Rebels Without a Cause in Cop City

In 2021, Atlanta decided to use city-owned land to create a new 85-acre training facility, dubbed “Cop City” by opponents, for police and fire services which replaced the poorly equipped and dilapidated training sites and improved departmental morale and retainment. In the two years since its construction, many protesters have violently attacked law enforcement officers, destroyed building materials and equipment, and intimidated private companies carrying out the construction through threats of violence. A police raid of the construction site uncovered protestors’ gasoline tanks, road flares, and explosive devices.

The protesters’ various violent crimes (throwing bricks, fireworks, and Molotov cocktails at law enforcement) earned many of them a domestic terrorism charge in March 2023 and a state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charge in September. In response, assorted human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, signed a letter stating that the charges were an “escalatory intimidation tactic and a draconian step that seems intended to chill First Amendment protected activity.”

The relevant sections of the First Amendment protect “freedom of speech,” the “right of the people to peaceably assemble,” and to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Throwing bricks, burning buildings, and shooting at a police officer, as Manuel Terán did on January 18, 2023, are violent crimes—and definitely not speech, peaceable assembly, or a petition for redress. Human rights groups, the protesters themselves, and even mainstream media coverage make this saga out to be a battle between protesters rallying behind an ideology and a tyrannical state government. NPR reported that “a Georgia State Patrol officer shot and killed Manuel "Tortuguita" Terán,” but “an officer was also shot and injured.” The buried subject here, the one who shot the officer in the passive voice, is the very same protestor who was shot—NPR forgets to mention that the protestor shot at the officers before the protester was shot. Similarly, a statement from the ACLU labeled these charges an example of the government punishing “protesters who express political beliefs.”

But these protesters are not even an ideological or political force: ask them what they protest for and you’ll receive a long, multifaceted, nonsensical answer. Some label themselves as “forest defenders,” opposing the facility because it supposedly would hurt the untouched forest. The site, however, already largely cleared for its previous use as a prison farm, sits on a mere 85 acres. Others object to the fact that the facility would be placed on land involved in “historical injustice,” but a bad thing happening on land does not make it unusable. The main objection, however, is a vague cry that anything police-related must hurt Atlanta’s Black community. But no matter what the protestors say, their actions are not a call for social equity, nor are the protestors advocates of racial justice. Delaying the construction of a police training facility for two years, resulting only in a 6 week-long delay, does not protect Atlanta’s Black community, or help Atlanta as a whole. All of the protesters’ violence has yet to yield any benefit.

After two years, it seems like the movement is less about results and ideas and more about violence and anger. In fact, violent mobs of angry people masquerading as racial justice advocates hurt racial equity movements far more than they help them. They use social justice as a pretense to flout the law, assault and intimidate officers and businesses, and live above the law—all the while adding to social justice's already tarnished reputation. If protestors try to intimidate and coerce the government through actual and threatened violence, then they deserve the label domestic terrorist, not social justice advocate or environmentalist.

Jack Elworth