Cop Cities, Jail Expansions, and The Expansion of Police Control in the Foothills

In the summer of 2024 fascist “congressman” Kevin Kiley announced his plans to get federal funding for a regional police training facility for the Nevada County Sherrifs Office. Despite his announcement in an attempt to goad the racist right into voting for him no further news about this “cop city” was shared. That was until yesterday when the Nevada County Board of Supervisors deliberated on “capital improvements”. With quite the fitting name for these projects to advance the control of capitalist domination the BoS announced a $15,000,000 indoor regional police training facility with 12 shooting lanes, indoor vehicle training, and educational facilities to educate police in how to continue oppressing our communities. Next door to this indoor shooting range the BoS also voted to build an $8,000,000 NCSO dispatch and training facility, expanding the cop city that hasn’t even been built yet. This puts the total price to $23,000,000 for a police training facility within a county of less than 100,000 people. To add insult to injury this cop city is set to built at 434 Kahele Ct inside city limits of the small town of Nevada City with less 3,000 people. The Nevada County Sherrifs Office which this training facility is being built for is one that has a long history of violence having murdered Sage Crawford in front of her children in 2021 and shot Gabriel Strickland for the crime of owning an airsoft gun in 2020. Then mysteriously John Anderson, the prime witness, in the case was found dead just before the trial began. The Sherrifs Office was also present on August 9th when fascists attacked Black Lives Matter protesters in the streets of Nevada City. Instead of intervening to protect the people being beaten in the streets the Sherrifs Office alongside the Nevada City Police Department marched alongside the fascists and stood by as they attacked protesters. The NCSO doesn’t keep it’s community safe, in many cases it is the greatest threat to safety in the community. The last thing Nevada County needs is to give the already violent Sherrifs Office more guns and more training on how to gun down our neighbors. From Atlanta to San Pablo to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada it’s time to demilitarize and dismantle the institutions of policing, not arm them further.

The news of this cop city wasn’t the only “capital improvement” that the BoS deliberated on though. Also among it was a $30,000,000 jail expansion to the Wayne Brown Correctional Facility. This money is set to go towards the creation of a new medical wing to the jail. Instead of funding people’s health and supporting communities that are already pushed to the brink the county is spending $30,000,000 to ensure that poor people’s best shot at medical care is to wind up in jail. Sick people should cared for, not incarcerated. $30,000,000 could go so far in supporting medical help for our community, but instead it’s being used to ensure that people already kept in cages can remain in cages when they get sick from the atrocious conditions inside the prison. Instead of expanding prisons we need to be tearing them down and reinvesting that money into our communities.

These projects although supported and partially funded by fascist Kevin Kiley he isn’t solely responsible. All members of the Board of Supervisors voted to support this including Heidi Hall the “democrat” running to take Kiley’s seat in congress. Both the overt and covert fascists in the Republican and Democratic parties are supporting the expansion of police power and control. We have no friends in government, nor will we ever. We can only rely upon ourselves to ensure what needs to be done is completed.

These projects are a war on not only Nevada County, but all communities in the Sierra Nevada and we have the chance to resist. Both the training facility and jail expansion are still in the development stages with estimated times of completion being 2028 for the cop city and 2030 for the jail expansion. We’re not going to tell you how to resist, but as we’ve seen across Turtle Island the answer is to get creative. It doesn’t matter how it happens, what matters is that these projects never see the light of day. Fuck cop city and victory to the resistance.

– some anarchists