Dozens detained in ‘week of action’ protest against Georgia’s ‘Cop City’

Clash came less than two months after police fatally shot an an environmental activist camped out in a forest in protest

As a “week of action” against the building of a $90m police and fire training center in a forest near Atlanta unfolded, police detained dozens of people on Sunday night after a violent clash at the proposed construction site of what’s been dubbed “Cop City”.

The clash came less than two months after police shot and killed environmental activist Manuel Paez Terán, known by his chosen name “Tortuguita”, who had been one of dozens of demonstrators camped at the site in protest against the project. The multimillion-dollar project on at least 85 acres of land, largely financed by the Atlanta Police Foundation, is nestled in the South River forest – known by activists as the “Weelaunee forest” – and would sit in an area bordering a Black working-class neighborhood. The site had once been a state prison farm.