By Michael Hewlett
Mina Ezikpe went to a morning meeting of Central Piedmont Community College’s board of trustees on March 12 with a friend and part-time student, Eboni Exceus, to learn more about a plan to build a $118-million public safety training complex on land adjacent to the school’s Levine campus, which is located in Matthews.
Ezikpe said she is opposed to the project partly because school officials have not been transparent and have been resistant to people getting even basic information. As an assistant public defender, she said she also was concerned about how a law-enforcement training facility might affect her clients.
The two women’s attendance at the meeting led to their ban from the campus, they alleged in a lawsuit filed last week against CPCC, its board of trustees, three unidentified security guards, and its president, Kandi W. Dietemeyer.
It’s not clear how the school intended to enforce the ban. “It feels like we’re being punished for just exercising our right to express how we feel about something that does concern us, that does involve our tax money, and that is of public interest,” Ezipke said in an interview.
Attorneys for the nonprofit Southern Coalition for Social Justice filed the lawsuit in Mecklenburg Superior Court on April 23. Three other plaintiffs—Xavier Torres de Janon, Julianne Liebenguth, and William Stanley—joined them.
The lawsuit alleges that for nearly three years, CPCC and town officials have conspired to keep details about the project from the public eye. The lawsuit said school officials violated state open meeting and public records laws and the First Amendment. The complaint alleges that the board of trustees improperly went into closed session at numerous meetings, including the one in March, refused to provide copies of meeting agendas to the public, and then illegally banned Exceus and Ezipke after the March 12 meeting.
The lawsuit also alleges that the school retaliated against Ezipke by having a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer notify Ezipke’s boss about her attendance a few weeks later, claiming that she was banned from campus because she had used abusive and disrespectful language with board members and security guards, the lawsuit said. Ezipke said those allegations are false.
The school calls the project the Community Lifeline; opponents have dubbed it Cop City Charlotte, using a term popularized during mass protests over a proposed Public Safety Training Center in Atlanta. As in Atlanta, North Carolina residents and activists have castigated the Community Lifeline as another example of police militarization and have expressed concerns about its social and environmental impact.
Activists have formed Cop City CLT, which has used social media to help organize protests against the project. School leaders and law enforcement officials have claimed the center would provide cutting-edge training for first responders, sheriff’s deputies, and police officers in Mecklenburg County, including high-tech simulations for real-life emergency scenarios.
“Our region relies on our first responders and emergency personnel every day, and with our expanded programs and new best-in-class facilities, we can provide safe spaces for these brave individuals to train, learn and grow,” Deitemeyer, the school’s president, said in a news release the school issued April 14.
With the bulk of its funding coming from Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners, the project would be split into two parts. One would be built on 23 acres, roughly the size of 17 football fields, northeast of the campus. Hendrick Automotive Group gave the land to CPCC in 2023. The facility will include a mock village with a single-family home, a townhouse, a convenience store, a vacant building for fire training, and other spaces where law enforcement and first responders can practice through simulated real-world emergency scenarios.
It also will have an indoor firing range. A driving course will be built on 14 acres of land to the west of the campus that Mecklenburg County government gave to the school. In response to a request for comment, CPCC Vice President of Communication and Marketing Catherine Butler issued a statement:
“Our commitment to the residents of Mecklenburg County and the first responders who serve them will not waver. Central Piedmont strongly disagrees with the allegations outlined, which are based on inaccurate claims. We will respond more specifically in court. We stand by our history of striving to comply with public records and open meeting requirements as a steward in the community. Our free speech policy provides for robust speech and debate while maintaining a respectful and secure campus environment.”
Janki Kaneria, an attorney representing one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement that the school’s violation of the state’s open meeting laws “threatens core democratic principles.”
“Backrooms and closed meetings do not further the public’s interest,” she said. “The public is entitled to information without fear of retaliation or intimidation.” Complex Negotiations Discussions about the public safety training complex began in 2022 with a conversation between Matthews Town Manager Becky Hawke and Dietemeyer, the school’s president.
The lawsuit said that soon after, a flurry of emails was sent back and forth between town leaders, CPCC officials, and representatives with Hendrick Automotive Group. The school had previously partnered with the company to establish the Joe Hendrick Center for automotive technology, which is named after the father of the company’s chairman and teaches 3,000 students each year on how to become automotive technicians.
The company had either acquired or was in the process of buying a large piece of land near the Levine campus, and hoped to develop it into an advanced manufacturing campus, according to the lawsuit. That plot also included the 23 acres the school planned to use to build the main part of Community Lifeline.
Town officials, including the chiefs of the police and fire and rescue departments, met with CPCC staff in May 2022. In September 2022, planning director Jay Camp organized another meeting with Hendrick representatives, CPCC staff, and town officials on the school’s campus, according to emails the plaintiffs’ attorneys requested that are included in the lawsuit.
On December 14, 2022, Hawke sent an email marked “CONFIDENTIAL” to Matthews town commissioners and the mayor for “small groups” to meet with Hendrick and CPCC leaders to “share their vision” for the land Hendrick wanted rezoned for its advanced manufacturing campus. In a statement, Hawke said, “The Town of Matthews is confident we have followed all open meetings laws.”
The lawsuit said Hendrick Automotive, CPCC, and town commissioners had a quid pro quo arrangement: town commissioners would approve rezoning land for the company’s manufacturing campus in exchange for Hendrick giving 23 acres of that land to CPCC for its training facility. The lawsuit alleges that CPCC and Hendrick held separate meetings with two or three commissioners at a time on January 23, 2025, to avoid the state’s open meeting requirements.
That same day, town commissioners held a closed-door meeting to discuss the “acquisition of real property.” Jeff Lowrance, a CPCC employee, told Matthews government officials in March 2023 that the “land gift won’t become official until the rezoning takes place.” Commissioners approved the rezoning in May.
Four months later, Hendrick Automotive Group and CPCC entered into an agreement to give the 23 acres to CPCC for the training center, the lawsuit said. Behind Closed Doors The lawsuit alleges that CPCC planned this project primarily in secret, violating open meeting and public records law throughout the process, and says that many community members had tried to get more information from school and town officials.
On April 9, plaintiff de Janon contacted Mecklenburg County Commissioner Laura Meier to find out more about the project. Meier emailed him a copy of a project overview that Deitemeyer had given county commissioners. CPCC didn’t publicly announce the project until June 2024, after Matthews town commissioners approved the rezoning. The lawsuit said CPCC staff communicated with Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officials about increased public awareness of the project in September 2024.
The complaint said that after more people became aware of the proposed training facility, residents tried to attend board meetings to get more information. At one meeting last November, 20 to 30 people showed up, but only 14 were allowed inside. A CPCC security guard said this was due to fire code.
That meeting also started with a CPCC representative, who is not identified in the lawsuit, stating that anyone disrupting the meeting would be charged with a misdemeanor. Minutes later, the board went into closed session. No agendas were distributed, the lawsuit alleged, and security guards escorted people out after the board went into closed session.
At one of the meetings, de Janon asked a CPCC representative for an agenda. The representative refused, saying, “We don’t have one,” the lawsuit said.
Queen City Nerve reported that at the March 12 meeting, Dietemeyer asked whether anyone had any questions, and when someone tried to ask one, the board moved into closed session. Ezipke said in an interview that for months, when people tried to attend meetings, they encountered security guards and were made to feel intimidated for simply seeking out basic information.
What happened at the March 12 meeting felt like an escalation, she said. She and Exceus left the meeting early due to prior commitments. As Ezipke left, a security guard followed her so closely, it felt like he was breathing down her neck, she said.
As she got to her car, she saw that another security guard had taken out his phone and was filming Exceus. The two women confronted the security guard. Ezipke said the security guard also started filming her, but denied it when confronted. Exceus, however, was behind the security guard and recorded the security guard filming Ezipke, she said.
The lawsuit said the security guard told Exceus that she would be arrested if she didn’t leave. The police officer then told Ezikpe that she was now banned from campus and would be arrested if she didn’t leave campus immediately. Security guards eventually told both women they were not allowed back on campus. The women never received any official notice of the ban; Exceus is still enrolled as a part-time student but she has not been back to campus since the incident.
No trial date has been set for the lawsuit. The complaint is asking a judge to issue an order prohibiting CPCC from holding any future meetings in violation of the open meetings law and to declare any actions the board took during allegedly illegal meetings be null and void.
The lawsuit also seeks unredacted meetings of any closed session the board held in violation of the open meetings law. Ezipke said this lawsuit is meant to ensure that CPCC is transparent and doesn’t violate people’s First Amendment rights. “I think this is a moment to say you actually can’t tell people they’re not allowed to use their freedom of speech to speak out just because you don’t like the side of the issue they’re on.”
Michael Hewlett is a staff reporter at The Assembly.
Source: theassembly.com, April 30, 2025