For years, activists in Atlanta have opposed the construction of a police training facility, while state authorities have prosecuted them using a law intended to go after mobsters. This week, a judge stepped in on behalf of the protesters.
"A Georgia judge on Tuesday said he will toss the racketeering charges against all 61 defendants accused of a yearslong conspiracy to halt the construction of a police and firefighter training facility that critics pejoratively call 'Cop City,'" R.J. Rico wrote Tuesday for the Associated Press.
As Reason has written extensively, activists have opposed the project—officially named the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center—since it was first announced in 2021. They objected to what they deemed "a police militarization facility for police to train in urban warfare," and they resented its construction on 85 acres of forested land. For months, people camped out in the forest to prevent construction, occasionally clashing with police attempting to clear the forest. In January 2023, police shot and killed protester Manuel Paez Terán; police say Paez Terán fired first, but autopsies later suggested otherwise.
