All right. Good evening, everyone.
Welcome to our joint Operation Center
here at the Atlanta Public Safety
Headquarters and we're joined here
with a lot of our partners tonight.
First, I want to thank our chief,
Chief Scheerbaum for his
great leadership today.
And the men and women of the Atlanta
Police Department, the Atlanta Fire
Rescue Department are 911 operators,
Georgia State Patrol, the GBI, the FBI,
our state and federal partners as
well as our partners in Fulton County.
DeKalb County,
Marta and others Atlanta is safe and
our police officers have resolved the
disruptions downtown from this evening.
Thanks to the quick action of our public
safety officials working together,
order has been restored in a swift manner.
Now the city of Atlanta and the
Atlanta Police Department will not,
will not tolerate this and we continue to
protect the right to peacefully protest.
We will not tolerate violence
or property destruction.
The Atlanta Police Department
and our law enforcement partners
are fully engaged and have the
resources to protect our residents,
our visitors and our businesses in this city.
Again, I want to thank Atlanta firefighters,
our police officers, our 911 operators,
EMS,
and everyone else who has helped
to keep order in our city.
My message is simple to those who seek to
continue this type of criminal behavior,
we will find you and we will arrest
you and you will be held accountable.
We have arrested several of them
this evening and she surban will
give you the details on that.
Many of them don't even live in Atlanta
or in the state of Georgia and they
don't represent the voices of Atlanta.
And to those and some of them were
found with explosives on them.
You heard that correctly,
explosives and that has led to a
police officers car being set on fire
and other destruction has occurred.
And so make no mistake about it,
these individuals.
Meant harm to people and to property.
And so to the people of Atlanta
have said from the beginning of my
administration that keeping our city
streets safe is my top priority,
and we will continue to leverage all of
the city's resources to make that happen.
And so tonight you saw good,
swift police work in collaboration with a
lot of our regional and state partners.
And I'll turn it over to Chief
Shibam so he can give you more
of the details from tonight.
Chief. Thank you, mayor.
Good evening, everyone. Start biking.
Alleging the support that we have here
at the podium of the Georgia State
Patrol and Sheriff Labatt and the key
role they have replayed this evening.
Restoring order our city.
This department is equally
committed to two things.
We will protect the 1st Amendment
rights of every citizen and we will
stop lawlessness wherever it may occur.
Occur in Atlanta and we prepared
tonight for both of those eventualities.
They protest was being held earlier
tonight about 5:00 o'clock in the
underground area of the city.
That group started marching N on
Peachtree St. in a peaceful manner.
And this department.
Was deployed to protect that
right of protest.
However,
when that group arrived at
the intersection of Ellis St.
and Peachtree St.
A group inside that marching crowd
decided to start committing illegal acts,
which included the breaking of
windows and also attacking police
cruisers that were in the area.
That immediately changed the
focus of this Police Department
and those that were in the area.
We're seeing a rapid response
line of police officers,
Georgia State patrolman and sheriff's
deputies and within two blocks.
The illegal activity had been
stopped and we had made arrest of
6 individuals that chose to take
the 1st amendment as a shield of of
illegal activity and we stopped the
protesters that were acting illegally,
had them in custody and had order
restored on Peachtree Street
and in the downtown area.
There are three businesses that
receive damages to their windows
and the investigation is continue
to determine who we haven't arrest
that may cause that and if there's
someone that committed a criminal
act that we currently do not have
in custody we're using.
All of our investigative resources
to ensure we identify them and
we bring them to justice.
The mayors already mentioned
that we have a number of federal
partners are here with us in the
building that is the ATF,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
We also have the Attorney General's
Office of the State of Georgia as well
as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
because even though we are just a
few hours into this investigation,
we already know that we have arrested
actors and have already been involved
in other criminal activity and are
involved in a manner to deter the
building of the public safety training.
Water.
Every citizen of this city
should know that we're criminals
should arrive inside of Atlanta,
GA.
They will be met by their Police
Department and they will be met by
the collaboration that stands behind
me and anyone that attempts to break
the peace and the security of Atlanta,
GA will be held accountable.
And we will protect the 1st amendment for
everyone that chooses to peacefully do so.
Our department is equally committed to both.
Thank you,
mayor. Thank you.
Question for you. Yes, Sir.
That was the police unit
that was set on fire.
Was there was an officer inside
there or was that that the unit
abandoned or left or empty?
You know, we were very fortunate tonight
that when the men and women of law
enforcement responded, none were harmed.
And so no Atlanta police officer,
no sheriff's deputy, nor Georgia State
Trooper has been injured tonight.
And the men and women of law enforcement
put themselves in a very dangerous situation
to quickly end this criminal activity.
And so we were able to answer
your question by saying no, no,
no law enforcement was injured.
OK, and I also think we should note
that no citizens on our street was
injured and protesters put them
in a very dangerous situation.
The mayor has already spoken about the the
explosive devices have been recovered.
We can tell now early in this investigation,
this was not the focus tonight,
just to damage Windows and three buildings
and and set a police car on fire.
The intent was to continue to do
harm and that did not happen.
And is there a lot of our viewers are
saying these are no longer protesters,
these are rioters, right.
Is there a fine line between that
with the incident that happened here
tonight between protesters and rioters?
You know, protest,
and I've said this before,
is engaging our elected officials
protest is raising your voice.
Folk protest is standing
on the courthouse lawn,
the City Hall lawn on every sidewalk.
And this is the Police Department.
As quickly as we move tonight
to arrest the Vandals,
we protect with the same dedication
men and women that exercise
their First Amendment.
And so it doesn't take a rocket
scientist or an attorney to tell you
that breaking windows and setting fires,
not protest, that is terrorism,
and that they will be charged accordingly.
And they will find that this Police
Department and the partnership is
equally committed to stop that activity.
And I. Fox 5, this is a question
for you and Mary Dickens.
Can you guys kind of give reaction
to just the whole nature of this
and this ongoing issue that's
been happening since last year
surrounding this training facility?
What were your thoughts when you
got wind of what was going on today?
You know what I what I know because I've
been involved for a number of months now,
this is a very small group of individuals
that we're dealing with and we're,
I think we're going to see tonight
that some of these individuals we've
already dealt with in this situation,
we know it's very small.
And we know it's not representative of
the citizens of Atlanta and it certainly
doesn't reflect the values of our city.
And so I'm very aware of that.
And I know that the mechanisms
of the collaboration of law
enforcement stands behind me.
The prosecutors that are engaged
in this case will hold those
accountable and we will start to
see this activity diminish and we
will eventually see this activity.
And it's only a matter of time.
Chief,
the arrest made tonight.
Do we know yet if those
people were from this area,
they were from out of state.
We're still reviewing that now. But
you said in the past it's typically
been people from out of state,
yes. I don't know which,
which News Group it was.
Recently we saw this great graphic of
everyone that was arrested this past week,
not a single Georgia resident in there.
It was from across the country.
And I don't want to give anyone out their
own promotion for your news agency,
but go look for that graphic and
see where each arrestee was and what
state they were associated with.
I think that speaks for itself.
Details on chart.
That will be forthcoming.
We already have prosecutors in
the room as we speak and we're
reviewing everything and we have a
lot of evidence to still go through.
So even charges you see tonight,
those can easily be upgraded and
they will be upgraded if appropriate.