‘Cop City’ Prosecutions Hinge on a New Definition of Domestic Terrorism

In a forest on the outskirts of Atlanta last March, hundreds of protesters had gathered once again to try to stop the construction of a new police and fire training center.

For Timothy Bilodeau, a 26-year-old who had flown in from Boston, the fight that began in 2021 had gained new urgency after state troopers killed a protester in a shootout in the forest weeks earlier that also wounded an officer.

On the day that Mr. Bilodeau headed in, there was another fiery confrontation. A crowd marched to the development site, where some protesters threw fireworks and Molotov cocktails, setting equipment ablaze. The police arrested nearly two dozen protesters, including Mr. Bilodeau.

As Mr. Bilodeau saw it, he was taking a principled stand against the destruction of the forest. But prosecutors had a darker take: They charged Mr. Bilodeau and 22 others with domestic terrorism.

In all, 42 people involved in the demonstrations against the training facility have been charged under Georgia’s domestic terrorism law, making for one of the largest cases of its kind in the country on a charge that is rarely prosecuted.

As several states have added or expanded laws related to terrorism, or are considering doing so, the case in Georgia is at the center of debate about the need for these measures, the dangers they pose and, more fundamentally, what constitutes terrorism. (One proposal in New York has suggested that blocking traffic, a tactic occasionally used in demonstrations, could be considered domestic terrorism.)

Georgia broadened its definition in 2017 to include attempts to seriously harm or kill people, or to disable or destroy “critical infrastructure,” with the goal of forcing a policy change. The charge carries a penalty of up to 35 years in prison.

Officials in Georgia have argued that those charged were involved in sowing disorder and destruction — actions that demanded a swift and forceful response.

“We will not waver when it comes to keeping people safe, enforcing the rule of law, and ensuring those who engage in criminal activity are vigorously pursued and aggressively prosecuted,” Christopher M. Carr, Georgia’s attorney general, said in a statement.

Critics say that the charges in Georgia justify their worst fear about domestic terrorism laws: that they can frame activism as terrorism, and allow prosecutors to pursue even harsher punishments for “property crimes that were already illegal, simply because of accompanying political expression critical of government policy,” as the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia said in a recent statement.

The result, critics argue, is stifling free speech.

“It’s chilling,” Mr. Bilodeau, a tech consultant, said. “It is a devastating threat to all people who are advocates or activists for the well-being of our planet or climate or communities.”

Legal experts have also raised concerns about many people being prosecuted for serious crimes over the actions of a few.

Mr. Bilodeau’s lawyer, Amanda Clark Palmer, argued in a motion for a bond that his arrest warrant contained “no specific allegation that Mr. Bilodeau himself possessed or threw a rock, firework or Molotov cocktail.”

“The only specific allegation,” she added, “is the following: The accused was observed with muddy clothing from breaching and crossing the embankment. Accused was also in possession of a shield.”

Officials in Georgia have maintained that the charges were warranted, with the Atlanta Police Department calling the accused “violent agitators,” mostly from out of state, who committed violence “under the cover of a peaceful protest.”

The charges have not yet proceeded to indictments, in part because the local district attorney withdrew from the case, citing a “fundamental difference in prosecutorial philosophy” with Mr. Carr, the Republican attorney general.

But the allegations also provided the foundation for a broader case that Mr. Carr’s office is pursuing under the state’s racketeering law — a powerful tool that prosecutors have used to target street gangs, public officials accused of corruption and even former President Donald J. Trump, who is accused of conspiring to overturn his election loss in 2020.

Mr. Bilodeau and 60 others are now facing racketeering charges, with prosecutors describing them as part of “an anarchist, anti-police and anti-business extremist organization” that conspired to block the training center. The first trial in the racketeering case could start in the coming weeks.

The Atlanta City Council voted in 2021 to authorize the training facility, officially named the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center and derided by protesters as “Cop City.”

The project stirred a diverse coalition of opponents: environmental activists who objected to developing a rare expanse of forest in a rapidly developing metropolitan area; social justice activists who believed the facility would train officers to police communities with militarized tactics; and nearby residents opposed to a potentially disruptive new neighbor.

The opposition intensified in 2022 as officers began sweeping the site. Protesters had set up camp in the trees and erected barricades to block officers and construction crews. Some of the demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails and set off fireworks, the police said. Officers responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, and in January 2023, a 26-year-old activist, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, known as Tortuguita, was fatally shot by state troopers.

Officials have said that the activist shot first, wounding a trooper, but protesters have remained skeptical, partly because the troopers were not wearing body cameras.

More construction and police vehicles at the site have been set on fire since then, including as recently as late January. Construction companies in Georgia and beyond — including at least one mistakenly associated with the training center — have had equipment vandalized or burned, the authorities said.

Last month, city officials said that the destruction had caused the cost of the facility, which had been estimated at $90 million, to jump by nearly $20 million.

“These individuals are trafficking in fear,” John F. King, Georgia’s insurance and safety fire commissioner, said in a recent news conference announcing rewards of up to $200,000 for help finding and convicting arson suspects.

When Georgia lawmakers strengthened the state’s domestic terrorism laws, it was in part a response to the racist massacre in 2015 at a Black church in Charleston, S.C. The point, they said at the time, was to empower prosecutors to charge perpetrators of racist attacks as domestic terrorists. Georgia lawmakers are currently considering another measure to bolster its law further.

Like Georgia, other states have also moved to expand terrorism-related laws, reflecting an increasingly fractured political climate and fears of rising extremism. A bill in West Virginia would clarify definitions of terrorism and create mandatory sentencing rules.

Last year, Oregon — where the authorities have had showdowns with armed militias on public land, and where far-right demonstrators breached the State Capitol in 2021 — became the latest state to enact a domestic terrorism law.

Officials in Georgia have used the expanded law to target left-wing activism that, they argue, took a violent turn in Atlanta around the time of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

One of the demands in the nationwide protests that followed the murder of George Floyd was to strip funding away from police departments and redirect those resources. The Cop City protesters see Atlanta as doing the opposite with the training center, which officials have hailed as an investment in a police force struggling with depleted ranks and morale.

“We don’t need more police and more of a surveillance state,” said Ayla King, 19, a recent high school graduate from Worcester, Mass., who traveled to Atlanta last March after following the developments on social media. Mx. King, who uses the they pronoun, faces both domestic terrorism and racketeering charges.

Mr. Bilodeau, who spent 17 days in jail after the confrontation last March, declined to discuss what he did in the forest in March, pointing to his impending trial. In charging documents, prosecutors accused him of criminal trespass and of joining “an organized mob designed to overwhelm the police force,” occupy the forest and cause property damage.

He returned to a life in Boston that was upended. His bank closed his accounts, he said. The youth art and music program where he had been a regular volunteer told him he was no longer welcome. His anxiety about the police seeped into his dreams, and he is wary of participating in any more protests.

“This has been just a crushing emotional and legal process, and we’re not really in the thick of things yet,” Mr. Bilodeau said.

Mx. King has had to set aside plans for college.

“This is terrifying,” Mx. King said in an interview in December, before a gag order was issued in their case. “But it’s really important to stay strong and just know that, just because the state says that I’m a domestic terrorist, it doesn’t mean anything, really. It’s such an inflated charge.”

Still, Mx. King has no illusions about the gravity of the situation. In fact, they recently had a stark reminder of the stakes: They declined a plea offer of a 10-year sentence that included three years in prison.