More than 60 comrades were charged through a RICO indictment for allegedly conspiring to block construction of an Atlanta police training facility in Georgia’s woodlands.
The sweeping indictment announced in Atlanta alleging that opposition to a police and fire department training center known as “Cop City” adds up to a criminal conspiracy.
According to the indictment, comrades are accused of coordinating, advertising and conducting “direct action” designed to prevent the construction of the Atlanta Police Public Safety Training Center and Shadowbox Studios, previously known as Blackhall Studios, and to “promote anarchist ideas.”
Some defendants are also facing charges of domestic terrorism, first-degree arson and money laundering.
The 109-page court document includes a series of “overt acts” by defendants that include writing ACAB or buying glue to make pamphlets about the movement against the training center, planned to be built in a forest south-east of Atlanta.
About Defend Atlanta Forest
Defend the Forest & Stop Cop City is a grassroots movement of many groups and individuals from Atlanta and beyond, working together and separately to prevent the South River Forest from becoming a police training compound and a new Hollywood soundstage complex.
Atlanta Police Foundation is trying to build the largest police training facility in the US in Weelaunee or South River Forest, a watershed. The plans include military-grade training facilities, a mock city to practice urban warfare, dozens of shooting ranges, and a Black Hawk helicopter landing pad.
After the historic George Floyd uprising where millions marched, demonstrated, and took action against police brutality, expressing their interest in police abolition, the Atlanta government and countless others found creative ways to give local law enforcement even more resources and funds, under the cover of “reform” and “trainings.”
The South River Forest, one of Atlanta’s largest remaining green spaces. The forest encompasses a three-hundred-acre, city-owned tract of land that sits in a poor and predominantly Black part of unincorporated DeKalb County. Underground are the much older remains of the Muscogee Creek people, who lived in what they called the Weelaunee Forest until they were forcibly removed by white settlers in the eighteen-twenties and thirties.
The plans for Cop City have been met with exuberant from forest defenders and the broader community.
Board of Trustees of the Atlanta Police Foundation include members from: Waffle House, Home Depot, AT&T, UPS, Delta Airlines, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch, Chick-fil-A, Equifax, and SunTrust Bank. A complete list can be found here: https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/about-the-atlanta-police-foundation/#board-members