Monitoring Desk
ATLANTA, US: Police have filed domestic terrorism charges against 23 protesters accused of attacking officers during a violent demonstration against a planned law enforcement training facility, dubbed “Cop City” by opponents, in Atlanta, capital of the US state of Georgia.
Authorities said “violent agitators” attacked police personnel and construction equipment with Molotov cocktails, commercial-grade fireworks, bricks, and large rocks.
Surveillance videos released by the Atlanta Police Department show a construction tractor set on fire and smoke billowing into the air, and at least four other fires burned alongside the fenced site as assailants dressed in black swarmed both sides of a police barricade before reinforcements arrived.
Some 35 people were detained. Only two of those arrested were from Georgia, while police say the rest were from places as far as Maine and Arizona. Meanwhile, one person was from Canada and another from France, according to a list provided by the Atlanta Police Department, which said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation would be prosecuting the charges.
Mass mobilization against Cop City
The incident comes 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 police training facility.
The protest comes after officers in January fatally shot a demonstator at the construction zone during an encounter where a state trooper was injured.
Critics of “Cop City” say the police training facility would harm the environment and propagate militarized policing. The events are part of a steady series of protests where activists, some of whom have camped in the forest surrounding the planned facility, have been arrested and charged with domestic terrorism.
