23 charged with domestic terrorism after fiery protest at Atlanta ‘Cop City’ police training site
After a construction vehicle was set on fire and objects were thrown at police officers at a protest, 23 people were charged with domestic terrorism Monday.
The demonstration took place Sunday at “Cop City” in Atlanta, a proposed site of a sprawling police training center.
A total of 35 people were detained during the protests at the 85-acre facility, where activists are concerned law enforcement will be trained to violently break up protests.
Police killed Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a demonstrator at the proposed Public Safety Training Facility location, several weeks ago. Organizers are planning several more protests at the site.
Hundreds attended the South River Music Festival before police say “agitators” left the concert, changed into black clothes and destroyed multiple pieces of construction equipment.
After entering the fenced-in area, the demonstrators allegedly “used the cover of a peaceful protest of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers,” a police statement said.
The department said officers used restraint “and used non-lethal enforcement to conduct arrests.”
However, the police department’s account has been heavily disputed.
Activist Kamau Franklin told CNN the arrests were “indiscriminate” and were another example of “policies of police aggression and the tactical response of over-policing.”
“There will continue to be protests meant to express the outrage of the community,” Franklin said. “These are big-tent protests. We don’t expect incidents beyond standard civil disobedience.”
Defend the Atlanta Forest and Atlanta Solidarity Fund both released statements describing the arrests as indiscriminate. They say many of the people detained were not involved in the destructive demonstration.
“They want to hold every movement participant liable for anything which anyone does in the name of defending the forest,” ASF said. “If one person burns a bulldozer, they want to jail every protester for arson. As a legal strategy, it would be laughable if it didn’t have serious consequences.”
“The strategy of extreme collective punishment is designed to scare protesters into silence, but also to pit the movement against itself. They want to get activists focused on condemning and policing each other so that the cops don’t have to.”
The facility has been met with fierce resistance since its announcement, with the community concerned in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder as well as the climate ramifications of clearing a large forested area on city-owned property.
While the Atlanta police claim to have a strategy for handling further protests, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating multiple law enforcement officers for Paez Teran’s shooting at an earlier protest.
No officers were injured in Sunday’s incident.
