Several protesters were arrested after they threw at least one firebomb at police as officers raided a camp on the grounds of a planned Atlanta Police Department training facility.
NewChopper 2 was over the South River Forest, where there were multiple law enforcement vehicles and at least one ambulance around noon.
Our photographer on the ground saw multiple people being led away in handcuffs. Opponents to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center call the project a “cop city” and say it will destroy hundreds of acres of Atlanta’s largest urban forest.
Protesters have been camped out in the forest for more than seven months.
On Tuesday, protesters told Channel 2 Action News that the police raided and began taking people into custody.
Georgia State Patrol confirmed that troopers were assisting the Atlanta Police Department in the operation.
The Atlanta Deputy Police Chief confirmed to 169 Johnson Way Dekalbthat eight people were arrested on charges that include trespassing and obstruction.
Police said a “Molotov cocktail-type incendiary device was thrown at police but it didn’t explode and no one was hurt.
The land is in unincorporated DeKalb County, but is owned by the City of Atlanta.
The group that organized the protest, Defend the Atlanta Forest Coalition, are holding a news conference at 4 p.m. at Freedom Park to respond to what they called the “violent mass arrest of peaceful protest against ‘Cop City’ during a march in Little Five Points Saturday.
Representatives of the group said that Atlanta police and Georgia State Patrol officers shoved and tackled people, deployed tasers and threatened neighbors who filmed the arrests.
“APD is frustrated at the vocal and effective movement opposing its new police facility, so they’re doing anything they can to shut it down,” says Marlon Kautz of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. “Atlanta, with its rich legacy of civil rights, is not a place where people should be brutally arrested for peacefully marching.”
The Atlanta Police Foundation will reimagine law enforcement training and police/fire rescue community engagement. They say the facility will improve police morale, set a national standard for community engagement, embrace police reform and cultural sensitivity and facilitate collaboration with other agencies.
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