The National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO), representing some 241,000 rank-and-file officers across the United States, condemns in the strongest possible terms the violent attacks upon the Atlanta, Georgia police training facility on March 5, and thanks the courageous officers and troopers risking their own safety in an effort to preserve peace and order.

Criminals armed with Molotov cocktails and using commercial-grade fireworks as anti-personnel explosives infiltrated and burned Atlanta’s new Public Safety Training Center. The Center suffered significant arson damage, and officers trying to protect the facility were attacked with rocks and bricks. 

"What happened last night was not peaceful protest – it was violence. Plain and simple," Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said in a March 6 statement. 

NAPO joins our brother and sister officers in Georgia, and men and women of good will across the United States, in calling for the swift and effective prosecution of the domestic terrorists involved. “Those who violently attack our nation’s law enforcement officers attack our society itself. No one who would burn down a Center designed to help first responders do their job better can be taken seriously when they claim they did it for the sake of ‘justice,’” said NAPO’s national president, Michael McHale. “Make no mistake, the efforts to violently destroy this Center will only serve to steady the resolve of citizens and officers alike to stand against anarchy and violence, and to support the rule of law, without which no community can prosper.”

Click here for the NAPO statement.