A demonstrator holds her hands up while she kneels in front of the Police at the Anaheim City Hall … [+]
Corporations loudly made billions of dollars in commitments to racial justice in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by police officers, often seeking the associated “halo effect” with an increasingly diverse consumer population in the US. What is less well-known, ironically, is their equal support of the expansion and increased militarization of police departments this past decade through organizations called police foundations in cities such as Atlanta, New York, Louisville and Los Angeles.
While government funds deployed to police departments have public oversight and accountability mechanisms, police foundations do not — they are controlled by boards of directors, largely made up of officials from the corporations that fund them. A 2021 report by ColorofChange and LittleSis documented 1,200 corporations (including the parent corp of Dunkin Donuts, Atlanta-based Inspire Brands) funding 23 police foundations nationally for almost $60 million in 2019, the most recent year cited by the report.
This is why on June 18th of 2020, the same week of Rayshard Brook’s funeral, the Atlanta Police Foundation was able to announce a $500 bonus for each police officer: they have funding independent from any government authority or accountability. As Fox News reported, it was a “difficult time” for police officers: “Fulton County prosecutors brought felony murder and other charges against the now ex-officer who shot Rayshard Brooks, saying that Brooks was not a deadly threat and that the officer kicked the wounded black man and offered no medical treatment for over two minutes as he lay dying on the ground. Another officer is being charged with aggravated assault.”
These payments collectively totaled over $2M. And yet, just a few months later, the city council voted unanimously to provide Mr. Brook’s family with $1M as an attempt at compensation for the harm caused by police conduct. This might sound contradictory, except that the funding sources, decision-making structures and objectives are completely different between the City of Atlanta, which is responsible for its police force and accountable to the public, and the Atlanta Police Foundation, which aims to serve the police force and is only accountable to its board (and to some degree, the IRS for its charitable status).
It’s worth taking a moment to consider how highly unusual a practice this is in American society more broadly. Can you imagine if politicians, like the Mayor of Atlanta or the Governor of Georgia, were allowed to accept bonuses from private foundations or corporate donors? Or if teachers at public schools could accept lavish gifts from parents or their employers? So why can police? And why can corporations?
The public has been learning more about these foundations: for instance, earlier this year, the LA Times covered the relatively hidden multi-million dollar fundraising arm of the LAPD. Is it any wonder, then, that with corporations and their executives bankrolling police foundations, problems like wage theft (where corporations illegally underpay already low-wage workers) still vastly exceed all other types of property crime in the US?
Certainly, public servants like teachers and frontline healthcare workers barely making a living wage could perhaps benefit from some private support, but you don’t hear news stories about corporations giving teachers millions too often. Corporations are generally assumed to donate where they expect to receive something in return, and perhaps a good relationship with a local police department has a better IRR.
Cop City and Corporate Funding
DENVER, CO – MAY 30: Police officers pepper spray a woman next to the Colorado State Capitol as … [+]
It’s thanks to such corporations that the Atlanta Police Department, despite having only a $236M budget in 2022, was able to get approval for a $90M project dubbed “Cop City.” The proposal includes a plan to build an 85-acre facility in an unincorporated, forested area of DeKalb County that would serve as a training facility for Atlanta police.
The Atlanta Police Foundation agreed to fundraise $60M alongside the city’s $30M. If the one who has (or donates) the gold makes the rules, this would structurally provide the corporate voices that govern the Atlanta Police Foundation an outsized voice in this project’s future. As 11Alive (Atlanta’s local NBC affiliate) noted: “The Atlanta Police Foundation’s Board is filled with executives from nearly all of Atlanta’s big-name companies like Delta, Waffle House, the Home Depot, Georgia Pacific, Equifax
There has been pitched opposition to the project for two reasons. First, people are concerned about the training tactics the facility would employ, which activists have called a “police militarization facility.” In what seems like unusually sensible NIMBY-ism, a fourth-generation resident noted at a local council meeting, “I don’t want my children to grow up hearing explosions” as part of potential bomb training. Republican Governor Brian Kemp and Democratic Mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, have dismissed opposition to the project as being from outsiders, but locals packed zoning board appeal meetings.The second, perhaps most critical objection to the project is its location. If built, the facility would require the destruction of up to 400 acres of the South River Forest, a vital headwater for and ecological keystone for the region. This adds insult to historic injury, given the land was already stolen from the Muscogee-Creek people, forced out during the US genocidal effort to relocate Native peoples to present-day Oklahoma — better known as the Trail of Tears. Amy Taylor, a resident who lives less than 250 feet from the forest and who serves on a community advisory committee intended to direct community feedback to the project, appealed to the City of Atlanta. “This is one of the most notorious landscapes of environmental injustice. Atlanta can move the project, but you cannot move South River Forest.”
Following the Money
TOPSHOT – A man holds a sign and a white rose in his fist while facing traffic outside a burned … [+]
A September 8th, 2022 update from the Atlanta Police Foundation, posted online by the Atlanta Community Press Collective (ACPC), spoke to the “Public Safety First Campaign,” a $90M campaign with a $60M philanthropic goal. The document states on page 20 that $46.3M had been raised so far.
Given that it has been extensively, publicly noted that the Cop City project, which the Atlanta Police Foundation refers to as the “Public Safety Training Center,” (or PSTC) has a $90M price tag, $30M to be contributed by the city of Atlanta, $60M by the foundation — the same arrangement laid out for the overall campaign — this report seemed to imply that $46.3M had raised been raised towards Cop City. The following are the corporate contributors (and more publicly-aligned foundations, full list here) to the Public Safety First Campaign:
Bank of America
Chick-fil-A — $1M
The Coca-Cola
Jay Davis (National Distributing Company) — $100K
Gas South — $155K
Georgia Pacific — $250K
Brent Scarborough Co. Inc. — $100K
Norfolk Southern
Tony Ressler (majority owner of the Atlanta Hawks NBA team) — $1M
Rollins — $5M
Austin Stephens — $250K
UPS — $1M
In response to a request for comment, however, two corporations, Bank of America and Gas South, explicitly clarified that their donations were earmarked for the At-Promise youth initiative and that neither corporation was funding the training center. (The other corporations and individuals on this list did not respond to a request for comment). So is this $60M going to the training facility or elsewhere? Atlanta Police Foundation did not respond to a request for comment. Finally, yet another document presented a pie chart noting that $30M of the campaign was destined for the training facility, but then that would imply that another $30M needed to be raised as well.
Clear as mud? Typically, major fundraising campaigns feature large public announcements and celebrations of progress made. But perhaps the controversy has led to less direct communication about which corporations and individuals are actually involved.
Community members with the “Stop Cop City” movement, have filed an open records request with the Atlanta Police Foundation to gain more insight into exactly how much money has been confirmed for the training ground specifically (as opposed to ancillary projects). As a non-profit organization with IRS-mandated transparency requirements one would hope for greater clarity in such reporting, and for the corporations who do not want to be implicated in the controversy over cop city, clearer communication to the public to ensure they are not falsely implicated.
Public Safety or Corporate Safety?
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during the opening bell on March 10, 2020 … [+]
Charitable giving is typically designed to address market failures (like the devaluing of nature) or to fill in where governments have proven ineffective (like solving hunger and homelessness). Charitable organizations receive tax-preferential status because they have a positive social mission approved by the IRS, for instance, protecting forests.
Ideally, these missions are relatively uncontroversial–that is much trickier with police foundations. As research organization Little Sis noted, “In 2011, JPMorgan gave the New York City Police Foundation $4.6 million, turning the NYPD into a militarized presence during Occupy Wall Street. Heidi Boghosian of the National Lawyers Guild said it created an appearance of ‘the police protecting corporate interests rather than protecting the First Amendment rights of the people.’” And while certainly the public is aligned on the need for public safety, this is often better achieved through more mental health and addiction services rather than more training in heavy-handed tactics.
Even the best of nonprofits are fundamentally undemocratic, as they allow people with money (across the political spectrum) to prioritize their perspective of how a problem should be solved instead of letting leadership come from the communities that are most affected by any particular decision or social policy. And that’s why democratically elected governments are, ideally, well-suited to collectively make decisions about resources (aka, our tax dollars) and try to address the public good. There’s a reason why they call it “public” safety, not private safety.
If corporations want to do good, fantastic. Like all of us, they will never be perfect in figuring out the best path toward social change. But at the very least, they can honor their word, and most recently, their strongest words have been about racial justice.
And that’s perhaps why the apparent corporate funding of Cop City comes as such a surprise, given that Tony Ressler, Chick-fil-A, UPS, Coca-Cola, and Norfolk Southern have all made prior racial equity commitments in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. For example, UPS talks about “creating social impact, advancing diversity, equity and inclusion,” and “building stronger communities.” Tony Ressler, owner of the Atlanta Hawks and founder of Apollo Global Management
Investors have been taking note: a coalition of investors and advocates led by Justice Capital has reached out to several corporations such as UPS, Chick-fil-A and Coca Cola questioning their overall relationships with the Atlanta Police Foundation and potential involvement in the Copy City Project. Eric Glass of Justice Capital said, “Corporations need to be consistent in word and deed. And we, the public, should hold them accountable for those words and deeds! Someone in the C-Suite needs to ask the question, ‘Does contributing to a police foundation and/or a ‘militarized’ training facility’ align with our proclamations and declarations around racial justice, as well as diversity, equity and inclusion?’
“Corporations need to answer to their customers and to the public writ large when they fail to walk the walk and talk the talk.”
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/morgansimon/2023/03/14/cops-and-donuts-go-together-more-than-you-thought-the-corporations-funding-cop-city-in-atlanta/