A judge has forced the Atlanta Police Foundation to provide hundreds of pages of records to journalists seeking information about the controversial Public Safety Training Center in Southeast Atlanta known to opponents as “Cop City.” Joy Ramsing is an attorney representing both Atlanta Community Press Collective and Chicago-based research center, Lucy Parsons Labs. Ramsingh argued for the release of the documents. She spoke with GPB’s Peter Biello.
Peter Biello: The Atlanta Police Foundation provided you redacted documents at first, but now they are saying that they will provide you with unredacted documents. This comes after you applied some legal pressure. What information is now going to be revealed to you in these unredacted documents?
Joy Ramsingh: Basically, officials at APF had forwarded varieties of emails to their counsel. … I’ve glanced very briefly at the records. I don’t think the material was privileged at all in any sense. It’s just been in keeping with what APF has done at every step of the litigation, which is, frankly, to just kind of drag their feet as much as possible and to redact as much as possible, whether it merits redaction or not.
Peter Biello: If they did, as you say, drag their feet, what in those documents do you think they were not eager to have revealed publicly?
Joy Ramsingh: Well, that’s just it, Peter. I mean, when we got the information, it was nothing. I mean, it was the largest “nothing burger” you can possibly imagine. They had literally just — APF officials had forwarded emails of news coverage to their counsel. And so the redacted information — if you want to put it that way, whole pages blacked out — was nothing but a forward message from APF to APF counsel, it was forwarded. So, we didn’t know that, right? Frankly, if we had known that it was nothing, we wouldn’t have had to go through the motion. But we didn’t. And all we saw was a completely black redacted page. So again, you have a situation where the lack of communication and the, just the approach of “redact everything and provide no explanation” led to additional litigation that was probably unnecessary.
Peter Biello: Is there anything in these documents that you believe or your clients believe would have changed public opinion about this project before it was opened?
Joy Ramsingh: One of the things that the folks of Atlanta did not know was, not just the amount of influence that APF had over the building of the training center, which is essentially carte blanche construction and design, but also the presence that APF has over policing throughout the city. One of the things that I didn’t know before I got these records and before I became active in this lawsuit: I don’t think the people of Atlanta understand that there’s a private entity out there that is surveilling them. I mean, their operations shield hundreds of cameras throughout. And when you see these cameras on the street, when you’re walking in Buckhead and you look up and you see a camera it says “Atlanta Police Department.” But the entity that is actually operating and maintaining the cameras — and, presumably, watching the footage — is APF which is a completely private organization. And so having a window into their operations is critical.
Peter Biello: Similar police foundations exist for cities across the United States. Does the judge’s ruling in this open records case have implications for those police foundations across the country?
Joy Ramsingh: I think so. So this decision is not legally binding, right? — on anyone except these parties in the state of Georgia. But it is highly persuasive. Because of the breadth of records that this request covered, these requests covered everything from emails to board meeting minutes, to agendas, to plans, to studies, to contracts. — most importantly, contracts, right? With other private companies. Because the ruling was so broad and the kind of information that it covered, virtually at this point, I can’t really think of a record that would not be public that would be in APF’s possession.
Peter Biello: Opponents had wanted to prevent the opening of the public safety training center, but it’s open now. What do your clients hope to accomplish by bringing these documents to light?
Joy Ramsingh: Our goal is not so much to affect a certain outcome, but to give people the information that they need to decide whether or not they’re satisfied with policing in Atlanta. And if they’re not, then they can take those concerns to their lawmakers through the democratic process.
GPB has reached out to the Atlanta Police Foundation for comment and has not yet heard back
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