Two people locked themselves to construction equipment in Midtown for four hours Monday to protest Atlanta’s planned public safety training center, causing a street to close amid the morning commute.
Using a device that authorities call a “sleeping dragon,” activists locked their arms around the equipment at a Brasfield & Gorrie work site at 12th and Juniper streets. The device is made by placing an individual’s hands inside pipes that are bound together with other materials to make it more difficult for authorities to cut through and remove them from protest sites.
One person was locked to a construction elevator and the other to a boom. Police were called to the site around 6:15 a.m., and both people were unlocked by 10:15 a.m. Police said no injuries were reported, and construction was not impacted by the protest.
“(This) was a publicity stunt to disrupt the neighborhood, to make sure people cannot go to and from work,” Atlanta police Chief Darin Schierbaum told reporters once Juniper Street was reopened around 11:30 a.m.
“This is disappointing,” he added.
Both activists were arrested and face criminal trespassing charges.
Brasfield & Gorrie is one of the contractors hired to build the training facility at the site of the old Atlanta Prison Farm in the south DeKalb County woods.
“We’re coming out here today to let Brasfield & Gorrie know that folks will continue to engage in civil disobedience at sites of theirs across the South and across the country until they do the right thing, which is to drop the contract,” Mariah Parker with The People’s Stop Work Order said.
Those opposed to the facility say its construction will damage the South River 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 and due to open later this year, is vital to maintaining well-trained police and fire departments.
Activists in metro Atlanta and other major U.S. cities have targeted companies involved in the building of the center. On Friday, four pieces of construction equipment were set ablaze at a townhome construction site linked to one of the subcontractors.
In 2022, a group believed to be connected with the protest movement vandalized Brasfield & Gorrie’s Cobb County offices. That attack came after the company’s Birmingham office was vandalized, causing an estimated $80,000 in damage.
Its employees and their family members had also been targeted at their homes, at church and in online attacks, the company said in a statement at the time.
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