El Paso is Getting its Own “Cop City”

“Cop City”.

It’s the nickname given by (mostly) protestors to Atlanta’s 80 acre, $90 million police training facility.  Some of the protestors there didn’t want the police to become even MORE militarized. Some protestors had environmental concerns. One protestor was shot and killed by Atlanta police.

Now, El Paso is getting their own “Cop City”. It’s going to cost almost as much as the Atlanta facility and it’s going to cover a MUCH larger area.  The El Paso Police/Fire Training Academy will occupy over 300 acres in Northeast El Paso at an estimated cost of $79 million.

This was reported in a story by Brandy Ruiz on El Paso Matters which you can read here.

Enter your number to get our free mobile app

The money for the project is from a bond approved by El Paso voters in 2019.

One of the reasons for protests over the Atlanta Cop City was that it required the clear-cutting of one of Atlanta’s largest green spaces, the Weelaunee Forest. Presumably, the loss of trees will not be an issue in Northeast El Paso.

The El Paso version of Cop City is scheduled to be open sometime in 2025. We don’t know everything that EP Cop City will have but the one in Atlanta is going to have a mock city for training purposes, vehicle training roads and a burn building for fire training. Also, lots of classrooms and gun ranges.

An anti-Cop City activist released an interactive map of all the “Cop Cities” in existence or scheduled to be built and the El Paso facility is on that map. In fact, it’s one of only two “Cop Cities” in the state of Texas, the other being in Dallas.