Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr on Monday reportedly defended the decision to bring domestic terrorism charges against those protesting the construction of a $90 million police and fire training facility.
Speaking to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the site of one of three youth centers set up to prevent gang recruitment of minors, Carr reportedly said, “The state of Georgia has passed a law that defines what domestic terrorism is. I’m confident we’ll have the ability to go to court and prove those charges.”
Carr said it was “critically important” that construction of the public safety training center, which activists who dubbed themselves “forest defenders” call “Cop City,” continue, citing last month’s fatal beating of Tyre Nichols by five Black police officers in Memphis, Tennessee.
“We’ve been talking for the last two years in particular, and then [the Memphis police death of Tyre Nichols] brought it back up, about well-trained law enforcement, well-trained first responders, well-trained firefighters as well,” Carr, a Republican, told the Journal-Constitution. “And that’s what this facility is about.”
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At least 19 people have been arrested and charged with domestic terrorism since December in connection to protests against the training facility for Atlanta’s police and fire departments to be constructed on 85 wooded acres in southwestern DeKalb County on the site of a former prison farm.
Six of those arrests came during a Jan. 21 violent riot in downtown Atlanta in response to the deadly shooting of 26-year-old environmental activist, Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, by Georgia State Patrol tasked with clearing protesters from the construction site. Authorities say Teran, who reportedly went by the name Tortuguita, identified as nonbinary, and used they/it pronouns, first shot and wounded a state trooper in the abdomen before law…
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