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Georgia National Guard Activates Over Anti-Police Riots, Kemp Declares Emergency

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has declared a state of emergency, activating 1,000 troops from the Georgia National Guard, to tackle anti-police riots in Atlanta.

As Valiant News reported, leftist activists had been camping out on the scene of the planned “Cop City,” a new training city for Atlanta law enforcement, for over a year, when police attempted to clear out the protestors last Wednesday.

“As law enforcement was moving through the property, officers located a man inside a tent in the woods,” the GBI said in a statement. The man, later identified as Manuel Teran, allegedly “did not comply” with verbal commands, and then shot a Georgia State Patrol Trooper. Other officers returned fire and killed Teran, while the injured officer was taken to a local hospital.

Despite some of the leftist groups peacefully protesting with candlelit vigils, other radical environmentalists called for “reciprocal violence” to be conducted against the police. Riots subsequently broke out in Atlanta, with the police arresting six people on Saturday after they attacked police cruisers and broke windows.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said that some of them had even been found with explosives that “led to a police officer’s car being set on fire,” adding that he believed the six arrested “meant harm to people and to property.”

On Thursday, Governor Kemp issued a temporary state of emergency, based on the “unlawful assembly, violence, threats, disturbance of the peace and tranquility of this state and existing danger to persons and property” seen in the anti-police riots.

“Georgians respect peaceful protesters, but do not tolerate acts of violence against persons or properties,” Kemp said in the emergency order, granting him the power to mobilize 1,000 members of the Georgia National Guard. The state of emergency will last until February 9th.

Earlier this month, Kemp warned against the “domestic terrorist activities” taking place near the planned police training center. “The only response we will give to intimidation and violence is swift and exact justice,” Kemp said in a January 3rd statement.

The Governor claimed that the Antifa activists involved “are members of a broader network of militant activists who have committed similar acts of domestic terrorism and intimidation across the country with no regard for the people are communities impacted by their crimes.” Notably, most of the six rioters arrested on Saturday were not from Georgia.

 

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