ATLANTA — The more than 60 people were were indicted back in September for alleged crimes tied to their involvement in the opposition movement against the future Atlanta Public Safety Training Center are due in court Monday morning.
An arraignment in the case is scheduled for 9 a.m. Protests are expected outside the Fulton County Courthouse.
Dozens of people were indicted by the Georgia Attorney General's Office , accused of collectively constituting an "enterprise of militant anarchists, eco-activists and community organizers."
“If you come to our state and shoot a police officer, hurl Molotov cocktails at law enforcement, set fire to police vehicles, damage construction equipment, vandalize private homes and businesses, and terrorize their occupants, you can and will be held accountable," Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said when announcing the indictment.
The Cop City Vote Coalition, which is attempting to organize a referendum that if passed would revoke City of Atlanta funding for the facility, has condemned the prosecution and argues it sends a "chilling message that any dissent to Cop City will be punished with the full power and violence of the government."
The coalition said after the indictment it "strongly condemns these anti-democratic charges" and "will not be intimidated," calling Carr's prosecution "part of a retaliatory pattern of prosecutions against organizers nationwide that attack the right to protest and freedom of speech."
Called "Cop City" by opponents, the project is a planned 85-acre complex on the Old Prison Farm site in south DeKalb County under a land lease agreement with the City of Atlanta.
In addition to police training facilities, it is also slated to offer training capacity to the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department and the city's 911 center.
The training center has been the subject of a now-yearslong protest movement as city politicians, including Mayor Andre Dickens and the Atlanta Police Foundation (which is primarily funding the project), have argued it will have a much-needed modernizing effect on the police force.
The protest movement mushroomed with the law enforcement shooting death of an activist, Manuel Paez Teran, in January. Officials have said the protester shot first at a Georgia State Patrol trooper as a clearing operation of protest encampments in the South River Forest was ongoing, then was killed in return fire. Paez Teran's family and activists have strongly contested the official narrative.
The lack of bodycam videos - which are not worn by state law enforcement officers such as GSP troopers or Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents - has left unresolved what exactly happened. A special prosecutor determined in October there would be no charges against any officers, deeming their actions "objectively reasonable."
The protesters have opposed the facility on environmental and historical grounds, saying it would decimate one of the largest preserved forest areas in the city and desecrate historically Native American land of the Muscogee Creek people, who once lived in the woods and called it the Weelaunee Forest before being displaced by white settlers in the early 19th century.
They also oppose it on the grounds that the land was once the site of the Old Prison Farm, a jail complex that was billed during its operation in the mid-20th Century as an "Honor Farm" where prisoners farmed the land as a "dignified means of imprisonment," a practice which has since been scrutinized for its profit generation and exploitation of unpaid labor.