A suspect fired shots on law enforcement striking a Georgia State Patrol trooper during an operation Wednesday morning to remove people from the area near “Cop City,” a public safety training facility being built in southeast Atlanta, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation director said.
The state trooper is in stable condition and in surgery at Grady Hospital. The suspect who allegedly fired the shots died on the scene when law enforcement returned fire, GBI director Mike Register said.
There is currently a heavy police presence in the area of Constitution Road near Bouldercrest Road in southeast Atlanta. There are also more than a dozen officers from several jurisdictions at Grady.
There have been several clashes between the protesters and police or other city service employees in recent months. Last month, five people were arrested at the site and charged with domestic terrorism.
The protesters have had semi-permanent encampments for about a year in the forested area where the Atlanta Police Foundation intends to build the training facility.
The protesters have opposed the facility on environmental and historical grounds, saying it would decimate one of the largest preserved forest areas in the city and desecrate historically Native American land of the Muscogee Creek people, who once lived in the woods and called it the Weelaunee Forest before being displaced by white settlers in the early 19th Century.
They also oppose it on the grounds that the land was once the site of the Old Prison Farm, a jail complex that was billed during its operation in the mid-20th Century as an “Honor Farm” where prisoners farmed the land as a “dignified” means of imprisonment, a practice which has since been scrutinized for its profit generation and exploitation of unpaid labor.
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