Community Members Speak Against ‘Cop City’ Construction in Matthews

When the police publicly murdered George Floyd in May 2020, the slogan “Defund the Police” became a rallying cry for systemic change within law enforcement.

While conservatives and law enforcement advocates have since pointed to the slogan to excuse shortcomings by police or rising crime rates where applicable, police budgets have in fact increased almost universally across the country, including in Mecklenburg County.

Capitalizing on these investments, law enforcement departments in recent years have invested millions of dollars into large-scale training facilities, known as “Cop Cities.”

According to a report published by researcher Renee Johnston on Substack, as of Feb. 1, law enforcement departments have planned, built or are currently constructing more than 80 police training facilities across the country since 2020.

Locally, a new “public safety training facility” is in the works in Mecklenburg County, planned for the property surrounding Central Piedmont Community College’s (CPCC) Levine campus in Matthews after Hendrick Automotive Group gifted the college around 23 acres of land near the campus in June 2024.

CPCC simultaneously announced it will construct a new training facility for law enforcement, fire and rescue, EMS, forensics, detention, and telecommunication staff on the land. With the news of widespread arrests during protests of a similar facility in Atlanta the previous year fresh in their mind, local activists quickly pegged the planned facility as “Cop City Charlotte.”

The planned facility is split between two parcels of land on either side of the Levine campus. The main facility along Campus Ridge Road will encompass 24 acres northeast of campus and include an outdoor scenario training village, an indoor firing range and indoor fire-and-rescue area with specialized equipment.

The other facility off CPCC Lane to the west of campus will be a driver training course, taking up 14 acres of existing Central Piedmont property.

After becoming aware of CPCC’s plans, students and community members opposed to the idea launched Stop Cop City CLT, a decentralized movement that began with an Instagram page, where they post any available information about the planned development, questioning the school’s involvement and the need for the facility.

Stop Cop City CLT drummed up concern from folks who oppose the project for a wide range of reasons, explained Del Davis, a community member with the movement.

Some look at the planned facility and others like it through an abolitionist lens, condemning the militarization of police training and acknowledging that the law enforcement system is based in white supremacy, created only to protect the property of the richest citizens.

Others are opposed to hosting a shooting range on campus or have concerns from an ecological perspective, pointing out that the gifted land contains trees over 160 years old and serves as an important monarch butterfly migration site.

“It was a natural talking point in various movement spaces,” Davis said. “There’s been a growing sense of urgency in activist spaces … to mobilize people against this and make sure that people understand that this is what the school, the county [and] CMPD are up to.”

Davis said initial mobilization was slow because the plans for the facility have proceeded in secret for months. Stop Cop City CLT has called on Central Piedmont president Dr. Kandi Deitemeyer to address concerns from the opposition, a request she has continuously avoided in public forums.

Organizers with Stop Cop City CLT who spoke to Queen City Nerve said the answers given by administration thus far have been artificial and do not encompass the full breadth of concern a Cop City would have on the campus.

“I think literally any acknowledgment would be better than where we are now,” CPCC student Noah Newman said. “[There’s been] no attempt whatsoever to even listen to student voices.”

What we know about Charlotte’s ‘Cop City’

CPCC officials have responded to two concerns repeatedly raised by community members: the presence of a firing range on campus and the clear-cutting of trees where the new facilities will be built.

Central Piedmont spokesperson Catherine Butler insisted there will be multiple layers of security within the training facility, including the firing range, so as not to allow unchecked guns onto school grounds. She also said the school will preserve 20% of the trees on the northeastern section and half on the western section.

Butler told Queen City Nerve that the public safety training facility is a project Mecklenburg County needs to support the growth in our community and region.

“Many of our first responders in the county have to actually travel to other counties or other states to get the required training that they need because we don’t have enough facilities to support the number of required trainings at this point,” she said. “So we want to make sure that our county is well positioned with those facilities.”

Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden said the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) does not have adequate classroom space, as it is the largest sheriff’s department in the Carolinas. The department’s firing range is also outdated, he insisted.

McFadden said his department wanted to build its own training facility and update its firing range but the county saw fit to fund the public safety training facility instead. Mecklenburg County’s Public Information Department did not comment on why this decision was made.

Along with outdated training spaces, there is a shortage of emergency responders in Mecklenburg County, Butler said. The full initiative, which is called Community Lifeline, is one of the largest workforce development projects in the region, she said. The goal is to have a centralized area where fire, EMS and law enforcement can participate in cross collaborative training.

The facility will provide mental health and wellness training; opportunities to train with virtual reality, drones and other new technologies; and proactive conflict-resolution techniques.

McFadden said he would like to provide citizens a chance to participate in and watch police training as it happens so they understand what officers can and can’t do. He also hopes the facility adequately represents departments from other Mecklenburg County municipalities along with the larger CMPD and MCSO to ensure collaborative training and learning.

“Every police shooting, what do you hear? ‘They need more training.’ Every incident with law enforcement, what do you say? ‘They need more training,’” McFadden said.

“We’ve been in a lot of the planning development phases trying to understand renderings and buildings, and also working with the agencies to understand what they need in a training facility,” Butler said. “Because we don’t want to build it in a vacuum and then it not be helpful to those who are actually in the field on a daily basis.”

McFadden said CPCC has been in contact with MCSO to discuss goals for the facility. The only people left out of the conversation, it seems, are students and community members.

Davis agreed that police should be better trained but through deescalation training and police reform, adding that law enforcement should reimagine policies by centering social workers, psychiatric nurses and public safety officers without the presence of firearms.

“The school is somehow linking themselves with law enforcement in a way that has nothing to do with education for students and that, to me, is one of the questions that they keep dodging,” Davis said.

After constructing the public safety training facility, CPCC is planning to expand its programming and curriculum around Basic Law Enforcement Training (BLET) and emergency medical science, moving its BLET programs to Levine campus.

“We imagine both programs will see expanded growth — the facility will largely support the continuing education programming, but … we’re also expanding curriculum programming as well,” Butler said.

She added that the facility should be fully operational by 2028, though some of the programs, like the virtual reality training, will be introduced earlier in phases.

Who is the public safety training facility for?

CPCC’s BLET program comprises curriculum for students pursuing a degree/going into the field and continuing education programs for people already working in the field to do additional training. Butler said there are around 700 students currently enrolled in BLET, with 1,600-1,700 enrolled on the continuing education side.

In CPCC’s 2024-25 academic year, more than 30,000 students enrolled across all programs. In a November press release from CPCC announcing the record-breaking enrollment, the school said it has strategically expanded programs to prepare students for high-demand careers including nursing, electrical line work, automotive systems, skilled trades and artificial intelligence.

The Levine campus itself is known for its focus on automotive technology, with the Joe Hendrick Center for Automotive Technology building — made possible by a gift from the Hendrick family — serving more than 3,000 students each year.

The campus also houses degree programs in Nurse Aid and Medical Assisting along with multiple Corporate and Continuing Education non-degree and non-transfer courses and programs.

Stop Cop City members question why CPCC is investing millions into a facility only designated for such a small student population.

“Only a tiny, tiny percentage of students are people who would utilize this and yet it will fundamentally change the culture of the campus,” Davis said before pointing out the generational differences between those in charge of the project and those who will have to live with it.

“This is the school shooting generation; you can’t simultaneously train students from kindergarten to community college to be prepared [at] anytime to be murdered in class and then also be like, ‘But don’t you feel safe when there’s guns everywhere?’”

In September 2024, there was an active shooter scare resulting in a Levine campus lockdown. Matthews Police Department announced that a 17-year-old CPCC student was charged with making a false report concerning mass violence on education property hours after the incident occurred.

Butler told Queen City Nerve that CPCC takes student safety on campus very seriously and has created additional layers of security within the training facility. There will be a badge system to access the facility separate from other educational buildings at Levine campus.

When authorized personnel enter the firing range, any training guns will be behind another layer of security and will be monitored by law enforcement.

As of now, Butler said only in-service law enforcement or those training for law enforcement programs will be allowed to use the firing range. In-service officers are able to carry their guns into the facility but training weapons will have strict protocols and procedures governing where they will be locked away or checked out for use in the indoor range.

“The firing range is not my concern, not whatsoever, not even the least concerned about the firing range,” McFadden said. “No, not at all.”

Regardless of how secure each weapon is kept, students could be hearing gunshots while in school, Newman pointed out.

“There’s not really any healthy way for a space that’s supposed to be safe for learning to co-exist with firearms,” they said. “Now, beyond that, with the current [presidential] administration, the current treatment of queer people and people of color, I don’t trust that that’s entirely safe.”

Davis hopes that CPCC might abandon the project altogether and leave the woods intact, but suggested that, if the college must build something and clear that land, they could instead use it to address several needs on campus that students have pointed out for years.

There are programs like dental hygiene, Certified Nursing Assistant program certifications and Registered Nurse pathways that are bottlenecked by facility or budget constraints, Davis said, adding that a growing number of community colleges experimenting with on-campus dormitories to address their student’s housing needs.

“Obviously there’s a need for some programs that would benefit our community to expand,” they said. “I would like to see them take a hard assessment of what to do with $75 million and a land gift and apply it logically to their role as a school in the community, instead of pretending to be a police academy for profit.”

The Board of County Commission’s (BOCC) Fiscal Year 2025 adopted budget includes a total allocation of $73.4 million to go toward the planning and construction of the public safety training facility.

In June 2024, the BOCC approved a total of $99 million of funding for CPCC capital projects starting between fiscal year 2025-2029. Nearly $40 million was allocated for the first phase of the training facility and more than $36 million for the second phase.

The county’s annual Resident Budget Priority Survey, created to gather resident responses regarding service priorities, service needs, and the extent to which they felt the county met those needs, identified five areas as the highest priorities for investment: access to affordable housing, behavioral health resources, healthy food programs, services for senior adults, and workforce development services.

Safety and security at county facilities was rated the lowest priority.

Despite clear resident input, the county allocated all five of the highest priorities a combined $36.2 million, less than half of the initial funds given to the training facility.

In total, Mecklenburg County has committed $116 million to the construction of the facility. Butler said each phase of this project will go out for bid to determine the cost.

The overall project has a budget of $118 million, most of which has already been appropriated by the county, with the other $2 million committed through private funding, Butler said.

The Levine campus isn’t the only area around Charlotte planning “public safety facilities.” In 2023, Cabarrus County approved the Fiscal Year 2024 budget, which included $2 million for the planning and design of a new public safety training facility plus an attributed $35 million in the county’s five-year spending plan for the project.

Gaston County council members also approved a property lease agreement with Gaston College in September 2024 in Gastonia to build a law enforcement training facility.

How Atlanta’s response influenced Charlotte

Cop City in Atlanta became a focal point for the Stop Cop City movement due to the intense state repression against those who opposed it.

Georgia State Troopers shot and killed an environmental activist and community organizer named Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, also known as Tortuguita, during protests at the site in January 2023. In March of that year, police arrested 23 people near the site, charging them with domestic terrorism. Then in September 2023, 61 people were indicted on racketeering and domestic terrorism charges for their participation in the protests.

The violent reaction by law enforcement in Atlanta has influenced the way community members have responded to plans for Charlotte’s Cop City.

“The powers that be in Atlanta knew that the fight right there was a bellwether for the national fight,” Davis said. “And they thought, ‘Let’s vilify the reasonable people who are opposed to this and let’s bring the hammer down,’ and they have done that.”

Any Stop Cop City members that have asked administration for details about the Matthews project have been met with vague answers, outright refusals and intimidation.

At the end of a public CPCC Board of Trustees meeting that Queen City Nerve attended on March 12, Deitemeyer asked if there were any questions and despite a community member voicing their interest in asking questions, the board promptly moved to a closed session.

After minimal, quiet discussion among other community attendees, two Black women left the meeting early only minutes apart. Campus security filmed the women on their way out of CPCC’s Disher building, took pictures of their license plates, told them they were now banned from campus and followed them in a golf cart until they left campus. One woman is a part-time CPCC student.

Queen City Nerve did not witness any antagonistic behavior from either woman that would warrant a ban or escort. One security guard said he “didn’t know” why the women were banned. The two women were not given an answer either.

One opposing attendee believed the board took any discussion related to the new project off the public agenda and moved it to the closed session.

Another instance documented on Stop Cop City’s Instagram showed a Jan. 28 Q&A with Dr. Dietemeyer at Queens University. In response to a CPCC student asking if Deitemeyer will be holding any public hearings to hear students’ concerns, Deitemeyer said she will not.

“I do not have to hold a public hearing because the money has already been appropriated and the project has already been approved,” Deitemeyer said. The students were later asked to leave the forum.

Despite Deitemeyer’s insistence, Cop City is not unavoidable, organizers insist. In the CPCC and Hendrick Automotive Gift Agreement document obtained by Stop Cop City, it states that the agreement may be modified, altered or amended at any time by the written consent of both parties.

The agreement also states that if there is no development within seven years after the closing date, CPCC is able to sell the property.

Davis and other Stop Cop City members have asked CPCC students to contact their administrators, Matthews residents to contact town commissioners, and Mecklenburg County residents to contact county representatives to ask them to choose another option for the land.

“I feel like there’s this sense of inevitability, like they’re just going to build it, and I don’t want to accept that,” Davis said. “I don’t think it’s necessary.”

There will be more information regarding the project in the coming weeks, Butler said. As for those who oppose it, Stop Cop City CLT has scheduled its own town hall to organize against the development on March 27 at Camp North End.

*Sources associated with Stop Cop City CLT chose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution; their names have been changed.