At the site in Atlanta where a new police training center will be built, there were fires and fights on Sunday night. The police say that this led to the arrests of 35 people.
Police said that a group of “violent agitators” dressed in all black “hide[d] behind a peaceful protest” and carried out a “coordinated attack” at the construction site of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, which some people call “Cop City.”
Police said that during the fight, people set off fireworks and threw big rocks, bricks, and Molotov cocktails, and some construction equipment caught fire.
At a press conference on Sunday night, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said that most of the people who were arrested seem to be from outside of Atlanta and will be charged as such.
Schierbaum said, “This was all about chaos.”
Chris Carr, Georgia’s attorney general, said that some of the people who were arrested on Sunday were from Massachusetts, New York, France, and Canada. During an appearance on Fox News on Monday morning, he said, “So this is a national network, an international group of people who want to come to our state and hurt a public safety training center.”
Atlanta police showed surveillance video from a construction site, which showed people running around and what looked like fireworks going off near police officers.
Schierbaum said that no police officers were hurt during the fights. He also said that the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are helping to look into the case.
The police said that “restraint” and “non-lethal force” were used to make the arrests.
In a statement, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said that the rioters “chose destruction and vandalism over peaceful protest, showing once again that they had very extreme goals.”
The Republican also said that “domestic terrorism will NOT be tolerated in this state” and promised, “We will not rest until those who use violence and intimidation to achieve an extremist goal are brought to full justice.”
The Associated Press says that the fighting on Sunday night was another peak in the fights between anti-police protesters, environmentalists, and law enforcement since the $90 million training center was approved by the Atlanta City Council in 2021 and construction began in a forest.
Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, a 26-year-old activist, was shot and killed by police in January. The police said that Paez Teran shot and hurt a Georgia state trooper, but Paez Teran’s family didn’t believe them and asked for more information.