‘Cop City’ Protesters Arrested For Distributing Flyers

Over the previous yr and a half, a protest motion 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 Security Coaching Heart would embody 85 acres of a 265-acre property and function a coaching facility for police and fireplace security personnel.

Opponents, who derisively name the event “Cop Metropolis,” fear it might exacerbate a number of current 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 can be vital and long-lasting,” Nina Dutton, chair of the Sierra Membership’s Metro Atlanta Group, informed The Guardian in 2022. Dutton added that the power “would represent an enormous funding right into a system of policing and militarization that has already confirmed to be harmful on this metropolis and world wide.”

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 dominated the loss of life a murder. The report said that whereas Paez Terán suffered not less than 57 gunshot wounds, no gunshot residue was detected on the activist’s fingers, undercutting the GSP officer’s story.

Then on April 28, police arrested three activists in Cartersville, about 40 miles north of Atlanta. Based on The Intercept, “Julia Dupuis, Charley Tennenbaum, and an activist named Wednesday” had been booked on “costs 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’ lawyer, informed The Intercept that the flyers named an officer who lived within the neighborhood and alleged that he was concerned within the January loss of life of Paez Terán.

Bartow County inmate data present that Julia Dupuis of Fullerton, California, and Caroline Tennenbaum and Abeeku Vassall of Atlanta, had been arrested on April 28, all on costs of misdemeanor stalking and a cost to be added later. Violating the Georgia statute on intimidating an officer can carry a nice 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 means of the weekend. All had been denied bail on Monday, regardless of no legal historical past nor any violence allegations within the costs.

If the activists had been merely reporting that an officer was concerned in a taking pictures, then it is onerous to see that as a criminal offense, a lot much less a felony. The Atlanta Neighborhood Press Collective launched the names of six officers concerned within the taking pictures final month primarily based on their inclusion within the health worker’s post-mortem report of Paez Terán. It is unclear which of these officers allegedly lived within the Bartow County neighborhood, however property data are additionally public data.

Between December and February, the state charged 19 protesters with felonies underneath Georgia’s home terrorism regulation. Regardless that 9 of these folks had been solely accused of misdemeanor trespassing, the state nonetheless utilized felony home terrorism costs on the justification that Defend the Atlanta Forest is “a gaggle categorized by the US Division of Homeland Safety as Home Violent Extremists.” Based on 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 website.