Demonstrators confront an Atlanta police officer during a protest over plans to build a new police training center, March 9, 2023, in Atlanta.
Some 61 people have been indicted in Georgia on racketeering charges after a state-run investigation into protests opposing the construction of a sprawling police training facility known as the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.
The indictment was brought on Aug. 29 and in an accompanying statement by Republican Attorney General Chris Carr, he hailed it as a necessary effort by authorities to quell the use of “coordinated violence” and “intimidation” by opponents to the $90 million training facility’s construction. The project spans nearly 100 acres and is located in an urban forested area that opponents say will be squandered with the creation of the site and will only serve to increase militarization of police forces while directly damaging an already-stressed environment in an impoverished and mostly Black community.
Protests of the facility, which opponents and activists have referred to as “Cop City,” have unfolded for roughly two years. During that time, protester and environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Teran aka Tortuguita, was shot and killed by police as law enforcement removed people from an area near the construction site. An autopsy report completed in March and released this April noted Teran, 26, was shot at least 57 times.
An investigation into Teran’s death by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation concluded that Teran shot at police and police shot back out of self-defense. But questions about Teran’s death have continued to circulate among some “Cop City” opponents and they point to officers’ lack of body cameras at the time of the killing as a key driver of their concerns.
The indictment is 109 pages and in it, prosecutors allege that 61 individuals conspired to stop the construction of the facility by coordinating their efforts to foment violence, intimidate people and destroy property.
The charges are quite expansive and cobble together more than 200 incidents that prosecutors say underlie the broader conspiracy; from defendants being reimbursed for food or glue provided to activists in the course of protesting, to the throwing of Molotov cocktails and/or fireworks at state employees, police officers, firefighters and EMTs. Damages targeting official vehicles, arson, vandalism and trespass are also included.
Five of the named defendants have been hit with domestic terrorism charges already as well for their alleged attempt of arson in the first degree. This, according to Carr, was connected to an attempt on Jan. 21 to “destroy and disable critical infrastructure” like a bank, police cars, and 191 Peachtree Tower, the fourth largest skyscraper in Atlanta that is also is home to the Atlanta Police Foundation.
Other defendants in the group already face money laundering charges for their leadership of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a group that helped provide protesters of “Cop City” with bail money. Also among the defendants are individuals who were previously charged with intimidation after sharing flyers that called a Georgia state trooper who shot at a protester a “murderer.”
Significantly, the indictment lists the start of the 61-member conspiracy as May 25, 2020, the day George Floyd was killed by police officers in Minneapolis. Protests were sparked that same day and continued apace well into the summer of 2020. But the Cop City Coalition points out in its recent statement that the Floyd killing occurred months before “anyone was even aware of Cop City.”
The attempt to link that date with the allegations is a greater attempt, the coalition argues, to hamstring the broader movement in the U.S. for racial justice and equity. Prosecutors contend the group “used the outrage stemming from the George Floyd murder and shooting of Rayshard Brooks to promote its anti-police, anti-government and anti-development views,” the indictment notes.
Brooks, a Black 27-year-old man, was killed by police in June 2020 in a Wendy’s parking lot. Prosecutors did not pursue criminal charges against the officers involved in Brooks’ shooting. The man’s family reached a $1 million settlement with the Atlanta City Council in November 2022.
“Today, Republican Attorney General Chris Carr, who used his platform to recruit for the Jan. 6 insurrection, announced blatantly authoritarian RICO charges against 61 people…[he] may try to use his prosecutors and power to build his gubernatorial campaign and silence free speech, but his threats will not silence our commitment to standing up for our future, our community, and our city,” a Sept. 5 statement from the coalition noted.
Tensions around the training facility have been high. To wit, when Teran was killed, a police car was set aflame in Atlanta in the days after. Then in March 2021, police were run off a construction site by masked protesters who managed to flee from authorities after setting a bulldozer and police ATV on fire. An hour later, police swooped in on a music festival where they believed some of the offenders had slipped into the crowd after changing clothes, AP reported. More than two dozen people were arrested and many were charged with domestic terrorism but for those who were, charges were mostly devoid of specifics.
‘Stop Cop City’ protesters march from Atlanta’s Gresham Park in honor of slain protester Manuel Teran on June 28, 2023. Photo by Collin Mayfield, SIPA USA. (Sipa via AP Images)
One of those charged with domestic terrorism in March, and who also appears in the August RICO indictment, was Thomas Jurgens, a lawyer with the civil rights-focused Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC. Jurgens’ attorney said the SPLC lawyer was wearing a green hat during the March event, a signifier that he was a peaceful, legal observer of protests. ‘
The Atlanta City Council voted 11-to-4 this June to fund the massive police training facility.
Individuals indicted are linked to the Defend the Atlanta Forest group, which the Republican attorney general describes at length as an anarchist, anti-police and anti-business extremist group. The indictment argues that the group’s sole function is to occupy the forested acreage slated for the new training facility.
The “Stop Cop City” indictment spearheaded by Carr comes on the heels of former President Donald Trump’s indictment in Fulton County, also for racketeering charges. Carr was one of the officials Trump called in Georgia in December 2020 when he sought Carr’s backing of a doomed lawsuit from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that was meant to throw Georgia’s election results out. Trump was indicted for election interference in Fulton County this August.
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