State Rep. Park Cannon is placed in the back of a Georgia State Capitol patrol car after being arrested at the State Capitol. Cannon was arrested after she tried knocking on the door of Governor Brian Kemp’s office while he was speaking after she signed a major Republican-sponsored revision of the state election. Hide Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution over AP caption
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Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP
State Rep. Park Cannon is placed in the back of a Georgia State Capitol patrol car after being arrested at the State Capitol. Cannon was arrested after she tried knocking on the door of Governor Brian Kemp’s office while he was speaking after she signed a major Republican-sponsored revision of the state election.
Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal Constitution via AP
Brian Kemp knocked repeatedly on the Georgia governor’s office door and arrested a lawmaker at the Capitol on Thursday.
Democratic MP Park Cannon, a black woman, kept knocking on Kemp’s office door after Georgia State Patrol officers instructed her to stop.
She later said she was arrested for “fighting against voter suppression”. A law signed by Kemp on Thursday includes new restrictions on postal voting, extends most voters’ access to early personal elections, and ends months of battles to vote in a battlefield nation.
It has been heavily criticized as a bill that would result in the disenfranchisement of black voters. It is also seen as reprimanding Republicans for the November and January elections, when the state’s black voters led the election of two Democrats to the Senate.
Cannon is charged with obstructing law enforcement officers through threats or violence, and she is charged with disrupting general assembly or other members’ meetings.
It is unclear what was said between Cannon and a police officer guarding Kemp’s office door.
Georgia State Patrol spokesman Lt. W. Mark Riley, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that Cannon had “been warned that she was disrupting internal operations and if she did not stop she would be arrested.”
Cannon’s warrant claims she “stepped” on an officer’s foot three times when she was arrested and escorted from the property, the AJC reported.
Several videos posted online reveal that arrest officers have repeatedly learned that Cannon is a state legislature.
While she is being dragged away, Cannon identifies herself as a Georgia state lawmaker and demands to know why she is being arrested.
In one video she yells, “There is no reason for me to be arrested. I am a lawmaker!”
Other officials then arrive to prevent onlookers from interfering. They eventually reverse a screaming cannon outside and into the back of a Georgia State Capitol patrol car.
Cannon is 5 feet 2, according to her arrest record. Her arrest by several major white police officers and the picture she was being brought through the Capitol resulted in widespread condemnation on social media overnight. And her arrest has been compared to protests against civil rights and police brutality from that summer as well as from the 1960s.
The Georgian Constitution states that the legislature “should be free from arrest” during the sessions of the General Assembly, with the exception of treason, crime or violation of the peace.
Cannon was charged and taken to a local prison. She was released around 11 p.m., according to her attorney, Gerald A. Griggs, who spoke to a group of reporters and supporters outside the prison.
Griggs told the crowd that Cannon had bruised from her arrest. He was escorted outside of prison by Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, who was visiting Cannon in prison. He told the group that he is also Cannon’s pastor.
Warnock said of Cannon, “She’s understandably a little shaken by what happened to her. She doesn’t deserve it.”
The Senator questioned what made Cannon’s actions “so dangerous” that her arrest was warranted.
Cannon tweeted early Friday thanking her supporters, saying, “I’m not the first Georgian to be arrested for fighting voter suppression. I would like to say I’ll be the last, but we know that not true. “
Griggs said Thursday night that the charges against Cannon have been exposed and they intend to fight them.
Rachel Treisman of NPR contributed to this report.
