RIOT SEASON SEEMS TO ARRIVE EARLIER AND EARLIER EACH YEAR: Atlanta riots erupt downtown amid ‘Cop City’ backlash.
Rioters in Atlanta set off fireworks and threw rocks at the Atlanta Police Foundation Saturday evening, according FOX 5 Atlanta.
The incident comes after an activist, Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, 26, was killed by police after allegedly refusing demands by authorities on Wednesday and allegedly fired a gun at state troopers at the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.
“An individual, without warning, shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper,” Georgia Bureau of Investigations Michael Register told reporters earlier this week. “Other law enforcement personnel returned fire in self-defense and evacuated the trooper to a safe area. The individual who fired upon law enforcement and shot the trooper was killed in the exchange of gunfire.”
Teran was an activist working against the development of the City of Atlanta’s Public Safety Training Center, and his fellow activists vowed to protest against the facility and police after his death.
The protest began peacefully on Saturday before spiraling into chaos, according to FOX 5.
And it continued peacefully, according to a local reporter interviewed by — who else — CNN:
CNN's interviews a freelance journalist who says the words violent shouldn't be used to describe the rioting in Atlanta. pic.twitter.com/u2TbfghSEb
— 3sidedstory 🇺🇲 (@3sidedstory) January 22, 2023
So according to CNN, the riot was mostly peaceful, but as the visuals playing alongside the reporter highlight, it did get more than a little fiery, to paraphrase this legendary moment from 2020:
