Contenders for city council president spar over public safety, scuttled ‘Cop City’ referendum

The two contenders for Atlanta City Council president, Rohit Malhotra and Councilmember Marci Collier Overstreet, traded barbs over policing and her support for the controversial Atlanta Public Safety Training Center — known as Cop City by critics — during Wednesday’s Atlanta Press Club Loudermilk-Young debate. 

Overstreet, who’s represented District 11 since 2018, tried to paint Malhotra, the founder of the Center for Civic Innovation, as an anti-police extremist for criticizing Mayor Andre Dickens and the city council over backing the facility. Malhotra refuted the accusation, then criticized Overstreet and the city council for ignoring the will of the people and scuttling a voter referendum over the police training center. 

After the city council voted to spend $67 million to build the facility on city-owned land in June 2023, public opposition, fueled by concerns about police militarization and environmental damage, sparked a petition drive for a voter referendum. 

The organizers needed about 75,000 signatures from Atlanta residents – 15% of registered voters in the last city election – to get the referendum on the ballot. They collected over 116,000 signatures by fall 2023, but City Hall quashed the referendum by tying it up in an endless legal battle. Meanwhile the $115 million facility opened in April. 

“I’m not proud of the process at all,” Overstreet said, in an effort to distance herself from the scuttled referendum. At the debate, she said she supported the voter referendum, but was also a “strong advocate” for the training center. “I also advocated in real time during full council for those signatures to be counted, as well as for them to be on the public website,” Overstreet said.

Putting the petition signatories online amounted to doxxing, Malhotra shot back. “This is what people are tired of in politics — revisionist history,” he said. “It’s funny when council members say that they would have made sure that people had the right to decide, but never once introduced legislation to make sure that could happen.”

In August 2023, Malhotra co-authored a public letter from King Center CEO Bernice King and other social justice advocates, asking the Atlanta City Council to let Atlantans vote on the training center. “There was no response,” he said. 

“We’ve never had an honest conversation, and we put police officers in the middle of a debate that they did not sign up for,” Malhotra said. “This is not a conversation about policing. It’s one that is about land and power.”

“Mr. Rohit should really own up to the fact that he wants to defund – or abolish – the police department,” Overstreet rebutted. She accused Malhotra of “sponsoring” activists who threw thousands of ping-pong balls at the council during a September 2024 meeting for “dropping the ball on democracy.” The stunt was to draw attention to the scuttled referendum, a year after activists submitted the petition with 116,000 signatures. 

“The words ‘defund the police’ – which I have never said, actually – came after George Floyd was murdered, and people were asking for changes in policing,” Malhotra responded. He added that supporting alternatives to policing doesn’t mean being anti-police.

After the debate, Malhotra told reporters that he had nothing to do with the ping-pong balls. 

Atlanta jail 

Malhotra also criticized the city’s failure to close the Atlanta City Detention Center. Former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms signed legislation in 2019 to convert the jail into a social services hub for things  like mental health services and job training.

“We’re talking about whether people want to defund the police or not — but we’re defunding diversion,” he said. 

Overstreet responded that the city must collaborate with Fulton County on the jail. The city has leased jail space to the county through December 2026 to house overflow inmates from its own dangerously overcrowded jail. The contract prohibits a lease renewal. 

“Collaboration is important, and extremism should not be the way of the future for our city,” Overstreet said. 

In her closing remarks Overstreet sold herself as a “principled and proven” leader. “Leadership does not look like 30,000 ping-pong balls being thrown at city council,” she said.

“It seems like these ping-pong balls really hurt your feelings,” Malhotra quipped. He pitched himself as a council president who will ensure the council functions as an independent check on the mayor. “It’s time for a new generation of leadership that is willing to be bold and transformative,” he said.