Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens told the Rotary Club of Buckhead last week that the city plans to provide police protection to the construction crews working on Atlanta’s public safety training center this year.

Dickens told folks at Maggiano’s Little Italy restaurant that he’s waiting on the final permit from DeKalb County to begin construction at the site, which will house facilities for Atlanta’s police and firefighters. But a contractor told Dickens at the meeting that her peers are deterred from bidding on the project due to the protest surrounding it.

Many activists are currently living in trees on the site, where they’re vandalizing equipment amid attacks on law enforcement and construction contractors with everything from soda cans and rocks to Molotov cocktails.

“They’re criminals, and they don’t even live in our cities,” Dickens told Buckhead residents. “Brasfield & Gorrie is still committed to doing this project, so I would get onto their coattails because if they’re not afraid, I hope that you wouldn’t be afraid.”

Vandals in September targeted the Mountain Brook home of M. Miller Gorrie, the chairman of Brasfield & Gorrie, which is a primary contractor for the training center.

In an anonymous online blog post, anti-training center activists claimed responsibility for the vandalism at Gorrie’s house.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation charged six people with domestic terrorism last month based on their alleged affiliation with the “defend the Atlanta forest” movement, which authorities deemed a domestic violent extremist group. Gov. Brian Kemp says he expects more center-related arrests in the future.

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