A $200,000 reward is being offered for information on arson suspects protesting the construction of the city’s public safety training center, also known as “Cop City.”
Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum announced the reward at a Thursday press conference. He said for the last several months, police have grappled with identifying a “very small group of individuals” that have set 21 fires in metro Atlanta and four other states. In Georgia, the amount of arson damage totals $10 million, Schierbaum said.
“They have been using the tool of fire and the crime of arson,” he said. “These individuals have placed citizens lives at danger. We’ve been very fortunate that no one has died yet. And these careless attacks … have no motivation, other than to harm and the harm is spread across all 245 of our neighborhoods.”
Last year, the suspects set fire to a Westside Youth Center. In July, Mayor Andre Dickens, Schierbaum and Fire Chief Rod Smith denounced “anarchists” they said targeted and burned eight police motorcycles parked at the Atlanta Police Department’s former academy on South Industrial Parkway. They also blamed the group for trying to set fires and damaging police cars parked on Memorial Drive at the department’s Atlanta BeltLine precinct.
In October, the suspects set fire three different times to equipment belonging to Atlanta-based construction company Brent Scarbrough & Co., Schierbaum said.
In November, the suspects set fire to a Gwinnett concrete company.
“We see that the same group takes credit each and every time,” Schierbaum said of the alleged arsonists. “It’s likely to be that same group, very small in number, moving from state to state … What is known is they are dangerous and what is known as they don’t care about life and safety.”
When asked why opponents of the public safety training center would set fire to a youth center, Schierbaum said it was likely because the youth center is affiliated with the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) and is representative of the city’s renowned reputation of the public and private sector working together. The APF if the private agency that is building and will manage the $90 million public safety training center complex.
“When they attacked the youth center, they thought they were going after the Atlanta Police Foundation. But at the end of the day … it was the kids who couldn’t go to the youth center and that’s who was impacted,” he said.
Schierbaum declined to give a number of people investigators think are setting the fires.
“It is a handful of individuals that are having an out a much larger impact on the safety of the city than they should have,” he said.
John King, former Atlanta Police officer and now the Georgia Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner, also spoke at the press conference. He said his office is assisting in investigating the arsons because the state supports the city in building the new complex.
“There’s a lot of conversations … a lot of emotions attached to this [new training center],” King said.
“I care about this training center because I trained here on Key Road back in 1985 in a temporary facility,” he said.
“Atlanta has been waiting for a permanent, world-class training center for 30 years. Atlanta deserves to have this training center so our officers are not trying to figure it out on the streets with our citizens when they’re trying to solve key problems,” King said.
People can submit anonymous tips online at https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/programs/crime-stoppers/.
This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Rough Draft Atlanta.
