Central Piedmont settles lawsuit over ‘cop city’ records allegations
A Central Piedmont Community College student alleged in an April federal lawsuit that her school unfairly banned her from campus after she attended a public meeting about a planned first responder training facility.
Now, the student and her fellow four plaintiffs are dropping their lawsuit after reaching a settlement with the school — but clashes continue over the planned facility, christened “cop city” by its critics.
As part of the settlement, CPCC promised to comply with open meetings and public records law, as well as lifting campus bans on visiting student Eboni Exceus and fellow plaintiff Mina Ezikpe. CPCC also pledged to respond to the pending public records requests made by another plaintiff in the case by June 30.
Exceus, Ezikpe and the other plaintiffs dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice Tuesday, which means they can’t file it in the future.
The lawsuit alleged that CPCC sidestepped North Carolina’s open meeting laws when it approved the construction of the facility — and that the school continued to do so once community members caught wind of the project.
“When news of the development’s existence publicly emerged in late 2024, community members began seeking more information,” read the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. “In response, Defendants have redoubled efforts to shield its plans from public view.”
The lawsuit alleged “retaliatory actions” that the plaintiffs and other critics of the facility faced from the CPCC. The Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a nonprofit that provides legal aid for poor communities and minorities, represented the plaintiffs in the suit.
The CPCC Board of Trustees held three meetings about the planned facility between November 2024 and March of this year, the lawsuit said.
At the meetings, the lawsuit alleges, security guards barred some community members from entering the room and later required attendees to provide identification. All three of the meetings eventually transitioned into closed sessions, requiring members of the public to leave, according to the lawsuit.
After leaving the March meeting, Exceus spotted a CPCC security guard photographing her license plate, according to the lawsuit. Exceus — soon joined by Ezikpe, who left the meeting after her — began questioning the security guard before he drove away.
The women crossed the street to Exceus’s parked car and spotted two other security guards. One of the guards told Exceus she was banned from campus, and threatened to arrest her if she did not leave. When Ezikpe asked repeatedly about the reasoning behind the ban, the guard told her she was banned, too.
Exceus and Xavier Torres de Janon, another plaintiff in the case, voiced relief about the settlement in a Tuesday afternoon press release by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. Torres de Janon characterized it as a “step forward … for everyone who cares about transparency and accountability in public institutions.”
But Catherine Butler, vice president of communications for CPCC, said that the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing by the school.
“Today’s outcome clearly proves that the claims in this case were unsubstantiated,” Butler wrote to The Charlotte Observer.
Butler also emphasized the “significant need” for emergency responder training in Mecklenburg County, and reiterated the school’s commitment to completing the training facility, which it refers to as the “Community Lifeline.”
CPCC disputed allegations
In court documents from earlier this month, attorneys for CPCC argued that the plaintiffs “seek not to redress any legal wrong, but rather, to delay progress on the lawfully approved and funded” facility.
According to the court documents, none of the plaintiffs were barred from a Board of Trustees meeting or required to show identification. No decisions regarding the facility were made in closed session, the documents add.
The CPCC’s attorneys also alleged that the critics of the facility threatened violence and vandalism. After the November 2024 meeting moved to a closed session, activists — egged on by Ezikpe and de Janon — stood outside of the building and chanted, “If you build it, we will burn it,” CPCC alleged.
The documents highlighted a January vandalism of the Charlotte office for Boomerang Design, an architecture firm tasked with designing the facility. Activist-run Instagram accounts praised the vandalism, according to the court documents.
Activists also harassed CPCC leadership over phone and email and filed “burdensome” records requests, the documents read. CPCC has provided 326 pages of records in response to requests from Torres de Janon and the plaintiffs’ attorney.
The attorneys alleged that Exceus and Ezikpe were banned from campus due to “belligerent and harassing treatment of CPCC security personnel,” rather than as retaliation for attending the Board of Trustees meeting.
