops.
[00:44:10]  So $90 million project, 85-acre center.
[00:44:15]  Mentioned the mock city.
[00:44:16]  There's firing range.
[00:44:17]  There's an explosive facility.
[00:44:20]  And then, of course, the Cop Academy, the Institute for Social Justice.
[00:44:25]  To kind of compare just a little bit, the NYPD Training Academy is a 32-acre campus, and the LAPD is about 20 acres.
[00:44:35]  So this is significantly larger.
[00:44:38]  Yeah.
[00:44:39]  So much larger that I think it is worth asking what the fuck is going on there.
[00:44:46]  Well, I will say one of the reasons that they said that Mayrakesha Lance Bottoms has said or and since politicians have said is that a big reason they're building this is for police morale.
[00:44:59]  What?
[00:45:00]  Yeah.
[00:45:01]  Why?
[00:45:01]  Do you remember all those posts?
[00:45:04]  I don't know.
[00:45:04]  Like for a Google thing, like they take the Google thing to heart and they're like, you know what cops need?
[00:45:09]  They need like Fro Yo.
[00:45:11]  Fro Yo.
[00:45:12]  They need like ping pong.
[00:45:13]  Yeah, team building happy hours.
[00:45:15]  The day in my life as an Atlanta police officer, wake up at 6.45 and have my bloom greens.
[00:45:23]  I don't know what else.
[00:45:23]  I never watch those videos more than that.
[00:45:25]  I don't know anything.
[00:45:27]  It's crazy, though, because I do be waking up at 6.45 and have my bloom greens.
[00:45:32]  I don't know, but it looks like something that gives you diarrhea.
[00:45:35]  I genuinely don't know, though.
[00:45:38]  So, you know, obviously, like, you know, they've got the firing ranges there, which by the way, you know, I'm no expert on this stuff, but like the Atlanta Forest is like, again, like a big, pretty big green environment in this city, right?
[00:45:53]  And Atlanta is like less hot.
[00:45:56]  This is how it was explained to me.
[00:45:57]  It's like, has more temperate temperatures than other parts of Georgia because of how much greenery is around it.
[00:46:03]  Makes sense.
[00:46:06]  I got to tell you, I don't know if having an outdoor shooting range is like really great for the environment out there.
[00:46:11]  But it's one thing though is that like, and this is something that I have always kind of been into.
[00:46:18]  You know, I love reading about weird cop shit and training and all that kind of stuff because they get up to some really funky shit.
[00:46:28]  The fake city aspect of it is really interesting to me because they're trying to play part of it off as firefighter training.
[00:46:36]  And they are going to have a burnhouse, like those big, like that one on the mission.
[00:46:39]  You guys see that one?
[00:46:41]  That's where firefighters go and then they like run up the stairs and they like put out fires.
[00:46:46]  Cheat on their wives.
[00:46:47]  I'm just describing it for them.
[00:46:49]  No, that's where they cheat on their wives.
[00:46:51]  I don't know if that's a thing about firefighters, but I'm assuming they do that.
[00:46:54]  It seems like the kind of guys who would.
[00:46:56]  But they're also building basically a fake city for the police to train in.
[00:47:02]  Yeah, a huge fake city that they could train in.
[00:47:05]  Interestingly enough, I want to say the Atlantic Press Collective, which I give a shout out to them.
[00:47:10]  They've been doing great work on all this and on the history of the Atlanta Prison Farm, which is the site where a lot of this is going to take place, or a lot of Cop City is going to be built.
[00:47:23]  They are saying that 40% of the cops to be trained at Cop City, they got their hands on some internal documents, are from out of state.
[00:47:32]  So basically, what they posit is that this center is going to function as a national and international training center.
[00:47:39]  Yeah.
[00:47:39]  Where, and this is a quote from them, law enforcement agencies from different states and possibly countries would develop and share violent policing tactics, the likes of which have most recently led to the deaths of Keenan Anderson, Tyree Nichols, and Manuel Tortuguita Tehran.
[00:47:56]  And, you know, there is a really robust history of U.S. cops kind of basically using centers in the states, but also then internationally to share and expand and test out policing activities before kind of bringing it home and training police elsewhere.
[00:48:18]  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:48:20]  I know famously, actually, a lot of police go and train.
[00:48:23]  I think we've actually covered this on the show before, go and train in Israel.
[00:48:28]  And one might wonder why American police are training in a country that is probably most famous for occupying a place, like, you know, classic barbed wire and electric machine guns attached to remote controllers.
[00:48:43]  Occupation, it's basically because they're training them in counterinsurgency.
[00:48:48]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:48:49]  I mean, Stuart Schrader, who he wrote his book called, I thought I was reading Badges Without Borders.
[00:48:55]  Yeah.
[00:48:56]  He has a great quote in that where he says, across the globe, counterinsurgency was policing.
[00:49:00]  At home, policing was counterinsurgency.
[00:49:02]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:49:03]  And I think in that book, he kind of traces a lot of the what he calls the professionalization of the police, which comes out of a lot of the reforms from the Kerner, the Kerner Commission, after the uprisings in Harlem and Detroit and Newark that like freaked the Johnson administration outside.
[00:49:23]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:49:26]  He says that basically, or he just kind of gives this history of that the cops, that the police, you know, the American police basically were intent on professionalizing themselves.
[00:49:36]  And it's in that process that, you know, all of these kind of police force recommendations, they get exported throughout the globe.
[00:49:47]  Yeah.
[00:49:48]  Basically, we test it out in Nicaragua, in Brazil, in the Philippines.
[00:49:51]  I mean, stuff that even we've talked about with, I mean, in episodes with Vince Bevins, for example.
[00:49:58]  Michael Judge.
[00:49:59]  Absolutely.
[00:49:59]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:50:01]  And a lot of this would take place at, you know, institutes that were similar, very much in scope to what is being built and planned for in Cop City.
[00:50:14]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:50:14]  So, I mean, famously, the 60s had a lot of pretty crazy riots.
[00:50:19]  I think on a level above what we saw in 2020, like significant stuff.
[00:50:26]  Full-on shootouts and stuff.
[00:50:28]  There was the myth sort of of the sniper that was like always around.
[00:50:32]  Like, you know, there was a sort of police.
[00:50:34]  Police are really into, like all sort of soldiers are really into mythologies, right?
[00:50:40]  And like there was this mythology that arose in the 60s of the urban, mostly black, often black panther, sniper, sort of sitting at like, you know, at a crossroads waiting for the police to come by and they'd pick him off.
[00:50:52]  This became a big thing.
[00:50:53]  I mean, the IRA actually did do that.
[00:50:55]  I'm sure that this did happen a few times in the 1960s.
[00:50:59]  But there were pretty big, like basically urban pitched battles between like the National Guard and police and then like residents of slums.
[00:51:08]  Yeah, and a lot of the response to that was basically, shit, the National Guard and the military cannot be trusted with this kind of, you know, they have no idea what the fuck they're doing, you know, especially after Kent State, right?
[00:51:23]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:24]  We need to put this back in the hands of local police and train them more effectively.
[00:51:30]  And that was the decision that got made under Johnson.
[00:51:33]  Yeah.
[00:51:34]  And it's in that process that the police then gets reformed into kind of the big, like, you know, in the force that we know it is today.
[00:51:46]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:47]  Like the semi-militarized like force whose duties include what you would think of as traditional policing, but also essentially counterinsurgency, right?
[00:51:55]  Yeah, and the police themselves were really drivers of this.
[00:51:59]  Yeah.
[00:52:00]  So they were going to, you know, the politicians and to the Johnson administration and to all of this and petitioning on behalf of their own organizations saying, we want this training.
[00:52:10]  We want, you know, we'll take more of a role in this.
[00:52:12]  All of this, you know, we are seeing what our quote-unquote police forces that we're training overseas are doing.
[00:52:19]  They're doing so well to manage the communist uprisings in, for example, Jakarta.
[00:52:25]  Yeah.
[00:52:26]  What if we were able to do that kind of training at home?
[00:52:29]  And so there was like a back and forth between these both at home and abroad, right?
[00:52:35]  He puts it that Stuart Schrader, he puts it this way in the book, and I think this is a great way to understand it.
[00:52:40]  Police in this situation were not passive recipients of demands from above, but actively made demands on lawmakers and fought political battles against the limits of their activities.
[00:52:49]  They shifted the meaning of crime itself through reference to emergent forms of social and political protest.
[00:52:56]  And that's kind of what we would understand as like the reification of crime, right?
[00:52:59]  How we understand crime then changes based on how it's being defined and redefined as new forms of social protest emerge.
[00:53:11]  Absolutely.
[00:53:11]  And I think that like, again, like something that really strikes me are these domestic terrorism charges against the people at Cop City, right?
[00:53:21]  And it seems to really be like, okay, the police are way above their remit with this.
[00:53:27]  You know what I mean?
[00:53:29]  And I think that's a result essentially of like, I mean, that is something like the FBI would be stringing you up on phony domestic terrorism charges, even like 20 years ago.
[00:53:40]  And it seems pretty absurd and pretty, you know, like a counterinsurgency tool that they're using here.
[00:53:47]  Absolutely.
[00:54:00]  So one of those guys that Schrader points to as being a real shaper of how we understand professionalized policing to this day was a guy named Byron Engle.
[00:54:17]  who was a CIA operative, we should say, and director of the Office of Public Safety.
[00:54:22]  Great.
[00:54:23]  Oh, yeah.
[00:54:24]  He had a great quote here.
[00:54:26]  This is from Byron Engel.
[00:54:27]  The communists have long experience in utilizing disturbances, riots, terrorism, as political action tools.
[00:54:34]  As a consequence, we have put a lot of emphasis on non-lethal riot control.
[00:54:39]  We have found that there are many principles and concepts which apply, whether it is in Asia, Africa, or South America.
[00:54:45]  Perhaps those same principles would apply in the United States.
[00:54:50]  And I saw your little eyebrows raised when I said the Office of Public Safety, because the OPS is a really interesting organization that got shut down thanks to a lot of public protest in I think it was the early 70s.
[00:55:04]  Maybe a little bit.
[00:55:05]  Talked about that on the show before, or about the organization on the show before, but I can't remember in what context.
[00:55:11]  So the OPS basically assisted police forces in at least that we know 52 countries and officers from 77 countries would come to attend its training academy fully funded by USAID and the CIA.
[00:55:25]  Yeah.
[00:55:26]  And, you know, we should talk a little bit about this academy.
[00:55:30]  Basically, the beginning of the 50s, the CIA was training overseas, you know, foreign police officers, like, you know, in their own countries, basically like on an ad hoc basis.
[00:55:43]  Yeah.
[00:55:44]  And by the mid-50s, the NSC starts calling for permanent police assistance.
[00:55:50]  And so it starts to get institutionalized in D.C. All this, there's a bunch of reorganization, whatever.
[00:55:57]  It all basically comes under the aegeas of our favorite, you know them, you love them, USAID.
[00:56:03]  We love USAID.
[00:56:04]  Shout out.
[00:56:05]  Shout out to our founders.
[00:56:07]  Our funders and our founders.
[00:56:08]  We love you.
[00:56:09]  You guys are great.
[00:56:10]  So they opened this thing called the International Police Academy, which is in, yeah, great.
[00:56:16]  I graduated summa cum laude from that motherfucker.
[00:56:20]  That's in Washington, D.C. in 1963.
[00:56:24]  OPS runs the entire place.
[00:56:29]  They are out of this international police academy.
[00:56:33]  They're training paramilitary forces in riot control.
[00:56:35]  They're training counter guerrilla action.
[00:56:37]  They're training in surveillance.
[00:56:39]  And, you know, officers from Honduras, Jakarta, Brazil, Vietnam, you name it, they're there.
[00:56:45]  So you could basically say this is like the policing version of something like the School of the Americas.
[00:56:51]  Absolutely.
[00:56:52]  Yeah, 100%.
[00:56:53]  I just understand because if they're teaching you the best way to tear out a guy's fingernails, couldn't they centralize into like one place?
[00:57:00]  They basically, I mean, kind of.
[00:57:02]  They kind of did.
[00:57:03]  Yeah.
[00:57:03]  Right?
[00:57:04]  I mean, advisors were designing and testing universally applicable policing technologies overseas and then bringing them home.
[00:57:13]  Gotcha.
[00:57:16]  You know, some of this training included riot training, right?
[00:57:21]  Yeah.
[00:57:22]  And that starts to happen early on at Fort Belvoir and Fort Gordon.
[00:57:28]  And it culminates in the building of this huge staging area called Riotsville, which is similar but smaller to what it looks like Cop City is going to be.
[00:57:39]  Yes.
[00:57:39]  So I've seen the documentary.
[00:57:42]  Yeah, I haven't seen that.
[00:57:43]  Riotsville, USA.
[00:57:44]  I think it's on Netflix, Stream Me.
[00:57:46]  I saw it in a movie theater.
[00:57:47]  That's crazy.
[00:57:48]  You see so many more movies.
[00:57:50]  So this is something that I knew we couldn't get away from.
[00:57:52]  No matter how this, because when I told you this, there was a pause and then you were like, I see a lot of movies.
[00:57:57]  No, because you said you saw the other movie yesterday.
[00:58:00]  What other movie?
[00:58:01]  Everywhere, everything, all the time, or whatever it's called.
[00:58:05]  Yeah.
[00:58:06]  First of all, pause.
[00:58:08]  Second of all, I will say Riotsville, USA, significantly superior to that.
[00:58:12]  I'm just saying, I can't believe you saw that movie.
[00:58:14]  Yeah, I had nothing to do.
[00:58:16]  It was like a Thursday.
[00:58:17]  That's what I'm saying.
[00:58:18]  You see a lot of movies.
[00:58:19]  That was like eight months ago.
[00:58:21]  That was probably the last.
[00:58:22]  No, we're not getting into this.
[00:58:24]  I just found out about this movie.
[00:58:26]  I pee-wee hermed my way out of that movie theme.
[00:58:29]  All right, all right, all right, all right.
[00:58:30]  I thought that that movie was too hella random for me.
[00:58:33]  I will say that.
[00:58:34]  Oh, but what?
[00:58:36]  It was Rick and Morgan.
[00:58:37]  As someone who doesn't know anything about this movie, I have no idea what you're talking about.
[00:58:41]  Anyways, yes, so I saw the movie and I actually had known, I was interested in it because I knew I like going to see a documentary.
[00:58:49]  I'm like, I know a thing or two about this.
[00:58:51]  It's all archival footage.
[00:58:52]  There's no talking heads or anything like that.
[00:58:53]  It'll be really interesting to see.
[00:58:55]  So I went and saw it.
[00:58:56]  I did.
[00:58:58]  The movie itself, I got to be honest with you, dragged for me in portions.
[00:59:03]  It got a little too artsy.

=== Archival Footage Reveals Training (02:33) ===

[00:59:04]  But it's all archival footage.
[00:59:05]  It's all archival, except for some of the artsy parts.
[00:59:07]  But yes, it's all archival footage.
[00:59:09]  I will say it was really fascinating because this is something that like, if you pay attention at all to like how militaries train or how police train or anything like this, the fake city is a major component of that.
[00:59:23]  And that's something I got really into like a couple years ago of just looking up like these more insane like training bases that people were using because some of them get really intense.
[00:59:33]  They'll make like whole fake villages and all that kind of stuff.
[00:59:38]  And obviously every couple years, some like racist photographs escape from this place of like a 19-year-old white guy dressed as in like full hijab.
[00:59:48]  The movie basically like shows how this place was built and then it shows the actual demonstrations that they used during these things.
[00:59:57]  Like they would have some soldiers play anti-Vietnam War protesters and then they would have those soldiers essentially fight MPs or other soldiers.
[01:00:09]  And there was only so there was I know other people use the facility, but there was only footage of American soldiers and National Guard training on it, probably for various reasons that one can imagine.
[01:00:20]  And they would have like full-scale riots and like, you know, they would have the police in there.
[01:00:24]  Actually, it's sort of crazy footage to see because it really looks like what you would see of like a military takeover, like full-on military control of America with like Jeeps lining up with like, you know, young black guys and like who are soldiers in handcuffs and like putting them all back there, you know, beating people into the back of trucks and stuff like that.
[01:00:43]  It's really sort of like jarring to see.
[01:00:48]  And like, you know, it's this sort of ruthlessness.
[01:00:50]  And it's these same techniques that these soldiers, if they were deployed to Vietnam, would use on, you know, Vietnamese people in cities or in farms and something like that.
[01:00:59]  You know, this sort of this domestic, or excuse me, at that point, it would be international counterinsurgency program.
[01:01:05]  That's what they were training.
[01:01:06]  Yeah, and we should say that like counterinsurgency too is not just like physically fighting back.
[01:01:13]  And that actually a ton of counterinsurgency training is focused on intelligence gathering and identifying leaders of dissident groups and how like operational, like what their operational techniques are in terms of communication and how to kind of figure out who's who and what's what.

=== Linking Police Repression (03:45) ===

[01:01:37]  Like I think so much is kind of, at least, you know, when you have in your head, like, okay, you've got a mock city, it's just, oh, it's just the cops practicing how to brutalize people.
[01:01:45]  And yes, absolutely.
[01:01:48]  Yeah.
[01:01:48]  But the flip side of that is also the more, I don't know how to, like, brain-intensive work.
[01:01:55]  Work.
[01:01:55]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:01:56]  That's not the right way to put it.
[01:01:58]  But like, no, but like, yeah, thinking, the thinking cops work, where it's actually like trying to figure out how to either embed yourself or how to actually get in the protesters' heads or anticipate what kind of moves they're going to make before they make them.
[01:02:15]  Yeah.
[01:02:15]  And that's such a, I just think that's such an important technology of the police to highlight because it's often, I mean, it can be, if someone's good at that.
[01:02:29]  Oh, yeah.
[01:02:29]  You know, your days are numbered.
[01:02:45]  So I gave them a shout out already, but I'm going to link to them in the notes.
[01:02:50]  And I want to, again, give them a shout out, which is the Atlanta Press Collective, because they've been doing really good work on compiling a lot of histories and goings on of what's happening.
[01:03:02]  Yeah.
[01:03:03]  Both like, you know, kind of the internal political inner workings and some of the organizations that are pulling the strings.
[01:03:12]  And I just want to support the work they're doing.
[01:03:15]  Yeah, there's also the independent investigation is being done through ATL Solidarity, which is, I guess, a lawyer's group, but it's ATL Solidarity.org, and they're trying to get together an independent investigation into the shooting of Torguita.
[01:03:30]  But this is a developing story, right?
[01:03:33]  So by the time this episode comes out, other stuff may have happened as well.
[01:03:37]  For sure.
[01:03:38]  And there is also a website, which I don't know if it's legal for us to link to, so I will not link to it, but I found it very amusing that did have the names of addresses of all the police who were involved in this sort of thing and a cop of the week kind of thing about the repression of the forest.
[01:03:57]  So that was interesting to see, just as a journalist.
[01:04:01]  I don't know if we mentioned that they arrested six protesters this past weekend and hit them with domestic terrorism.
[01:04:09]  Yes, and something that should be said about that too is that prior to that, it had only been out of state people charged with domestic terrorism.
[01:04:16]  Locals were charged with different crimes, but it was a way for the police to say that all these are out-of-state people, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:04:24]  But there were two people from the Atlanta area, one from Atlanta proper, and then another arrestee who was from, I can't remember what the city's called, but it's a city that's like Emeryville style, just completely surrounded by Atlanta.
[01:04:37]  And they were being like, oh, they're not from Atlanta.
[01:04:39]  It's like, I hate this out-of-state thing.
[01:04:41]  It's such bullshit.
[01:04:42]  First of all, like, so what?
[01:04:46]  This next whole month, we're supposed to celebrate the Freedom Rides, which is all out-of-state protesters.
[01:04:52]  But now, if anyone comes from out of state, it's all anti-fo-agitator.
[01:04:55]  It's such corny bullshit.
[01:04:57]  Just stop.
[01:04:59]  And remember, I will say this, remember too, all these fucking people are Democrats.
[01:05:04]  You know?
[01:05:06]  All these fucking politicians.
[01:05:07]  Anyway.
[01:05:08]  All right.
[01:05:09]  Let's wrap this motherfucker up.
[01:05:11]  Yeah.
[01:05:11]  Stop cop city.
[01:05:12]  Yeah.
[01:05:13]  My name, Brace.
[01:05:15]  I'm Liz.
[01:05:16]  We are, of course, as always, joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[01:05:20]  And this has been Trunon.
[01:05:21]  We'll see you next time.