This is NOT a PROTEST it's a TERRORIST Attack on Private Property. Thousands of Dollars of Equipment was Destroyed.
Police say at least 23 people will face domestic terrorism charges after they were arrested Sunday amid violent protests at the site of a planned law enforcement training facility in Atlanta dubbed “Cop City” by opponents who claim it would propagate militarized policing and harm the environment.
Police and construction equipment were assailed with Molotov cocktails, commercial-grade fireworks, bricks and large rocks, authorities said.
A construction tractor was set ablaze, with smoke billowing into the air, footage from the area shows. At least four other fires burned in and around the fenced site as people dressed in black swarmed both sides of a police barricade before additional officers arrived, surveillance videos released by the Atlanta Police Department show.
Some 35 people were detained. Two of those arrested were from Georgia, while police say the rest hail from places as far as Maine and Arizona. One person was from Canada and another from France, according to a list provided Monday by the Atlanta Police Department, which said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation would be prosecuting the charges.
The incident came at the start of what protesters are calling a weeklong “mass mobilization” – with Thursday labeled a “National Day of Action Against Police Terror” – at the forested site slated to host the $90 million, 85-acre law enforcement facility.
The mobilization comes after officers in January fatally shot a protester at the construction zone during an encounter where a state trooper was wounded. The events are part of a steady stream of protests where activists, some of whom have camped in the forest surrounding the planned facility, have been arrested and charged with domestic terrorism.
“This is not a protest, this criminal activity and the charges that will be brought forth will show that,” Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said at a Sunday news conference. “When you throw commercial-grade fireworks, when you throw Molotov cocktails, large rocks, a number of items at officers – your only intent is to harm.”
“Appropriate charges” are being coordinated with DeKalb County prosecutors and the Georgia Attorney General’s office, Schierbaum said at the news conference, adding no officers were hurt.
Officers “exercised restraint and used non-lethal” force to make the arrests, police said in a statement, also describing the accused as “violent agitators.”
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