Witness: Cops target Cabbagetown muralists

The week after two taggers and the man who attacked them reached a peaceful resolution over the highly charged issue of how much graffiti is too much in Cabbagetown, tensions in the neighborhood flared again.

This time, it was Atlanta police who cracked down.

At around 2:30 a.m. this morning, muralists with an out-of-state art collective called Trust Your Struggle were putting up a mural in the Krog Street tunnel when four patrol cars responded. Police put an abrupt end to their painting, according to witness Dawn Smith.

About an hour earlier, the artists, who had come to Atlanta to do a free commissioned mural at West End’s Omenala-Griot Afrocentric Museum, arrived with Smith at the Cabbgetown bar 97 Estoria. At the bar, Smith and several other patrons mentioned that the muralists should paint something in the tunnel, which is widely perceived by graffiti artists and Cabbagetown residents as a “free space” for graffiti-styled murals.

“Neighbors, people from Estoria all gathered around” to watch them paint, Smith says.

Within 15 minutes, Smith says, the cops arrived. “They proceeded to harass and threaten to arrest people,” she says. “It was really this tense standoff.”