After months of stonewalling by Georgia prosecutors, defense attorneys were allowed on Tuesday to visit the forest at the center of the state’s criminal conspiracy case against a movement opposing the police training center colloquially known as “Cop City” – only to come away frustrated by how much things had changed on the ground. The attorneys also found confusion about where arrests and alleged crimes occurred during the last two years, according to a handful who spoke to the Guardian. “[W]e were provided very little to no guidance as to the alleged location of .
.. events such as .
.. arrests, camp sites or locations of any other police or protest activities that are part of the case,” said Drago Cepar, one of at least 30 attorneys who visited the South River Forest south-east of Atlanta.
Several attorneys told the Guardian they asked Fowler about such details, only to have the prosecutor say he didn’t know, or give answers later confirmed to be incorrect. Although the attorneys hiked for several hours in a wooded area spanning hundreds of acres that include a public park and the Cop City construction site, Fowler basically told them, “go and look around”, Cepar said. One thing several attorneys were able to confirm: any defendants arrested in the public park where protesters camped for more than a year could not have been “trespassing”, as arrest warrants alleged.
Signs are now posted in that part of the forest saying the area has been off limits to t.