Cop City protest: Activists lock builder’s Charlotte office

Climate activists chained themselves to the doors of a Charlotte office building Friday morning to protest a construction company’s role in a new Atlanta police facility in a forest.

Other protesters closed the Morehead Street building’s doors with bike locks then fled in a black Honda CR-V as security approached, according to a video provided to The Charlotte Observer.

Members of Defend the Atlanta Forest want Brasfield & Gorrie to cancel its contract with the City of Atlanta. The Birmingham, Alabama-based firm has a Charlotte office in the Dilworth building.

Atlanta has contracted Brasfield & Gorrie to build an 88-acre police training facility in the South River, which runs through the Weelaunee Forest, ancestral home of the Muscogee Creek Tribe, according to reports.

Detractors of the Atlanta police facility have dubbed the project “Cop City.”

‘Criminal acts of vandalism and harassment’

In a statement to The Charlotte Observer on Saturday, Brasfield & Gorrie said the event at its Charlotte office “remained peaceful.”

“Brasfield & Gorrie employees and offices have been the target of criminal acts of vandalism and harassment during similar demonstrations against the construction of a training center for police and first responders in Atlanta,” according to the statement.

“We support the right to free speech, but in previous separate events, activists crossed the boundary of peaceful protest into unlawful activity involving significant property destruction and harassment,” the statement continued. “Our offices in Birmingham and Atlanta were vandalized, and individual employees and their families have been targeted at their homes, at church, and in online attacks.”

Worker: Guard made protesters leave

The protesters, dressed in all black, jumped out of the SUV around 7:45 a.m., William Smith, a parking employee at the building, told the Observer. They split off to both sides of the building, carrying signs and bike locks, he said.

First, they locked the front door and main entrance. Then, two protesters chained themselves to the front and back doors by their necks, Smith said.

A security guard at the front of the building forced the protesters to leave, he said. The SUV went around the back to pick up the other protesters, the video shows.

By the time Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officers arrived, the protesters were gone.

The protesters left signs on the doors that read “STOP COP CITY. DROP THE CONTRACT,” and“WE ARE HUMAN,” “VOTE,” and “STOP FACISM.”

A larger group of demonstrators held a protest at Brasfield & Gorrie’s offices on June 30, QCityMetro reported.

“We are in a climate crisis that threatens all of us, especially Black and Indigenous people,” activist Haley Pinto said in a news release announcing the protest Friday morning. “Destroying 300 acres of the largest urban forest in the country to build a militarized police training facility will exacerbate this crisis.”

CMPD said it had no written report on the protest.

This story was originally published July 23, 2022 7:00 AM.

Charlotte Kramon is a metro news intern for the Charlotte Observer. Originally from Los Angeles, she is a rising junior studying Public Policy and Policy Journalism and Media Studies (PJMS) at Duke University. She also covers local politics at The 9th Street Journal.