Police have arrested three key organizers supporting people protesting Atlanta's proposed police and fire training center, which opponents call “Cop City.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says its agents and Atlanta police on Wednesday arrested three officers of the group that runs the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. The fund has bailed out protesters and helped them find lawyers. Charged with money laundering and charity fraud are 39-year-old Marlon Scott Kautz of Atlanta; 30-year-old Savannah D. Patterson of Savannah; and 42-year-old Adele MacLean of Atlanta. Opponents say it's an “extreme provocation” to arrest leaders of a bail fund. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp says they're part of a criminal organization.
it’s just kind of surreal the way Georgia’s various governments have been reacting to Stop Cop City, particularly in a post-George Floyd era. police (and the legal mechanisms they have at their disposal) continue to act with complete impunity to try and prosecute anybody even tangentially supporting the protesters. if it were happening in another country, this would be decried as genuinely authoritarian–because it is.
It really does make my blood boil. The Stop Cop City protestors have done nothing wrong. I wonder if perhaps the George Floyd protests made police departments double down on suppressing protests of police. Couple that with a happily complicit Republican-led government and you get this.