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Dozens of activists have been indicted for opposing the construction of a massive police facility outside Atlanta.
Over 60 protesters have been indicted on RICO charges for their efforts to block construction of the massive police training facility known as “Cop City” outside Atlanta.
The indictment out of Fulton County court last Tuesday charges 61 protesters with violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Many are facing additional charges of domestic terrorism or money laundering. The indictment was handed up by the same grand jury that handed up the indictments against Donald Trump and his co-defendants, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and is being prosecuted by Georgia Republican Attorney General Chris Carr.
Over the past year and a half, Georgia police have made dozens of arrests at the proposed site for Cop City, with charges ranging from alleged property damage and trespassing to domestic terrorism.
In May, Atlanta police arrested the organizers of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a bail fund for the protesters of Cop City. One of the fund’s organizers who was arrested, Marlon Kautz, had predicted in February that the state would level RICO charges at the protesters.
“We understand that this movement is as broad as society itself. It includes environmental activists, community groups, faith leaders, abolitionists, students, artists, and people from all over,” Kautz said in February.
“But police, prosecutors, and even Governor Kemp have been trying to suggest in the media and in court that the opposition to Cop City is actually the work of a criminal organization whose members conspire to commit acts of terrorism. In essence, they’re trying to concoct a RICO-like story about the movement.”
Kautz, along with fellow Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers Adele Maclean and Savannah Patterson, is listed in the RICO indictment and is also facing an additional 15 counts of money laundering.
The date listed on the indictments is May 25, 2020, the day George Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. Although this predates any Stop Cop City protesting, it’s possible that the attorney general’s office plans to link the Stop Cop City movement with the larger protests that followed Floyd’s death.
In June, Atlanta District Attorney Sherry Boston announced that her office would withdraw from criminal cases tied to the Cop City Protests, which the state’s Republican attorney general had leveled at protesters. Boston cited the domestic terrorism charges specifically and said that she and Attorney General Chris Carr had “fundamentally different prosecution philosophies.”
The new indictment out of Fulton County is the state’s latest attempt to suppress political protest and dissent, even in the wake of violent police brutality—and to push through the massive $90 million police facility, no matter the cost.
This is either horrible overreach by the Government of Georgia or it is a long term plan to undermine the legitimacy of the Georgia RICO statute to the benefit of the Trump criminal organization.
Seems like Georgia hasn’t changed much since the civil rights era. But now they use tear gas instead of fire hoses.
Georgia RICO is a bit of a mess. It basically boils down to, did two or more people talk about a crime before doing the crime. It’s been described as an exclamation point charge, a sort of extra fuck you from prosecutors.
Federal RICO has something like eleven tests that all must pass before something can be called RICO. Federal judges love to throw out federal RICO cases and then tear into prosecutors who waste their time.
I wouldn’t call it an exclamation point, more like the whole damn book copied and pasted from defendant to defendant glued together by old conversations and arrest records. But I do think that if Georgia uses this high profile RICO tactic on everyone from rappers, teachers, and protesters to even presidents eventually it will get to broad and get stuck down.