By Shaddi Abusaid
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — Billboards are going up in major cities across the U.S. offering cash rewards for information leading to the arrests and convictions of violent “anarchists” opposed to Atlanta’s Public Safety Training Center, the police chief said Wednesday.
Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said signs advertising rewards of up to $200,000 will be placed on hundreds of billboards across nine cities as early as this week.
The announcement comes one day after activists set fire to another piece of construction equipment associated with the project in southern DeKalb County and then took credit for it, officials said.
“We have a checkbook ready to go,” Schierbaum told reporters during a news conference at Atlanta’s police and fire headquarters.
The billboards and the cash rewards are being funded by Crime Stoppers of Greater Atlanta and private donations, he said. They will go up in Detroit, Seattle, Nashville and New York , along with other major cities from which investigators believe the activists are coming.
Known by opponents as “Cop City,” the controversial facility is currently under construction at the site of the old Atlanta Prison Farm in the south Dekalb woods. The Atlanta City Council’s Finance Committee was scheduled to receive a construction update Wednesday afternoon.
Activists say the training center’s construction will damage the forest and contribute to what they say is the militarization of the police department. City officials say the facility, which is more than 75% completed, is vital to maintaining well-trained police and fire departments.
“There is an effort underway by a very small group of individuals — anarchists that want to impact the safety of Atlanta, Georgia,” Schierbaum said, calling it a tactic of “violence, fear and intimidation.”
According to the city, there have been more than 80 “criminal instances” related to the training center’s construction and more than 173 arrests. That includes 23 acts of arson resulting “in the destruction of 81 pieces of equipment and buildings” across 23 states, officials said.
As a result, the price of the facility has increased nearly $20 million, from $90 million to $109.6 million, the mayor’s office announced Wednesday.
That includes $6 million for additional security and $400,000 for insurance increases.
Last year, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr indicted 61 activists on charges of violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act. Some face additional charges of domestic terrorism, arson and money laundering.
Schierbaum was flanked by the Atlanta’s deputy fire chief and Georgia’s insurance commissioner, along with members of the FBI, ATF and the GBI.
The chief said while most residents were asleep in their beds late Tuesday, the city’s officers and firefighters braved 14-degree weather to extinguish blazes, respond to car crashes and transport homeless people to warming shelters so they didn’t freeze to death.
“The only reason we’re able to do that as a police and fire department is because we invest in our first responders,” Schierbaum said. “Yet anarchists are at work. They struck again this week ... They took credit for that attack. They took great pride in that attack.”
Officials also announced last month’s arrest of a 23-year-old activist accused of burning and spray-painting construction equipment in Summerville, S.C. The concrete company that owns the damaged vehicles has a “loose connection” with the training center’s construction, Schierbaum said.
Phrases written on the equipment included “Stop Cop City;” “If you build it we will burn it;” and “Save the Weelaunee,” which is what the Muscogee people called the South River Forest.
“I want to put on notice every member of this group. This will soon be you,” Schierbaum said as the 23-year-old’s booking photo was placed on the monitor behind him. “Starting this week, that reward information will appear on over 450 billboards across the country.”
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