Five Anti-Police Activists Charged With Domestic Terrorism

Five activists were charged with domestic terrorism this week after alleged attacks on police cars and EMTs near a DeKalb County, Georgia, police training center’s proposed location.

Authorities arrested five people between the ages of 20 and 25 in the area, levying a domestic terrorism charge against each and imposing various charges including interference with government property, felony obstruction and riot incitement among them, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) revealed Wednesday, noting its participation in a joint task force for combat ongoing crime there. Left-wing activists began occupying the planned $90 million training center’s wooded site more than a year ago, with dozens of arrests happening since, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Several people “threw rocks at police cars and attacked EMT’s outside the neighboring fire stations with rocks and bottles” Tuesday, the agency said.

“Task force members used various tactics to arrest individuals who were occupying makeshift treehouses,” the GBI reported. “After police cleared the area of concern, which included makeshift treehouses, they found explosive devices, gasoline, and road flares.”

The Atlanta Solidarity Fund’s Marlon Kautz, whose organization provides support to people arrested at protests, suggested that these arrests happened due to police improperly tying “legitimate political protesters” to violence, arguing that “there’s clear evidence to the contrary that the people they have been arresting and targeting and attacking have been engaged in nothing but peaceful civil disobedience,” according to AJC.

“I think there are forest defenders who will continue to defend the forest,” the Black liberation group Community Movement Builder‘s founder Kamau Franklin said, the outlet reported. “That means civil disobedience, that means rallies, demonstrations. That means all the tactics that we can use.”

The GBI did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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