Atlanta Police Now Arresting People For Paying Bail

It is not illegal to pay someone else's bail.

Cash bail has been a controversial issue for some time now, with people like me who think it's maybe bad to financially devastate and traumatize people who have not even been found guilty yet, and others who think it keeps us safe by ensuring that those who can't afford bail stay in jail until they get a verdict (and who have also apparently never heard of Robert Durst).

Rarely, however, does anyone say that paying someone else's bail is a crime, because of how it is very obviously not a crime. And yet, on Wednesday morning, an Atlanta Police Department SWAT time invaded an apartment and arrested three of its residents ... for paying bail. 

Marlon Scott Kautz, Adele Maclean, and Savannah Patterson, board members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, had been raising money to bail out and pay for lawyers (a thing people are legally entitled to in our justice system) for those who had been arrested for protesting against the construction of Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, a massive police training facility that has been dubbed "Cop City" by those who oppose it. They were charged with "money laundering" and "charity fraud." Aside from these being ridiculous charges, they are also rarely the kind of charges that require the deployment of an actual SWAT team.

Currently, 42 activists are facing "domestic terrorism" charges for protesting Cop City. While one empty police vehicle was set on fire ahead of a music festival supporting the protest movement, the identities of those who actually did that are still unknown. Thus, 22 people are facing "domestic terrorism" charges for simply attending the festival itself.

 The Intercept reported at the time that the warrants cited as evidence the arrestees having mud on their shoes (a shocking sight at a music festival held in a forest), that they had legal support phone numbers written on their arms, and that they were holding shields.

There are also three other people who were arrested for felony intimidation for handing out fliers identifying the cop who killed Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, an activist who had been living in the forest in hopes of preventing the construction of Cop City.

But Let's Backtrack A Little, Shall We?

For nearly two years, environmentalists, anti-police brutality activists, clergy, college students, neighborhood associations, local schools and many others in Atlanta have been protesting and working to prevent the construction of "Cop City" in the South River Forest (also known as Weelaunee Forest). It would be the country's largest urban warfare training facility for police. The proposed facility would be something like a School of the Americas, but for United States police — a place where they can learn how to best deploy military force against American citizens.

For some weird reason, activists just really don't want to see a massive chunk of environmentally necessary urban green space destroyed and turned into a site for bomb testing, tear gas deployment practice, and shooting ranges. The $90 million police militarization facility is also meant to include a fake neighborhood filled with fake houses, because apparently governments are able to build houses for the purposes of training police to terrorize citizens, but not to house people.

Forest defenders have been living in treehouses in order to prevent construction of Cop City, as well as Shadowbox Studios's (formerly Blackhall Studios) planned construction of the nation's largest motion picture soundstage. The forest and these encampments have been the subject of repeated violent police raids, including one in January in which they shot and killed forest defender and street medic Manuel "Tortuguita" Terán.

The land itself has a rather tortured history. It belonged to the Muscogee people before white settlers came and violently drove them out. Then it was a slave plantation. Then it was a prison farm that was supposed to be a lovely "honor farm" where low risk prisoners could live and work, but later turned out to have involved no small amount of abuse, torture, overcrowding, and other atrocities, including many unmarked graves. Notably, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) was briefly incarcerated there.

Cops have largely gone wild trying to stop the protests both on and off the proposed site. In April, they even raided on-campus protests at Emory University and Georgia Tech in hopes of intimidating the students enough that they would shut up and stop protesting.

But Back To Those Arrests

Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp issued a statement defending the Wednesday arrests, in which he did his level best to make the Cop City protesters look like scary domestic terrorists instead of activists who don't want a necessary green space in their city to be turned into a giant fake neighborhood where cops can set off bombs, deploy tear gas and practice killing unarmed people.

 It read:  

For months, law enforcement on the state and local level have worked diligently to secure the site of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in the face of violence from mostly out-of-state activists. They came to harass police officers and civilians, choosing destruction over legitimate protest. Thanks to our brave law enforcement, many of them have already been arrested. And today, we're proud to share that those who backed their illegal actions are also under arrest and will face justice.

These criminals facilitated and encouraged domestic terrorism with no regard for others, watching as communities faced the destructive consequences of their actions. Here in Georgia, we DO NOT allow that to happen. Today's announcement is a reminder that we will track down every member of a criminal organization, from violent foot soldiers to their uncaring leaders. We will not rest until they are arrested, tried, and face punishment.

I commend the GBI, Georgia State Patrol, DNR Game Wardens, Atlanta Police, DeKalb Police, the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office, Attorney General Chris Carr, the DeKalb County D.A.'s Office, and all others who have helped to fight back against these extremists. Rest assured, if you endanger the people of Georgia, law enforcement like them will ensure you face swift justice.

The drama . Note how he specifically claimed protesters are from "out of state," in hopes Georgia residents don't see them as their fellow citizens, and are therefore not as appalled by the attack on their civil liberties.

If Kemp is so upset about these muddy-shoed "domestic terrorists"/concertgoers being bailed out, that is an issue he should take up with the judge that set bail for them in the first place. You can't set bail for people and then claim it is illegal for someone to pay their bail. You also can't arrest someone in the United States of America and then insist it's a crime for someone else to pay for the lawyer they are legally entitled to.

Kemp and the cops desperately want their stupid training center, but they know how bad it looks and they are trying to get the public on their side by trying to present those who oppose it as scary "domestic terrorists" with no valid concerns. They are willing to stifle freedom of speech, freedom of association and any civil rights and liberties they need to in order to get this done, and are clearly far too daft to realize that this is not a good look.

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