Atlanta police have released the names, mugshots and charges for the six suspects arrested during a riot in downtown Atlanta Saturday evening. The agitation was not an organic Georgia-born eruption. With one exception, all the arrested agitators were from out of state. Their interest in the Atlanta police training facility was not clarified. Only one arrested suspect, Graham Evatt, 20, of Decatur, was a Georgia resident.
As reported, those arrested were charged with four misdemeanors and four felonies. “The misdemeanor charges include rioting, pedestrian in a roadway, willful obstruction of a law enforcement officer and unlawful assembly. The felony charges include: second degree criminal damage, first degree arson, interference with government property and domestic terrorism.”
FOX 5 Atlanta photojournalist Billy Heath captured two of these six individuals being arrested on video. Three businesses, it was reported, were targeted and damaged when rioters threw bricks and rocks shattering windows. “At least two police cars were targeted, one was set ablaze. Investigators said some of the individuals arrested were found with explosives.”
Mayor Andre Dickens and Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said at a press conference Saturday night that “city officials will continue to look for anyone who was involved in violence and destruction that night.” Chief Schierbaum offered this insight: “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or an attorney to tell you that breaking windows or setting fires is not protesting, that is terrorism.” Mayor Dickens added: “My message to those who seek to continue this kind of criminal behavior: We will find you, we will arrest you, and you will be held accountable.”
In a related post, TIMELINE: HOW ‘STOP COP CITY’ MOVEMENT LED TO VIOLENT DOWNTOWN PROTEST AGAINST ATLANTA POLICE, the actions of the “protestors” were described as flooding the area “with people demanding justice for an activist killed near the site of a planned Atlanta Police Department training facility.” That the so-called “protestor,” and so-called “activist,” 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, opened fire first on a Georgia State Patrol trooper is undisputed. No protestor interviewed indicated what precise “justice” for Teran was being demanded.
