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A
109-page indictment, handed up by a grand jury last week and
made public on Tuesday, accuses 61 members of a group called
Defend the Atlanta Forest of illegally occupying the 85-acre
(34.4 hectares) wooded site where the $90 million Atlanta Public
Safety Training Center is being built.
The defendants were charged with violations of the Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly known as the
RICO Act. The law, enacted in 1970, was originally intended as
an enhanced tool to curb organized crime activity.
The alleged crimes rolled into the racketeering indictments in
state court include criminal trespass, vandalism, throwing
objects including Molotov cocktails at police, and posting
threats on the internet.
"Each individual charged in this indictment knowingly joined the
conspiracy in an attempt to prevent the training center from
being built," the indictment reads.
Neither members of the group nor the Atlanta police immediately
responded to requests for comment.
The indictment describes the members as being part of an
Atlanta-based "self-identified coalition and enterprise of
militant anarchists, eco-activists and community organizers,"
who are also "anti-police."
On its website, the group said its mission is to protect the
South River Forest site, which is in unincorporated DeKalb
County. It describes the area as "the lungs of Atlanta."
It also aims to stop the expansion of what the website calls a
"hyper-militarized" police force, which it links to a series of
police killings of unarmed Black men across the U.S. in recent
years. One of those killings, the fatal 2020 shooting of
Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, helped fuel nationwide protests
triggered by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis the
previous month.
"The movement to prevent the development of Cop City is a fight
against hundreds of years of racialized violence and ecological
destruction," the website says.
Clearing of the training center site has already begun, but a
petition has circulated in Atlanta demanding a halt to the
project pending a referendum.
A 26-year-old protester was shot and killed by police in January
during a raid to clear the site of demonstrators. Police said
the man had fired first at officers, a claim disputed by the
activists.
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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