March 7 (UPI) -- Authorities in Georgia said 23 people arrested over the weekend for attacking the construction site of a planned Atlanta police training facility have been charged with domestic terrorism.
The Atlanta Police Department announced the charges by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation on Monday, a day after officers detained 35 people for allegedly breaking away from a nearby peaceful protest against the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a "coordinated attack" on construction equipment and police officers at the location.
Police said the "violent agitators" were dressed in black and entered the construction site where they destroyed several pieces of construction equipment by fire and vandalism, and multiple police agencies were deployed to detain the suspects, who are accused of throwing rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails and fireworks at officers.
Edited footage of the incident posted by the Atlanta Police Department to its Facebook page shows a large group of people descending upon the site. Fireworks are seen thrown at officers and at least on one tractor is seen to have been set on fire.
Only two of the 23 people charged with domestic terrorism on Monday were from the state of Georgia. One person was from France and another from Canada.
"Actions such as this will not be tolerated," Atlanta police chief Darin Schierbaum told reporters during a late Sunday press conference. "When you attack law enforcement officers, when you damage equipment, you are breaking the law."
This was a very violent attack that occurred this evening. Very violent attack. This wasn't about a public safety training facility, it was about anarchy. This was about the attempt to destabilize."
Announced by former Democratic Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in September 2021, plans for a new $90 million police and firefighter training facility on acres of forest land has been met by staunched opposition from those who call it Cop City.
Opponents say construction of the facility will damage the local environment while the facility itself will be used to train local law enforcement in military maneuvers that could be deployed to oppress people, particularly minorities.
The National Lawyers Guild, a progressive legal association, said in a statement Monday that Atlanta's detention of 35 demonstrators is part of "ongoing state repression and violence against racial and environmental justice protesters, who are fighting to defend their communities from harms of militarized policing and environmental degradation."
Among those arrested and charged with domestic terrorism was Thomas Jurgens, a Southern Poverty Law Center lawyer who was acting as a legal observer on behalf of the NLG.
SPL said its employee is an experienced legal observer and his arrest "is not evidence of any crime, but of heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters."
"This is part of a months-long escalation of policing tactics against protesters and observers who oppose the destruction of the Weelaunee Forest to build a police training facility," it said.
"The SPLC has and will continue to urge de-escalation of violence and police use of force against Black, Brown and Indigenous communities."
Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which provides support to those arrested during protests, lambasted the police statement on Monday for implying the arrests were made at the construction site.
"This did not happen," it said in a statement. "Police raided a music festival over a mile away. All the supposed 'domestic terrorism' arrests were made indiscriminately at the festival."
Georgia authorities have filed domestic terrorism charges against a slew people since at least December in connection with training facility protests, including five people on Dec. 14 and six people on Jan. 23.
