The Atlanta Municipal Clerk’s Office has posted scans of what organizers for the “Stop Cop City” coalition say is more than 116,000 signatures of voters who want a referendum on the controversial public safety training center.
Today, Sept. 29, was the deadline the Atlanta City Council set for the petitions to be made public after approving a resolution at its Sept. 18 meeting directing the clerk’s office to scan the petitions and post them online.
The clerk’s office website currently shows scans of the petitions and signatures from 16 boxes that were turned over Sept. 11 by activists opposed to the training center. Links to each of the 16 boxes show the petitions, which have roughly five signatures on each page.
Addresses and phone numbers of the signers are included in the scans while birthdates are blocked out. More than 25,000 documents were scanned, according to numbered pages.
The legislation directing the city to make the signatures public was sponsored by Councilmember Liliana Bakhtiari and approved in a 15-0 vote. Bakhtiari, who has been outspoken in her opposition to the estimated $90 million training center, said the intention of the legislation is to put pressure on city officials to stop fighting the referendum.
It also allows public experts to verify signatures because the city says it cannot legally do so as it awaits a final ruling on the validity of the petitions from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Bakhtiari’s original resolution wanted to redact voter information included in the petitions, such as addresses and phone numbers, to ensure people who signed the petition are not potentially harassed. Councilmember Alex Wan succeeded in amending the motion to say redactions would “conform with Georgia’s open records law.”
City Council President Doug Shipman and Bakhtiari also sent a letter to the clerk requesting personal identification of the signers of the petition be redacted “in the interest of promoting voter privacy and security.”
The Vote to Stop Cop City Coalition issued a written statement Sept. 29 denouncing the clerk’s decision to ignore the request to redact the personal information. The statement said the city’s law department gave “intentionally inaccurate information by conflating the council’s right to publish public information with redactions with a document requested through an Open Records Request.”
“The Municipal Clerk consciously, and without notice, colluded with the City’s law department to publish unsecure, unredacted images of petitions as PDFs on the City of Atlanta’s website – in effect doxxing all signers of the Cop City referendum petition,” the statement said. “It is well-known and documented that the City’s website security suffers from a dangerous history of cyberattacks and hacking.”
The coalition requested the City Council immediately direct the city clerk to take down the website with un-redacted information.
The clerk’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Signatures accepted and scanned by city, but referendum still in legal limbo
Organizers of the Vote to Stop Cop City coalition were stunned on Sept. 11 when they brough the boxes of petitions to City Hall and were handed a memo from the city clerk that said the city was prohibited from verifying the signatures because they were turned in too late.
The city’s legal team told the coalition and its legal counsel that the Sept. 1 decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to stay a July 27 federal district court’s preliminary injunction meant petitions needed to be turned in by the original Aug. 21 deadline. The city said it would have to wait for a final ruling by the 11th Circuit Court, likely to come in November, before it could decide to verify signatures.
The proposed referendum would allow voters to choose if they want to repeal the ordinance that authorized the lease of roughly 300 acres of South River Forest land to the Atlanta Police Foundation. Mayor Andre Dickens along with city officials and state officials have called the petition drive “invalid” and “futile.”
Preliminary construction of the 85-acre training center site is already underway off Key Road in DeKalb County in the South River Forest. The site is near the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. The Atlanta Police Foundation, a private nonprofit group, has said the training center would be completed by late 2024.
Opponents need just over 58,000 valid signatures of Atlanta registered voters for the City Council to consider the referendum for approval. Tens of thousands more signatures were collected because organizers expect many to be tossed out as part of the city’s line-by-line verification process.
The mayor and other city officials have argued a new public safety training center for police and firefighters is needed to replace rundown facilities. They also argue the new facility is needed to recruit and retain police officers. The Atlanta Police Department, like many departments across the country, saw an exodus of officers following national protests against police brutality in 2020 sparked by the murder of George Floyd.
Opponents of the training center, who have dubbed it “Cop City,” say building the complex would only lead to more police militarization and violence against Black and brown people. They also accuse the city of environmental racism for building the training center in a majority Black neighborhood.
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock urged Mayor Dickens to be more transparent in how city officials handle the petition drive, saying he is “closely monitoring” the issue.
Dickens issued a response to Warnock stating, “It is dangerous for any of us to forget that our first job in government is public safety and I reject the notion that we must choose between investing in our officers and our community. We can and will do both.”