Atlanta police have been carrying out around-the-clock surveillance in several neighborhoods for months, on people and houses linked to opposition against the police training center colloquially known as “Cop City”.
The surveillance in Georgia has included following people in cars, blasting sirens outside bedroom windows and shining headlights into houses at night, the Guardian has learned.
While no arrests have been made, residents said they’re at a loss as to what legal protections of privacy and freedom from harassment are available to them. Chata Spikes, the Atlanta police spokesperson, did not respond to requests for comment.
The ongoing actions started soon after an 8 February pre-dawn, Swat-style raid on three Atlanta houses in which Atlanta police and agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sought evidence relating to arson of construction and police equipment.
Police have since established themselves in four neighborhoods, centering on about 12 houses – including those that were previously raided – with marked and unmarked cars parking near them, driving slowly by and leaving when approached by residents.
Social movement historian Dan Berger said this low-tech type of surveillance and related behavior – blasting sirens and flashing lights, following people – has precedence dating at least to the civil rights era. He called the actions “naked intimidation with plausible deniability attached to it”.
Berger added that “[a] common strategy of police work is, when a movement reaches a point of threat, the powers that be begin actively trying to scare them out of existence – showing them they know where they live, who they hang out with”.
The Cop City training center is being built on a 171-acre footprint in a forest south-east of Atlanta. Opposition has come from a wide range of local and national supporters and is centered on concerns such as unchecked police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police say the center is needed for “world-class” training.
One resident of a Lakewood neighborhood house raided on 8 February described being in a car with another person several days afterward. Different vehicles followed them for four and a half hours, as they drove out of city limits and into Gwinnett county suburbs.
When they stopped in a drive-through, a Gwinnett police officer pulled them over and gave them a ticket for having the car’s license plate in the back window, and not on the bumper.
The Guardian spoke to the driver in that incident, as well as half a dozen other residents of different Atlanta neighborhoods and a DeKalb county neighborhood experiencing increased Atlanta police presence in recent months. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity or used assumed names, out of safety concerns.
The same Lakewood resident who was a passenger in the followed car was stirred from bed one morning in March at 3:30am, when a police car blasted its siren for about 10 seconds.
“I’m not a lawyer,” he said. “But it eventually reaches the point of harassment – how do you tell cops they’ve crossed that threshold?”
Andrew Ferguson, a lawyer, law professor at the American University Washington College of Law and expert on police surveillance, privacy and civil rights, explained how this behavior can happen.
“Generally speaking, courts have given police the power to investigate crimes,” he said. “[T]he problem is, abuse and harassment are usually harder to define … and there aren’t great external laws to say, ‘You can’t do this.’”
Atlanta police have been carrying out “physical surveillance” – as distinguished from digital or technological surveillance, Ferguson noted. The reason: “Police want to be seen because the purpose of the surveillance is to intimidate and expose dissenting voices. Police are using the coercive power of surveillance to silence protest and dissent.”
Ferguson noted that the US constitution’s fourth amendment “is supposed to be a check on this”, adding that what’s happening in Atlanta is “exactly the kind of case where there needs to be some kind of external examination – like from the Department of Justice”.
Meanwhile, some residents keep tallies of police activity outside their houses. In Lakewood, 10 houses exchange observations on a Signal thread. Ashley, a south Atlanta resident, made 16 entries on a list.
“One night, people were over for dinner and a cop car slowed down in front of the house, about 20ft from the entrance. The room got quiet,” she said. “It’s like an intimidation tactic. ‘We know you believe this one thing,’” referring to her participation in protests against Cop City.
Ashley stopped spending time on her front porch, a custom in the US south, and started sleeping with binoculars.
“Even though I’ve done nothing wrong … there’s this constant stalking feeling,” she said.
A resident of Starlight Heights – blocks from the Cop City site – said Atlanta police have pointed headlights at her bedroom around midnight.
“It’s very scary,” she said. “We’re all women [in the house]. We don’t want to go out … and talk to police at night.”
An incident earlier this week created another parallel to the civil rights movement. A resident of a house raided in February woke to a bright light outside his bedroom window, next to the front door, early last week at 3:15am. He opened the door to see a lit road flare catching fire to the wooden railing next to steps leading to the house’s wooden porch. He ran into the house, filled a bucket with water and doused the flames. It is unclear who left the flare on the porch.
“I’m already paranoid,” he said. “But there’s a difference between police surveillance and trying to burn your house down.” A lawyer recommended filing a police report. “But what if it’s a state actor? Who protects us then?”
