ATLANTA — Hundreds of activists stormed the site of a proposed police and fire training center on the wooded outskirts of Atlanta on Sunday, burning police and construction vehicles and a trailer and setting off fireworks at officers parked nearby.
The destruction came on the second day of what was supposed to be a weeklong series of demonstrations to protest what activists derided as Cop City, a planned 85-acre city-owned campus. The complex would include classrooms, an amphitheater and spaces where law enforcement officers can simulate high-speed shootings and chases, and firefighters can learn to drive fire trucks and fight fires. It was not immediately known if anyone was injured.
Tensions have risen in recent months between police officers and protesters in the wooded area. Environmental advocates want the forest, which spans more than 1,000 acres, to be preserved as one of the region’s most important green spaces. Other activists are concerned that the development of the training site will allow for further militarization of local police forces. Downtown opponents began organizing against the complex shortly after the Atlanta City Council authorized it in 2021.
In January, a clash as police cleared protesters from the forest left a 26-year-old protester, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, dead and a state trooper seriously injured.
On Sunday, many protesters, a subset of the several hundred protesters who attended and stood in an area where music played, wore black and camouflage, with their faces masked, as they walked through tall grass and mud to the work, pulling out small roots. fences along the way When the vehicles were set on fire, the police watched and initially did not intervene.
An Atlanta police helicopter circled overhead. After a few minutes, the protesters returned to an area where they had been gathering since Saturday, where live music was playing from loudspeakers. Later, the police concentrated in that area and made arrests. The Atlanta Police Department, the Georgia State Patrol and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the agency investigating January’s death, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The cost of the planned center, which is located in DeKalb County, is estimated at $90 million, and a nonprofit organization, the Atlanta Police Foundation, is raising most of it.
Anti-development activists kicked off their planned week of protests on Saturday with a rally, a march through the South River Forest and a music and art festival.
Neelam Bohra provide reports
