Over the previous 12 months and a half, a protest movement has erupted in Atlanta to oppose the development of a police coaching facility on a city-owned patch of forest in majority-black DeKalb County. The Public Safety Training Center would embody 85 acres of a 265-acre property and function a coaching facility for police and fireplace security personnel.
Opponents, who derisively call the event “Cop Metropolis,” fear it might exacerbate a number of present issues in Atlanta. “The environmental ramifications of clearcutting a large swath of one of many final remaining undeveloped forests in our metropolis and changing it with this facility could be important and long-lasting,” Nina Dutton, chair of the Sierra Membership’s Metro Atlanta Group, told The Guardian in 2022. Dutton added that the ability “would represent an enormous funding right into a system of policing and militarization that has already confirmed to be harmful on this metropolis and all over the world.”
As if to show the activists’ level, state and native police have arrested activists for distributing flyers calling consideration to the police killing of a “Cop Metropolis” opponent.
On January 19, a Georgia State Patrol (GSP) officer shot and killed Manuel Paez Terán, an environmental activist occupying the positioning of the longer term police facility together with the group Defend the Atlanta Forest. The officer alleged that he had returned fireplace after being shot. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) confirmed the officer was shot by a gun that Paez Terán had legally bought. However final month, the DeKalb County Medical Examiner ruled the demise a murder. The report said that whereas Paez Terán suffered a minimum of 57 gunshot wounds, no gunshot residue was detected on the activist’s arms, undercutting the GSP officer’s story.
Then on April 28, police arrested three activists in Cartersville, about 40 miles north of Atlanta. According to The Intercept, “Julia Dupuis, Charley Tennenbaum, and an activist named Wednesday” had been booked on “expenses of felony intimidation of an officer of the state and misdemeanor stalking” for putting flyers on mailboxes in a residential neighborhood. Lyra Foster, the suspects’ legal professional, informed The Intercept that the flyers named an officer who lived within the neighborhood and alleged that he was concerned within the January demise of Paez Terán.
Bartow County inmate information present that Julia Dupuis of Fullerton, California, and Caroline Tennenbaum and Abeeku Vassall of Atlanta, had been arrested on April 28, all on expenses of misdemeanor stalking and a cost to be added later. Violating the Georgia statute on intimidating an officer can carry a advantageous of as much as $5,000 and as much as 20 years in jail.
Foster informed The Intercept that every one three had been held in solitary confinement by way of the weekend. All had been denied bail on Monday, regardless of no legal historical past nor any violence allegations within the expenses.
If the activists had been merely reporting that an officer was concerned in a taking pictures, then it is exhausting to see that as against the law, a lot much less a felony. The Atlanta Group Press Collective released the names of six officers concerned within the taking pictures final month based mostly on their inclusion within the medical expert’s autopsy report of Paez Terán. It is unclear which of these officers allegedly lived within the Bartow County neighborhood, however property information are additionally public info.
Between December and February, the state charged 19 protesters with felonies beneath Georgia’s home terrorism regulation. Although 9 of these individuals had been solely accused of misdemeanor trespassing, the state nonetheless utilized felony home terrorism expenses on the justification that Defend the Atlanta Forest is “a bunch labeled by the US Division of Homeland Safety as Home Violent Extremists.” According to Grist, “a DHS spokesperson denied that the federal company classifies any particular teams with this time period.”
In March, 23 protesters had been arrested and charged with home terrorism after allegedly throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at police on the web site.
