The fight over a proposed police training facility in Atlanta has escalated in recent months, with a series of confrontations — including one that resulted in the police killing of an anti-deforestation activist — signaling a potential violent new front in clashes between radical environmentalists and law enforcement.   

Last year, the city began preliminary construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, or Cop City, on 85 acres of the South River Forest.   

The project has drawn a broad, overlapping coalition of opponents on the left, from anarchists to anti-police brutality activists to environmentalists opposed to the deforestation.   

Confrontations between those opponents and law enforcement have intensified and grown violent in recent months, leading to a number of protestors being charged with domestic terrorism and to the first known police killing of an environmental activist in the U.S. 

On Jan. 18, Georgia State Patrol officers raided an encampment in the forest, shooting and killing Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a nonbinary anarchist and environmental activist who went by Tortuguita, during the confrontation.  

Police officials have said the activist shot first, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), which is investigating the shooting, has said a loaded handgun belonging to Tortuguita was recovered at the scene that matches an officer’s wound.  

However, Atlanta police body camera footage of the aftermath of the shooting depicts an officer saying “you f—ed your own officer up?” while another officer later in the recording asks, “Did they shoot their own man?” An autopsy commissioned by Tortuguita’s family indicated they were shot 14 times and that, at the time of death, their hands were raised, with the palms turned inward toward their upper body. The state patrol does not wear body cameras and the GBI has said no footage exists of the shooting itself.  

The Hill has submitted a request for the incident report under Georgia’s open-records law, which has not been answered as of this writing.  

The killing puts the fight over Cop City in unknown territory, because there are “very few, if any, examples in U.S. history” of police killings of environmentalist activists, said Keith Mako Woodhouse, an associate professor of history at Northwestern University and author of the book “The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism.”  

While no further fatalities have occurred, police detained 35 people in early March after a free concert in the forest protesting the construction became a confrontation, in which police claimed they were attacked with rocks, bricks and Molotov cocktails and that attendees damaged construction equipment. Twenty-three of the detainees have been charged with domestic terrorism, including a legal observer from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the only one offered bond.  

The charges have been levied based on state law, “because there is no federal domestic terrorism statute,” said Daryl Johnson, a former intelligence analyst for the Department of Homeland Security. Georgia broadened the scope of its domestic terrorism law in 2017, expanding it to cover purposeful damage to “critical infrastructure” with the intention to “alter, change or coerce” government policy.  

In addition to the arrests, DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond issued an executive order last week closing Intrenchment Creek Park near the site to the public, claiming police have discovered “booby traps” including boards with nails protruding from them covered by underbrush. 

   Battle over Atlanta’s ‘Cop City’ signals potential for more violent clashes between protesters, police (msn.com) 

 Fight over ‘Cop City’ heats up in Atlanta forest | The Hill 

Story by Alex Leeds Matthews • Mar 29

Earlier this month, nearly two dozen people were arrested after demonstrations against a police and fire training center near Atlanta that opponents have dubbed “Cop City.” But while critics of the facility say it will harm the environment and propagate police militarization, the controversy has seeped into the foundation behind it.

The project is largely funded by the Atlanta Police Foundation, a multimillion-dollar nonprofit that supports the Atlanta Police Department. The foundation is one of at least 150 like it across the US that CNN reviewed that say they fill crucial budget gaps, not dissimilar to a nonprofit supporting a library or public school.

“Our role in Atlanta is to help provide, to develop new programs which can ultimately reduce crime,” said Rob Baskin, the Atlanta Police Foundation’s vice president and director of public affairs.

Critics argue these nonprofits — many of which were launched after the wave of protests when a Black 18-year-old was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, in in 2014 — are unaccountable to the public and create channels for corporate influence in law enforcement.

The backlash over the new training facility is raising public debate over how involved private philanthropy should be in policing, according to Seth Stoughton, a professor of law and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina.

“Police foundations don’t have democratic accountability the way that a police agency does,” Stoughton said.

Hundreds of these law enforcement foundations — like Atlanta’s, which was founded in 2003 — have sprung up across the country in the last two decades to support departments with extra money and equipment, according to a study co-authored by Kevin Walby, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Winnipeg. Some are no longer active.

These types of foundations have existed since at least the 1970s, but most sprung up starting in the early 2000s. Walby’s study notes that nearly 40 percent of the organizations it studied in the US were founded in the two years after the 2014 demonstrations over the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

Many of these foundations supporting major cities raise annual revenue in the millions, but since 2014, Atlanta Police Foundation’s revenue has grown to make the nonprofit an outlier. It raised at least $28 million in revenue in 2021, the highest revenue among more than 150 other police foundations for which CNN reviewed Internal Revenue Service data. That figure is approximately 15 times what the foundation raised a decade earlier.

About $16 million of the foundation’s 2021 revenue was designated for projects that qualify for a tax credit to develop low-income neighborhoods, Baskin wrote in an email to CNN.

Among the more than 150 foundations whose IRS data CNN reviewed, the foundation supporting police in Las Vegas, which has a slightly larger population than Atlanta, raised the second-largest amount, with over $12 million. Omaha’s police foundation, where the police department serves a population similar in size to Atlanta’s, raised just under $1.7 million in revenue in 2021, by comparison, among the highest revenues of any police foundation CNN reviewed.

Police departments spend most of their budget on personnel, said Tom Kovach, executive director of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Foundation. Private foundations —such as Atlanta’s — offer opportunities to fund new technologies or programs that don’t get included in government budgets, Kovach said.

But while police foundations can help departments overcome budget constraints, “There are political constraints, not just resource constraints,” said Stoughton. He says that the foundations can sometimes “provide an end run” around those political constraints, purchasing more controversial items like surveillance technology or training that the public doesn’t support.

The foundation disagrees. “What we offer to the department is determined by what the department says it needs,” Baskin told CNN.

The foundation in Atlanta only funds programs that the mayor or police department have approved, typically for a pilot period, Baskin said in his email.

The Atlanta foundation’s annual revenue has grown substantially since 2014, with particular increases from campaigns supporting a youth diversion program, surveillance technology, and an initiative to develop housing for officers to live in the communities they police, Baskin added.

Such campaigns are often supported by corporations based in Atlanta.

“It makes sense that businesses would want to have a role in an organization that cares about public safety. I don’t see anything wrong with companies investing in their communities and donating to a nonprofit,” said Farhang Heydari, a law professor and researcher at New York University. “The part that becomes a little problem with police foundations is when police departments use them as an end run around democratic governments. You would have to go through a normal budget process to buy a bunch of surveillance cameras and put them up around the city.”

The surveillance cameras that the Atlanta Police Foundation has installed through its Operation Shield program are only in neighborhoods that want them, Baskin said. He also noted that the foundation does not purchase weapons or ammunition for the police department.

But it’s the funding for the training facility that is drawing attention these days.

About two-thirds of the so-called “Cop City” training facility’s projected $90 million price tag will be covered by the police foundation, according to Bryan Thomas, the director of communications for Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens. The project was announced by then-Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in spring 2021 and the city council approved an agreement to lease the land designated for the facility to the Atlanta Police Foundation in September 2021. In June 2021, protesters allegedly vandalized the foundation’s office.

The Las Vegas’ foundation has also been fundraising for a new training center, Kovach told CNN.

These campaigns to increase funding for police foundations have come as racial justice groups call to reduce police spending. Critics question corporations’ motivations for contributing to these funds, while some simultaneously publicly espouse support for Black Lives Matter and other movements that demand reform.

“That these police departments can go to these corporations and get things that that our elected officials haven’t given to them…this is a dangerous cocktail,” said Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, a racial justice group that released a 2021 report that was critical of the foundations.

“What shareholder would be comfortable with corporations moving money if it didn’t have something to do with influence?” Robinson added.

 Atlanta Police Foundation President and CEO Dave Wilkinson surveys the damage from protests at the site of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Facility in Atlanta on March 6. - Alyssa Pointer/Reuters

In response to such criticism, Darin Schierbaum, chief of the Atlanta Police Department, told CNN that corporations involved with the police foundation do not craft policy for the police department: “I have a dedicated and talented group of executive commanders that do,” he said.

“That criticism is inaccurate,” Baskin said. “I think it’s incorrect, and I think it misstates and shows frankly a misunderstanding of what we do.”

He added, “The business and philanthropic community in Atlanta is extraordinarily generous and very eager to enhance public safety.”

The presence of corporate leadership on foundation boards is common among philanthropic nonprofits, where such leaders offer the gifts of “time, talent and treasure,” Kovach said. He suggests that it’s useful for these foundations to have both the expertise and the financial resources associated with these corporations.

Stoughton, the University of South Carolina professor, believes the emphasis is on the offering of “treasure.”

“The reason that they’re pulling people from big corporations is because the people in big corporations have big checkbooks,” he said.

Police departments aren’t the only public agencies that rely on private philanthropy. Libraries, schools, fire departments, universities, and other public entities have dedicated foundations to support their mission. But the issue of private philanthropy funding public agencies is “sharper” around policing, Stoughton says, given recent controversy over policing and racial justice.

“Policing is much more at the tip of the pendulum of public opinion,” Stoughton said.

Methodology: To find the highest revenue among police foundations, CNN reviewed the Internal Revenue Service’s business master file for any organizations that described themselves as police, or public safety foundations, or “friends” of law enforcement. This analysis excluded organizations that described themselves as “fraternal order,” or public safety foundations that were found to only support non-law-enforcement first responders, such as fire departments. CNN also reviewed any exempt organizations in the business master file that filed at the same address and appeared to be law-enforcement related, to see if any of those reflected additional sources of revenue for the same police foundation, as APF Support Inc. does for the Atlanta Police Foundation.

In reviewing Atlanta Police Foundation’s annual revenue, CNN reviewed 990 filings from ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer. If there were differences between one year’s filing and the “prior year” revenue in the preceding year’s filing, the year reflects the most recent figure.

 Atlanta’s so-called ‘Cop City’ is igniting protests. Here’s what we know about the foundation behind it (msn.com) 

Opponents say move is yet another example of crackdown by officials seeking to disrupt protests against $90m training center

Children and parents from a couple of Atlanta private schools recently showed up at city hall during a school day to urge city council members not to go ahead with “Cop City”, a $90m police and fire department training base planned in a forest that has become a center of controversy in the US and overseas.

On Monday college students at Emory University, Georgia Tech and other Atlanta schools protested the gigantic project, holding up signs, handing out leaflets and giving speeches. They tried to camp overnight at Emory, but were forced off by Atlanta police early Tuesday morning.

But while the protests against Cop City go on, the project is making headway and a key stretch of public land nearby is no longer accessible to people seeking to defend the forest. For the first time in nearly two years of opposition to Cop City, the public park part of South River Forest south-east of Atlanta has been shut down, allegedly for the public’s safety.

Opponents say the move is yet another example of the heavy-handed crackdown by law enforcement and local officials, who have sought to portray the protesters as “domestic terrorists” and have used a variety of methods to disrupt opposition groups. Dekalb county officials have no timeline for reopening the park.

The park’s secondary-growth forest is where police shot and killed activist Manuel Paez Terán, or “Tortuguita”, on 18 January, catapulting the fight over Cop City into global headlines. It is also where dozens of people were arrested on 5 March during a music festival and charged with domestic terrorism and where almost all the movement’s “tree sitters” have camped.

Called Intrenchment Creek Park – or Weelaunee People’s Park by protesters – the part of the forest now closed down has been the physical and spiritual center of the movement to “Stop Cop City”. “Forest defenders” have camped there and dozens of public events around the issue have happened there, including Jewish and Muscogee (Creek) ceremonies, herbal workshops, school events, food distribution to area residents and five “weeks of action”.

Forty acres of the park have also been under threat from a developer’s plans since before the Cop City project became public in late 2021. These plans have been stalled by a local environmental group’s lawsuit.

In response to the park’s closing, the broad range of groups interested in defending the forest are showing up elsewhere around the city – as evidenced by the visits to city hall and this week’s actions by Emory and other Atlanta-area college students. Weekly food distribution and potlucks, formerly held in the park’s parking lot, are now being held right outside, yards away from police.

“The fact we’re not able to be in the forest … makes us shift in different directions, to expand the movement,” said Willow, an Emory student organizer.

Dekalb county CEO Michael Thurmond announced the order closing the park in a press conference, claiming that the protestors had “booby-trapped” the forest, putting the public in danger. He displayed photos of boards with nails in them allegedly found in the park as evidence, and said the order would be lifted when it was “safe” – but to date police and barricades are still blocking public entrance.

County officials barred a local documentary filmmaker and a reporter from the Atlanta Community Press Collective – a leading local source of information about the training center in an environment where the state has been less than transparent – from entering the press conference.

Asked why the park remained closed, and when it would be reopened, Dekalb spokesman Andrew L Cauthen merely sent an email quoting the order: the park “will remain closed ‘until further notice … to protect the safety of the families, residents and visitors and their pets in the area … [and] county personnel.’”

Dekalb county commissioner Ted Terry, a former state Sierra Club director, described the order as a “back-room, behind-closed-doors coordination between Thurmond and [Atlanta’s mayor, Andre] Dickens … to push visual opposition to what’s happening in South River Forest out of view”. He will be pushing to reopen the park through a resolution being introduced in early May.

Jacqueline Echols is board president of the South River Watershed Alliance, the group behind the three-year-old, ongoing lawsuit seeking to stop the county from giving away 40 acres (16 hectares) of the park to a developer named Ryan Millsap, in exchange for another piece of land nearby. Before “Stop Cop City”, there was “Stop the Swap”.

Through their lawsuit, Echols and her group of Atlanta-area residents have essentially been keeping the park open while “Stop Cop City” turned into a local, national and international cause celebre for a range of people concerned about police militarization and abuse of force, and troubled about destroying the forest.

The group’s lawsuit also maintained the forest’s accessibility to the public in an area where majority-Black neighborhoods have historically been overlooked, and protected the Atlanta metro area’s largest forest in an era of climate change. “With no lawsuit, after all these years, the land probably would have been sold for a hefty profit … and by this time, there probably would not be a forest,” Echols said.

Echols, who is Black, has been taking mostly Black people from the Atlanta area on hikes and kayak rides down South River – which is fed by a creek that flows between the planned training center and the park – for more than a decade. She is surprised to find herself three years into defending part of the forest against Millsap, a former film studio executive, and that “Stop Cop City” has launched from the same forest.

The park is closed to shut down people protesting against Cop City and the land swap

“I never anticipated this – that Dekalb would do the swap, or that the city of Atlanta would do what they’re doing – particularly because the people running those municipalities are Black, and they should understand the importance of protecting this forest in an area that has suffered so much neglect,” she said – referring to Dekalb CEO Thurmond and the Atlanta mayor, Andre Dickens.

Joe Peery, an artist who lives near the forest, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. On a recent Saturday, he got off his bicycle along with several dozen cycling enthusiasts, stood in front of a police car and several concrete barriers blocking the park’s entrance, and took a photo. The idea: sending a letter to the county opposing keeping the park closed.

Peery knows nearly every inch of the forest that stretches out behind the barriers and the police. He has biked and walked there for more than a decade, created or maintained about six miles of trails himself, and led hundreds of people on tours.

“There’s a comfort to the forest,” he said. “It’s beneficial to meeting with others, discussing ideas and feeling a sense of acceptance.”

“The park is closed to shut down people protesting against Cop City and the land swap,” Peery said. “But what’s happened is people are finding other ways to express themselves.”

 Atlanta shuts down strategic park in ‘Cop City’ protest movement | Atlanta | The Guardian 

City council to vote on giving taxpayer money to controversial project as state characterizes opposition as work of ‘terrorists’

Timothy Pratt in AtlantaSat 20 May 2023 11.00 EDT

Pressure is growing on Atlanta politicians to vote against giving $31m to a police and fire department training center known as “Cop City”, even as the state continues to characterize opposition to the project as the work of “terrorists”, and the city’s mayor doubles down on the notion it is needed for “public safety”.

Atlanta’s city council will soon vote on giving taxpayer money to the controversial scheme, which is months behind schedule due to protests. The Atlanta Police Foundation, the organization behind it, is also apparently coming up short in sought-after $60m in corporate funding.

  Meanwhile, the state’s second-highest law enforcement official successfully argued this week against granting bail to one of three people recently arrested for leaving fliers on mailboxes in a north-western Georgia town. The flier called a police officer who lived nearby a “murderer” for being involved in the shooting and killing of an environmental activist.

The incident pushed the Cop City project on to global headlines; the state says the activist, Manuel Paez Terán, known as “Tortuguita”, fired first and the case is with a special prosecutor.

Police have arrested dozens of protestors since the 18 January shooting, and the state has insisted on labeling those who oppose Cop City as part of a “domestic terrorist organization”.

If the council approves the funding as early as 5 June, it will be against the wishes of nearly 300 Atlanta-area residents who signed up for seven-plus hours of public comment on Monday – plus another 100 or so who attended the meeting but weren’t able to sign up in time.

Some read opposition letters signed by college faculty, union presidents, neighborhood residents and other local groups. The meeting set a record for civic participation in the city’s modern era, several people who have been involved with city politics for decades told the Guardian.

It’s unclear whether public opposition will matter. City councilman Michael Julian Bond, a member of one of two committees charged with reviewing the funding proposal, said: “I appreciate their passion. But that doesn’t absolve us from serving public employees.” None of the other council members replied to the Guardian’s repeated requests for comment.

Atlanta’s mayor, Andre Dickens, landed an editorial in the city’s main daily, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), the day after the meeting. In it, he invoked a recent mass shooting – in which four were wounded and one person was killed – as a reason for building the training center, since such incidents “show that when a crisis hits, we rely on all our first responders to be on top of their game”.

But Shannon Cofrin Gaggero, a personal friend of Amy St Pierre – the person killed in the shooting – published an op-ed in the Atlanta Community Press Collective in which she lambasted Dickens for “us[ing] her death in an attempt to drum up support for the deeply unpopular police training center”.

She noted St Pierre, a healthcare researcher, opposed Cop City and supported “a safer, more just society by advocating for common sense gun laws and investments in housing, education, healthcare and social services”.

Gaggero also mentioned that she submitted an editorial to the AJC countering the mayor’s, but received no reply. To date, the AJC has only run one editorial in nearly two years of public protest that even questions the project – written by Bernice A King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. In it, she encourages the city to “identify a more suitable location” for the training center.

Many of the hundreds of residents addressing the council’s 14 members invoked the city’s civil rights legacy, and its most famous son, King.

This included Atlanta-area Black residents mourning deaths of family members at the hands of police, such as Jimmy Hill, whose son Jimmy Atchison was killed by police in 2019. Hill asked city council members who will soon consider the funding: “What happened to integrity?”

The meeting also included scientists, human rights attorneys, reverends, college students, school teachers, university faculty, community organizers, gardeners, environmentalists and senior citizens. Some expressed concern about the environmental impact of locating the training center in a forest amid a changing climate.

  Amelia Weltner, 34, told the meeting about her grandfather, Charles Weltner, a Democrat who was the sole member of Georgia’s congressional delegation to vote for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and declined to run for re-election after his party asked him to support segregationist Lester Maddox.

“I get that they have political ambitions,” Weltner told the Guardian. “But in the long term, where does that get you? How do people view you after you’re gone?”

In an interview with the Guardian, Bond – son of civil rights leader Julian Bond – acknowledged he had never seen as many members of the public come to a city council meeting for an issue that wasn’t yet up for a vote, since being elected in 1994.

But he added some of the comments made “were not factual, or incorrect … such as saying that we were doing this in response to the unrest of 2020 – that’s not true”.

Many of those opposed to Cop City, however, do draw a line from the historic Black Lives Matter protests to Atlanta’s plans.

But even if the proposed $31m goes through, documents obtained through open records requests by the local media group Atlanta Community Press Collective suggest the Atlanta Police Foundation has concerns about cutting costs that may point to corporate funding issues.

Will Potter, who studied environmental movements in his book Green Is the New Red, compared Bond’s characterization of public opposition to Cop City to other activism he’s studied.

“In environmental movements, there’s a moving of the goal posts when it comes to the ‘proper ways’ for achieving social and political change. And especially if they’re successful in any way. There’s always something pointed to, always a way of invalidating.”

Potter added:“It’s hard not to get cynical. What conditions have to be met for people to be heard? What is enough? Will they ever be heard?”

 Atlanta politicians face pressure to vote against giving $31m to ‘Cop City’ | Atlanta | The Guardian 

Three activists protesting the planned facility were charged under a little-known Georgia law, raising first amendment concerns.

Three activists have been arrested in confusing circumstances and charged under a little-known Georgia law – an apparent tightening of the state’s criminal justice system in response to a movement opposing the building of a huge police and fire department training center known as “Cop City” near Atlanta.

“Cop City” has sparked a broad-based protest movement in Atlanta and elsewhere, drawing global headlines when one environmental activist was shot and killed by police.

  The latest arrests are “stunning and feel like overreach”, said Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University. They come under a law making it a felony to intimidate a law enforcement officer, and are in response to a printed flyer.

“It raises serious first amendment concerns,” the ACLU of Georgia wrote in an email. “It is also part of a broader pattern of the state of Georgia weaponizing the criminal code to unconditionally protect law enforcement and to silence speech critical of the government.”

Caroline Hart Tennenbaum and Abeeku Osei Vassall, of Atlanta, and Julia Dupuis, of Fullerton, California, were arrested 28 April, after leaving a flyer on mailboxes in Cartersville, a Georgia town about 45 miles north-west of Atlanta.

The flyer, exclusively obtained by the Guardian, called a policeman who lived in the neighborhood a “murderer” for participating in the 18 January shooting and killing of activist Manuel Paez Terán.

Local police initially charged the three with stalking, a misdemeanor, according to the county sheriff’s report. The activists heard officers debating whether to arrest them, with one asking another, “Isn’t this freedom of speech?” according to Lyra Foster, an attorney defending the arrestees. But the sheriff’s department was soon “advised that GBI [Georgia bureau of investigation] and FBI agents would be en route to interview the suspects”, according to the report.

The arrestees declined to be interviewed without a lawyer. Felony charges were added at some point.

A GBI spokesperson, Nelly Miles, would not answer questions about how or why the agency became involved. Neither would the FBI. Events surrounding the arrest led Stewart Bratcher, another attorney representing the activists, to wonder, “are they investigating a crime here or are they not liking what people are saying and therefore looking for a crime?”

The day after the arrests, all three were placed in solitary confinement without explanation, and left there for nearly four days, said Caroline Verhagen, mother of Dupuis. Georgia’s deputy attorney general, John Fowler, will be prosecuting the charges – an indicator of the state’s approach to the case.

The officer mentioned in the flyer, Jonathan Salcedo, was one of six named in a recently released document from the GBI, the agency charged with investigating Paez Terán’s death. The 18 January incident was the first time in US history police have shot and killed an environmental activist while protesting, catapulting the training center, known as “Cop City”, and the forest in which it will be built, into international news.

The state alleges the activist shot first and the case is with a special prosecutor.

Paez Terán, or Tortuguita, was one of dozens of activists camped in a public park south-east of Atlanta in mid-January, protesting against the “Cop City” project, planned for a part of the South River forest less than a mile away, as well as a developer’s plans to convert 40 acres (16 hectares) of the park into private land.

In the ensuing months, dozens of protesters have been arrested and charged under a state domestic terrorism law – another first in US law enforcement response to environmental activism. Now the state appears to have added a legal arrow to its quiver, after Salcedo called local police on the three activists driving through his neighborhood in Cartersville. Two were leaving flyers under the flags on mailboxes in front of each house, while a third was a passenger, according to Foster.

The sheriff’s report indicates Salcedo saw the van drive by, leaving flyers on mailboxes, and “felt harassed and intimidated by these actions and wished to have them prosecuted”.

  The flyer features a large-type, bold-faced heading. Written as if by a resident, it reads: “Dear Neighbor, a murderer lives in our neighborhood!”

The same flyer was made for several of the officers involved in the shooting; only the name and street location of the officer’s residence varies. It explains some of the incident, including that Tortuguita’s body sustained 57 gunshot wounds, according to the DeKalb county autopsy report. The flyer does not include physical or other threats. It finishes by stating that the officer “has blood on his hands and he lives in our neighborhood”.

The activists’ intent, according to Foster, was “to raise awareness of a tragedy”.

Language on felony intimidation of a law enforcement officer was added in 2012 to a statute on intimidating “any officer in or of any court” that had been on the books for three decades.

“I’ve never come across a law that makes it a felony to intimidate a law enforcement officer or his family through speech or communication – unless there’s a very specific threat,” said Paulson.

“Saying unpleasant and insulting things about the way a public employee does his job is at the heart of free speech in America,” Paulson added.

Bratcher, with two decades of Georgia practice, said he had never seen the charge prosecuted. Thaddeus Johnson, a criminal justice professor at Georgia State University who is researching laws in 15 states with increased penalties for assaulting police officers, also had never seen the law used.

Meanwhile, the family of the one arrestee from out of state, Julia Dupuis, has been trying to understand both the jail’s treatment and the state’s charges. Verhagen, who lives in Massachusets, said that actions such as putting her daughter in solitary confinement and, afterward, leaving lights on all night, are “like a third-world jail”.

“I’m afraid they’re going to stretch this law on intimidation to fit their needs and my daughter winds up in jail for a couple of years,” she said.

 Latest arrests of ‘Cop City’ protesters ‘feel like overreach’, experts say | Georgia | The Guardian 

Opponents say move is yet another example of crackdown by officials seeking to disrupt protests against $90m training center

Children and parents from a couple of Atlanta private schools recently showed up at city hall during a school day to urge city council members not to go ahead with “Cop City”, a $90m police and fire department training base planned in a forest that has become a center of controversy in the US and overseas.

On Monday college students at Emory University, Georgia Tech and other Atlanta schools protested the gigantic project, holding up signs, handing out leaflets and giving speeches. They tried to camp overnight at Emory, but were forced off by Atlanta police early Tuesday morning.

But while the protests against Cop City go on, the project is making headway and a key stretch of public land nearby is no longer accessible to people seeking to defend the forest. For the first time in nearly two years of opposition to Cop City, the public park part of South River Forest south-east of Atlanta has been shut down, allegedly for the public’s safety.

Opponents say the move is yet another example of the heavy-handed crackdown by law enforcement and local officials, who have sought to portray the protesters as “domestic terrorists” and have used a variety of methods to disrupt opposition groups. Dekalb county officials have no timeline for reopening the park.

The park’s secondary-growth forest is where police shot and killed activist Manuel Paez Terán, or “Tortuguita”, on 18 January, catapulting the fight over Cop City into global headlines. It is also where dozens of people were arrested on 5 March during a music festival and charged with domestic terrorism and where almost all the movement’s “tree sitters” have camped.

Called Intrenchment Creek Park – or Weelaunee People’s Park by protesters – the part of the forest now closed down has been the physical and spiritual center of the movement to “Stop Cop City”. “Forest defenders” have camped there and dozens of public events around the issue have happened there, including Jewish and Muscogee (Creek) ceremonies, herbal workshops, school events, food distribution to area residents and five “weeks of action”.

Forty acres of the park have also been under threat from a developer’s plans since before the Cop City project became public in late 2021. These plans have been stalled by a local environmental group’s lawsuit.

In response to the park’s closing, the broad range of groups interested in defending the forest are showing up elsewhere around the city – as evidenced by the visits to city hall and this week’s actions by Emory and other Atlanta-area college students. Weekly food distribution and potlucks, formerly held in the park’s parking lot, are now being held right outside, yards away from police.

“The fact we’re not able to be in the forest … makes us shift in different directions, to expand the movement,” said Willow, an Emory student organizer.

Dekalb county CEO Michael Thurmond announced the order closing the park in a press conference, claiming that the protestors had “booby-trapped” the forest, putting the public in danger. He displayed photos of boards with nails in them allegedly found in the park as evidence, and said the order would be lifted when it was “safe” – but to date police and barricades are still blocking public entrance.

  County officials barred a local documentary filmmaker and a reporter from the Atlanta Community Press Collective – a leading local source of information about the training center in an environment where the state has been less than transparent – from entering the press conference.

Asked why the park remained closed, and when it would be reopened, Dekalb spokesman Andrew L Cauthen merely sent an email quoting the order: the park “will remain closed ‘until further notice … to protect the safety of the families, residents and visitors and their pets in the area … [and] county personnel.’”

Dekalb county commissioner Ted Terry, a former state Sierra Club director, described the order as a “back-room, behind-closed-doors coordination between Thurmond and [Atlanta’s mayor, Andre] Dickens … to push visual opposition to what’s happening in South River Forest out of view”. He will be pushing to reopen the park through a resolution being introduced in early May.

Jacqueline Echols is board president of the South River Watershed Alliance, the group behind the three-year-old, ongoing lawsuit seeking to stop the county from giving away 40 acres (16 hectares) of the park to a developer named Ryan Millsap, in exchange for another piece of land nearby. Before “Stop Cop City”, there was “Stop the Swap”.

Through their lawsuit, Echols and her group of Atlanta-area residents have essentially been keeping the park open while “Stop Cop City” turned into a local, national and international cause celebre for a range of people concerned about police militarization and abuse of force, and troubled about destroying the forest.

  The group’s lawsuit also maintained the forest’s accessibility to the public in an area where majority-Black neighborhoods have historically been overlooked, and protected the Atlanta metro area’s largest forest in an era of climate change. “With no lawsuit, after all these years, the land probably would have been sold for a hefty profit … and by this time, there probably would not be a forest,” Echols said.

Echols, who is Black, has been taking mostly Black people from the Atlanta area on hikes and kayak rides down South River – which is fed by a creek that flows between the planned training center and the park – for more than a decade. She is surprised to find herself three years into defending part of the forest against Millsap, a former film studio executive, and that “Stop Cop City” has launched from the same forest.

The park is closed to shut down people protesting against Cop City and the land swap

Artist Joe Peery

“I never anticipated this – that Dekalb would do the swap, or that the city of Atlanta would do what they’re doing – particularly because the people running those municipalities are Black, and they should understand the importance of protecting this forest in an area that has suffered so much neglect,” she said – referring to Dekalb CEO Thurmond and the Atlanta mayor, Andre Dickens.

Joe Peery, an artist who lives near the forest, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. On a recent Saturday, he got off his bicycle along with several dozen cycling enthusiasts, stood in front of a police car and several concrete barriers blocking the park’s entrance, and took a photo. The idea: sending a letter to the county opposing keeping the park closed.

Peery knows nearly every inch of the forest that stretches out behind the barriers and the police. He has biked and walked there for more than a decade, created or maintained about six miles of trails himself, and led hundreds of people on tours.

“There’s a comfort to the forest,” he said. “It’s beneficial to meeting with others, discussing ideas and feeling a sense of acceptance.”

“The park is closed to shut down people protesting against Cop City and the land swap,” Peery said. “But what’s happened is people are finding other ways to express themselves.”

Atlanta shuts down strategic park in ‘Cop City’ protest movement | Atlanta | The Guardian