As the heavily protested Atlanta Public Safety Training Center is set to open sometime this spring, researchers say the city is not the blueprint for public safety reform.
It’s all detailed in a new Brookings Institution commentary. In the report, Ali Sewell, a sociology professor at Emory University, and Keon Gilbert, a fellow at The Brookings Institution in governance studies and a professor of public health at Saint Louis University, and two other co-authors provide analysis. They compare policing in Atlanta to policing in Baltimore and St. Louis in the aftermath of the construction of Atlanta’s police training center, also known to critics as “Cop City.”
The experts interviewed people living in Baltimore and St. Louis to get their take on community policing and to examine the effects of police reform on community cohesion, health and trauma.
