Brian Kemp declares a state of emergency after anti-police riots and activates the Georgia National Guard
Gov. Brian Kemp (R) declared a temporary state of emergency in Georgia Thursday and deployed 1,000 Georgia National Guard troops in response to recent anti-police protests and devastating riots in Atlanta.
Kemp’s order cites Saturday’s protests and riots, sparked by ongoing demonstrations against a police training center the city is building in a wooded area of metro Atlanta.
Saturday’s riots also came in response to the death of activist Manuel “Tortugita” Teran, who government officials said was killed by law enforcement after he shot and wounded a state patrol soldier at the site of a planned facility.
.@FOX5Atlanta pulls CNN’s “mostly peaceful protest” in its news segment about the violent attack on downtown Atlanta by #Antifa and far-left extremists. The mayor has just confirmed that the detainees were found to have explosives. pic.twitter.com/wulkxaHL95
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) January 22, 2023
Atlanta officials, including Mayor Andre Dickens (D) and Police Chief Darin Schierbaum, said police arrested six people on Saturday after some of the protesters used violence, smashed business windows and attacked police cars. Dickens noted that explosives were found on some, which “led to setting fire to the policeman’s car.”
“Make no mistake, these people intended to harm people and property,” Dickens said.
The Atlanta Police Department released photographs of those arrested, most of them out of state, and listed the charges against them:
“Georgians respect peaceful demonstrators but do not tolerate acts of violence against people or property,” Kemp wrote in his emergency order.
The Governor cited “illegal gatherings, violence, open threats of violence, disruption of the peace and tranquility of this state, and danger to persons and property” as reasons for the state of emergency, which will expire February 9.
Kemp has taken a tough stance on those outside of peaceful demonstrations from the start of the protests.
“These individuals are members of a wider network of militant activists who have carried out similar acts of domestic terrorism and intimidation across the country with no regard for the people or communities affected by their crimes,” Kemp said in a January 3 statement.
The following is my statement regarding domestic terrorist activity related to the proposed public safety training center in Atlanta: pic.twitter.com/RLD7mcdfX7
— Gov. Brian P. Kemp (@GovKemp) January 3, 2023
Indeed, groups opposed to the police station, and now also to Teran’s death, have sprung up in other states, including Massachusetts and Oregon. Online reports of the protests show that they adopted the phrase “stop cop city”.
In Massachusetts, 23-year-old Jared “Riley” Dowell, the child of the second Democrat in the House of Representatives Katherine Clark (Massachusetts), was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer and vandalism. a historic landmark at the time of the protest, according to the Boston Police Department.
Boston officers were on “high alert” for “Solidarity with Defenders of the Forest of Atlanta” on Saturday when they met Dowell among a group of about 20 people.
Email Ashley Oliver at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.
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texasstandard.news contributed to this report.
