Dozens indicted on Georgia racketeering charges related to ‘Stop Cop City’ movement appear in court

by Kate Brumback, Nov 7, 2023

ATLANTA (AP) — “Nearly five dozen people indicted on racketeering charges related to protests against a planned police and firefighter training facility near Atlanta appeared in court on Monday as their supporters rallied outside the courthouse.

“Protests against the proposed training center — dubbed “Cop City' by opponents — have been going on for more than two years. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr obtained a sweeping indictment in August, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to target the #protesters and characterizing them as 'militant #anarchists.'

“Demonstrators and #CivilRights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (#ACLU), have condemned the indictment and accused #Carr, a Republican, of levying heavy-handed charges to try to silence a movement that has galvanized #environmentalists and #antipolice protesters across the country.

“All 61 people indicted were scheduled to be arraigned Monday, that is to have the charges against them formally read in court. Fifty-seven of them appeared, called in small groups before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams over a three-hour period, and each waived arraignment.

“Four defendants failed to appear. One was believed to be in France and prosecutors didn’t have a good address for him. One was in federal immigration custody. Another who is not American and who had left the country tried to return twice in recent days to attend the hearing but was denied entry to the country, her lawyer said. A fourth simply didn’t show.

“Most of the people who appeared had not yet surrendered at the Fulton County Jail to be booked on their charges. Some had recently reached agreements with prosecutors on a bond amount and conditions and others were still in the process of doing so.

“Adams told them they had until 10 a.m. Tuesday, 24 hours after the start of the arraignment proceedings, to turn themselves in. If they fail to do so, she warned, a warrant for their arrest could be issued and any bond would be rescinded.

“Adams instructed defense attorneys to provide the attorney general’s office with hard drives by Friday so they can receive copies of evidence in the case, known as discovery. Prosecutors are to finish copying and distributing that evidence to defense attorneys by the end of the year.

“A final plea hearing will be set no later than the end of June, Adams said. She explained to the groups of defendants that if they want to reach a plea agreement with prosecutors they must do it by that date.
“A couple of hundred supporters of the ‘#StopCopCity' effort rallied outside the courthouse in downtown Atlanta on Monday morning singing, chanting and waving signs.

“Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and other supporters say the 85-acre, $90 million facility would replace inadequate training facilities, and would help address difficulties in hiring and retaining police officers. Opponents have expressed concern that that it could lead to greater police #militarization and that its construction in the #SouthRiverForest will worsen #environmental damage in a poor, majority-Black area.

“Protests against the project, which have at time resulted in violence and vandalism, escalated after the fatal shooting in January of 26-year-old protester Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, known as #Tortuguita. A prosecutor last month said he would not pursue charges against the state troopers who shot Paez Terán, saying he found that their use of deadly force was ‘objectively reasonable.'

“Most of those indicted in August had already been charged over their alleged involvement in the movement. RICO charges carry a sentence of five to 20 years in prison that can be added on top of the penalty for the underlying acts.

“Among the defendants: more than three dozen people who were previously facing domestic terrorism charges in connection to the protests; three leaders of a #BailFund previously accused of money laundering; and three activists previously charged with felony intimidation after authorities said they distributed #flyers calling a state trooper a
'murderer' for his involvement in Paez Terán’s death.

“Prosecutors have alleged a conspiracy that includes a wide variety of underlying crimes that range from possessing fire accelerant and throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers to being reimbursed for glue and food for activists who spent months camping in the woods near the construction site.”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/dozens-indicted-on-georgia-racketeering-charges-related-to-stop-cop-city-movement-appear-in-court

#DefendTheForest #ACAB #DefendWeelauneeForest #Fascism #Censorship #ClimateJustice #DirectAction #JusticeForTort #JusticeForTortugita #AtlantaGeorgia #EnvironmentalRacism #StopCopCitiesEverywhere #FreeAllForestDefenders #CriminalizingDissent #SilencingDissent

Angela Davis had returned the award in solidarity with the Stop Cop City movement. 

#Tortuguita
#SouthRiverForest #StopCopCity

https://atlanta.capitalbnews.org/angela-davis-cop-city/

#Atlanta community members warn of #environmental damage from ‘#CopCity’

The police training facility will harm the endangered South River and further contribute to #EnvironmentalRacism

by Ray Levy Uyeda June 15th, 2022

“Jacqueline Echols loves to take Atlanta residents kayaking on the South River, which begins at the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and flows 63 miles into Lake Jackson. Echols says that it’s fun to bring people out on the river who have never paddled before. The river is shallow and bordered by undergrowth and native trees, rich soil, and the occasional deer, making it an unintimidating classroom for those new to the water.

“‘The South River and the green space around it have a lot to offer,' Echols says. 'If you’re going to invest in a community, the first thing you invest in is green space.'

“But in Atlanta, a privately funded police foundation is working double-time to expand the police’s reach at the cost of the community’s access to the city’s rich environment. The river and its surrounding forest have become the site of a major battle playing out in Atlanta between the city’s police department, backed by many members of the city council and county leaders, and the residents of the neighborhood adjacent to the #SouthRiverForest. At issue is whether or not nearly 400 acres of the #forest will be handed over to the police department to construct a new training facility, which activists have renamed 'Cop City' because of the proposal to build a mock city on the grounds for training. The facility will be constructed on 85 acres of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, where incarcerated people once grew food for those detained in the city’s jail.

‘’’#Green space holds value more than any other land, and [when] the environment goes, so does the community,' said Echols, who is also board president of the South River Watershed Alliance, an advocacy organization for the fourth-most endangered river in the U.S. 'What’s going on with the prison farm … is just devaluing people, devaluing communities, devaluing the #environment, and they’re doing it because these are very vulnerable communities, marginalized people, and they can get away with it. You know, they can’t get away with it in [a wealthy white area like] #Buckhead.’”

#SaveWeelauneeForest #StopCopCity

Read more:
https://prismreports.org/2022/06/15/atlanta-environmental-damage-cop-city/

Some background about the Weelaunee Forest and #StopCopCity

The New Fight Over an Old Forest in Atlanta

The plans for an enormous police-training center—dubbed Cop City by critics—have ignited interest in one of Atlanta’s largest remaining green spaces.

By Charles Bethea, August 3, 2022

"Three years ago, Joe Santifer, a Black man in his early fifties, moved from the wealthy north Atlanta enclave of Buckhead to Glen Emerald Park, six miles southeast of the city’s downtown. Santifer, who owns a computer-consulting firm, raised triplets in Buckhead—all three are now in college—but his new neighborhood, he told me, is where he’d always wanted to live. He was attracted to its 'collage of humanity,' he said, and also its proximity to the #SouthRiverForest, one of #Atlanta’s largest remaining #GreenSpaces. 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. 'Most people in Buckhead couldn’t find it on a map,' Santifer said, chuckling.

"After he moved, Santifer began making frequent visits to what he called a “verdant oasis,” where he often saw deer and rabbits. The forest also bears traces of the people who have lived in and around it over the years. Exploring by bicycle recently, I came upon giant stones with “HOMER,” “POE,” and “VIRGIL” carved into their nearly overgrown façades—relics from Atlanta’s old Carnegie Library, discarded here sometime after it was torn down, in the late nineteen-seventies, when the forest was a de-facto city dump. Underground are the much older remains of the Muscogee Creek people, who lived in what they called the #WeelauneeForest until they were forcibly removed by white settlers in the eighteen-twenties and thirties. Later, the forest was home to what has been called the “finest plantation in the county,” and the site of a famous Civil War battle.

"In 2017, the South River Forest was designated as one of four major city “lungs” in a report titled “The Atlanta City Design,” put together by Atlanta’s city-planning department. The report’s lead author was Ryan Gravel, a Georgia Tech alum whose graduate thesis led to the creation of the city’s ballyhooed BeltLine #greenway. Gravel and his co-authors envision the South River Forest as a great urban park and conservation corridor. The city council formally adopted the plan, and Gravel began working with the Nature Conservancy to make it a reality; in March of last year, a two-hundred-acre parcel surrounding a drained lake three miles south of the prison farm, which could have become another landfill, was approved for permanent preservation.

"Then, the following month, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat, made an announcement: the area around the prison farm was going to be the site of a sprawling training facility for police and firefighters. This, Gravel said, was “a big surprise.” Many people in Atlanta were startled by the news—including Joe Santifer, who told me that he’d already been bothered by the police presence in the forest. For decades, the Atlanta P.D. has operated a firing range there, and, on his forest strolls, Santifer had begun hearing gunfire. Even from a distance, he said, it “sounds like a battleground.” He e-mailed a complaint to the city, and, a few days later, he got a response: “Call 911.”
[...]
"Other cities have lately built or proposed similar facilities, but, at eighty-five acres, Atlanta’s would be much larger than nearly all of the others. New York City, for instance, has a thirty-acre facility for a force fifteen times the size of the Atlanta P.D. The A.P.D. facility’s planned features include a firing range, a “vehicle skills pad,” a “burn building” for firefighters, and a “mock village” for staging simulated emergencies. It’s slated to cost around ninety million dollars, with a third of that money coming from public funds, and the rest coming from the Atlanta Police Foundation."
#StopCopCity

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-south/the-new-fight-over-an-old-forest-in-atlanta

The Old Atlanta Prison Farm is a city-owned prison complex in southeast Dekalb County in Georgia. From approximately 1920 to 1990, the farm was worked by prisoners to produce food for the prison. The prison farm is located in the South River Forest.
Wikipedia

#AtlantaGA
#DekalbCoGA
#PoliceBrutality
#CopCity
#plantations
#PrisonFarms
#ConvictCamps
#ConvictLeasing
#NeoSlavery
#LochlinJohnson
#BadgerFamilyGA
#SouthRiverForest