DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Five people who are accused of chaining themselves up in protest at the construction site for the future Atlanta Public Safety Training Center earlier this week went before a judge Saturday morning.
During the 9:30 a.m. first appearance hearing in magistrate court, the five defendants appeared via Zoom from the DeKalb County jail. A judge granted the five an "unsecured judicial release" -- a release that does not carry a dollar amount, and is usually issued with the promise that a defendant will appear in court for all future hearings.
In addition, the judge forbade the defendants from returning to the site off Constitution Road near Key Road.
The five people -- a 65-year-old from Smyrna, a 61-year-old from Roswell, a 28-year-old from Atlanta and two 25-year-olds from Atlanta and Burlington, Massachusetts -- were all charged with criminal trespass and obstruction in connection to Thursday's protest.
Thursday's demonstration followed a RICO indictment brought earlier this week by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr that charges more than 60 people for alleged crimes tied to their involvement in the protest movement against the facility, which they call "Cop City."
Activists with the movement said in a release the five people were comprised of two ministers and other people of faith. They were delivering what they called the "People's Stop Work Order," according to the release.
In a statement, protesters cited the ongoing effort to petition for a referendum that, if passed, would revoke city funding for the facility.
Atlanta Police said the five people had trespassed onto the site and were taken into custody. Around that same time, APD said 25 people gathered outside of the site to protest. They also posted a request for additional people to come and show their support, according to APD. Protesters began leaving the area around 11 a.m. and no additional incidents were reported, authorities added.
More on the yearslong protest movement against the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center:
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.
The training center has been met with a roughly two-year-long 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. It is also slated to offer training capacity to the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department and the city's 911 center.
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.
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.
Dozens of people have been arrested and charged with domestic terrorism in the last year after various protest actions at the construction site, some instances in which equipment was lit on fire, or other acts of vandalism and damage occurred. The RICO indictment includes additional charges of domestic terrorism and arson for some individuals. Many of the individuals included in the case file are among those previously arrested and charged by local authorities with domestic terrorism.
In a statement, the Cop City Vote Coalition, which is attempting to organize a referendum that if passed would revoke funding for the facility, said the prosecution 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 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."
