February 13, 2023 • 40 mins
The Georgia State Patrol kill a forest defender during a police raid on the Weelaunee Forest. Garrison travels to Atlanta to talk with people in the movement; this episode covers the police's escalation of violence and what happened the day of the shooting.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Around eight am Wednesday, January eighteenth, a forest defender who
went by Tortegita sent out a text message that read
morning raid. Please help. Just minutes prior, a multi agency
coalition of heavily armed law enforcement officers led by the
Georgia State Patrol began a raid on the Wallauni Forest
(00:43):
in southeast Atlanta. Encampments have sprung up throughout the forest
since November of twenty twenty one in protest and militant
opposition to a proposed militarized police training facility with a
mock city to practice combating civil unrest in the wake
of the corporate funded Atlanta Police Foundation seeks to control
(01:05):
over three hundred acres of the Wallauni or South River
Forest to construct this sprawling, state of the art police
compound with a starting budget of ninety million dollars for
its first phase of construction. The police raid on January eighteenth,
twenty twenty three, started off pretty similar to previous raids
(01:25):
that had taken place in the prior months, but for
the Georgia State Patrol, seemingly it was their first time
leading such a raid. In the woods. Police shut down
the parking lot at entrenchment, Creek Park and nearby streets
before entering the tree line with guns drawn. Within the
first hour, swat teams arrested two people in the woods
(01:46):
and destroyed multiple tents, and then shortly after nine am,
forest defenders in the woods reported hearing a rapid sequence
of about a dozen gun shots. Quickly, news spread that
Georgia State Patrare officers shot and killed a protester in
the woods who was defending the forest, and that a
(02:06):
state trooper was being sent to Grady Hospital with a
bullet wound. After the gunshots rang in the air, police
were quick to publicize a palatable sequence of events depicting
an exchange of gunfire rather predictably. The police claimed that
the deceased force defender had surprised to the armored swat
team and fired first. This is Peter, a force defender
(02:30):
I talked with a few days after the shooting.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So luckily I was in the woods on that day.
Just in a whim, I decided to stay in town.
The day of the shooting was really jarring. Trying to
figure out who was safe and who was unaccounted for
was like the main thing on my mind for most
of the day, and by the afternoon I realized that
it was probably taut. The last message that they sent
was at eight am saying morning raid, Please help, and
(02:56):
the shooting was at nine am. It was a weird
space to be in, knowing that it was likely toward
a GIDA that had died, but not being able to
grieve yet because not really having confirmation. The only eyewitnesses
were the police, and then all the other witnesses just
like heard noises.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
In contradiction to the exchange of gunfire narrative, activists on
the ground reported hearing a single burst of gunfire and
suspected that the injured trooper was hit by friendly fire,
and cautioned against taking police narrative as fact due to
cops track record of lying about police killings and covering
for fellow officers. Here's Sam from the Atlanta Community Press
(03:37):
Collective for more information about the sequence of events that day.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
We know from speaking to people who were in the
area on that day that PD the various police agencies
that were involved in the raid began the operation around
maybe seven thirty or eight. Records show that two people
(04:02):
were arrested maybe thirty to forty minutes before tort was shot.
Tort was shot around nine am. Some of our sources
that were in the woods at the time say they
only heard like one I guess you could call it
(04:24):
a volley of gunfire followed by a large boom. You
can speculate a lot about those statements, but they were
pretty independent. They were almost all identical and independent of
each other. We know that. Sorry, it's hard to talk about.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah. It wasn't until late into the night that people
in the movement were able to confirm that the person
killed by the Georgia State Patrol was Manuel Tehran, also
known by their forest name to to Gita, which means
little turtle. Torti Guita was a young Queer Afro Venezuelan
(05:07):
twenty six year old forest defender, described by friends and
loved ones as your friendly neighborhood anarchist, as a kind, earnest, fierce, welcoming, funny,
exceedingly helpful and brave person. They were an artist, an
urban farmer, a trained street medic, and heavily involved in
(05:28):
mutual aid all across the South. This is it could
happen here. I'm Garrison Davis or just Gare And after
checking in with friends and various people I know in
the movement. I made my way down to Atlanta late
Wednesday night. I've been reporting on and writing about the
Defend the Forest and Stop cop City movement since summer
(05:51):
of twenty twenty one. Last year, in twenty twenty two,
I put out around six hours of audio related to
the Forest encampment's protests, organized weeks of action, and the
forgotten history of the prison farm that operated on the
land cop City is slated to be built on. But
these new episodes serve as a follow up to the
(06:12):
two part series from last May titled on the Ground
at Defend the Atlanta Forest, but the various updates put
out since then will certainly help fill in the gaps.
This four part series will feature interviews with forest defenders,
audio clips from on the ground in Atlanta, and accounts
on what's changed the past few months. Episode one, What
(06:35):
You're listening to right Now will largely cover the events
around the shooting itself. Episode two will get into who
Tortigita was as a person and the stories about them
from friends and comrades. Episode three and four will cover
protests in the wake of the police killing, state repression,
(06:56):
and how the movement might evolve going forward due to
increasing state repression. We will be using a mix of
voice distortion and re dubbed voice replacement for some of
the interviews and discussions I had with forest defenders on
the ground in Atlanta. Speaking of the next forest defender
you're going to hear from is Cricket talking about their
(07:18):
experiences the day of the shooting.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
God, I mean, I can only obviously only speak for myself.
For me, it was terrifying. We had obviously already lived
through the raid in December, but when we heard someone
had been shot and killed, it was it was terrifying,
and in part because of the complete lack of information.
We had so few details for so long, and it
wasn't at least for me. It wasn't until the following
day that I found out that it was taught and
(07:44):
it it was just devastating. I mean, there's not really
words for it. It was like it felt like the
world stopped and then kept going. But it shouldn't have
like it felt like it should have stayed stopped like
it it shouldn't have kept turning.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
After the dead shooting in the morning, the police continued
their multi agency raid of the Wallani Forest in a
pretty regular fashion, with cops reportedly firing pepperballs at people
up in treehouses and making arrests throughout the day, into
the night, and even the next morning.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
I think a total of seven folks were arrested in
the forest that day. It might have been six. Six
arrested on the day Tourt died, and then one person remained.
The last tree.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Setter, the last person arrested in the deadly police raid,
was up in the trees overnight and surrounded by police
for about twenty hours straight. All seven people arrested in
the forest were charged with criminal trespassing and domestic terrorism.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
There was one person who remained in a tree set
because we had some communication with them throughout the night.
They were just like perched in and their climbing rig
in a tree for about twelve hours until a little
after sunrise when dekeb County SWAT moved in and took
(09:13):
them into custody. I guess you could say as they
were trying to repel back up the tree. They had
been in the tree pretty much the whole day and
then all night. They ran out of food and water
I think sometime after nightfall, and then after dark. They
were turning their phone on and off to conserve battery,
(09:35):
so it was a little sporadic. They were able to
send us some pictures of two cops standing in the
platform of like a trucuity used to work on a
telephone pole, and they both had like the SWAT operator
helmets on, and one of them had a long gun.
And then later on in the evening, four or five
police cars just like backed up to the tree and
(09:58):
just like surrounded the tree and shown their spotlights up
in the tree. And they didn't the cops didn't that
were there over night. They didn't say anything. They were
just waiting. They were just waiting for the sun to
come up so SWAT could move.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
In the night of the shooting, before we even knew
who was killed, there was a small vegil turned to
march in the Little Five Points neighborhood of Atlanta. The
first twenty four hours after the shooting were extremely hectic,
as many people were not even sure who the police
had killed.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Obviously, the first thing on everyone's mind was who was killed,
and by late Wednesday night, some folks that help us
source our reporting came to us saying that they believed
it was this person that they believed it was Taut.
(10:53):
A lot of people's friend was just murdered by the police,
and folks wanted to get ahead of the police narrative,
and as a community press collective, of course, we wanted
to support the community in that, so we just immediately
offered like to post whatever Towart's family and I believe
(11:17):
their their partner consented to that. That was the primary thing.
Once the community had kind of definitive definitively identified that
it was Tort, was obtaining consent from from those closest
to Tort to publish their name, any pictures, details, and
(11:39):
we wanted to give people a way to help tell
everyone who was about to be paying a lot of
attention to the story whose Tot actually was and not
who the police would like people to think Torque was.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
State agencies were swift in their attempts to control the
narrative surrounding the deadly raid. Hours after the killing, the
Georgia Bureau of Investigation set up a press conference as
the raid was very much still ongoing. First, a GBI
spokesperson explained the purpose of the raid.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
The operations goal is to secure the site of the
future City of Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Next, GBI Director Mike Register gave his account of the
day's events so far.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
As you are aware.
Speaker 7 (12:48):
A few weeks ago, several individuals were arrested for domestic
terrorism in the area around the future site of the
public safety training facility. This morning, the GBI, with a
other local state law enforcement agencies such as the CABPD,
Atlanta PD, the Georgia State Patrol, and Georgia DNR, conducted
(13:09):
a plan clearing operation to remove the individuals who were
illegally occupying the area. At approximately nine o'clock this morning,
as law enforcement was moving through various sectors of the property,
an individual, without warning, shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper.
Other law enforcement person there returned fire and self defense
(13:31):
and evacuated the trooper to a safe area. The individual
who fired upon law enforcement and shot the trooper was
killed in the exchange of gunfire. The GBI is working
the officer involved shooting and the investigation is still active
and fluid. The circumstances was an individual confronted law enforcement
(13:53):
and I don't think that he was seen until he fired.
I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Right leader that day, a GABI statement claimed that officers
located tort inside a tent in the woods and that
they did not comply with verbal commands from law enforcement officers.
The day after the shooting, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
also announced that there is no body cam footage of
the incident. They also claimed that twenty five campsites were
(14:20):
located and removed Wednesday and that quote mortar style fireworks,
edged weapons, pellet rifles, gas masks, and a blowtorch were
recovered unquote, after people pointed out that the list of
recovered items was absent any firearms. The next day, the
GBI released a photo of a nine millimeter handgun allegedly
(14:43):
found at this scene of the shooting. It was the
only firearm police claim they found in their extensive sweep
of the forest.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
The GBI has been as the independent agency investigating all
of this. Has changed their story a little bit, which
it was a breaking news story. I think they first
went before the cameras at noon when it happened at
nine am, not to grant the police any kind of
flee weigh at all, because Fuckham. But it was a
(15:14):
rapidly evolving situation, as they say. That said, the story
changed kind of dramatically over the first few days. They
released an initial list of items that had recovered, but
it didn't mention a gun. And then when the community
kind of said, hey, you said, tort shot this trooper,
(15:37):
where's the gun? Then a gun was produced. Then when
people still didn't believe it, the GBI said that they
had a bill of sale for the gun. The GBI
and Georgia State Patrol have also come out and said
that they won't release the identity of the trooper for
concerns about their safety.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Results from an independent autopsy were released on February third.
It found thirteen gun shot wounds. Attached to the report
was a statement from Tortighito's family, of which I will
read quote. The GBI has claimed that Manny shot an
officer and that the bullet matches the gun possessed by Manny,
but even if that is true, there are still many
(16:20):
unanswered questions. The GBI has selectively released information about Manny's death,
says civil rights attorney Jeff Philipovitz. They claim many failed
to follow orders. What orders. The GBI has not talked
about the fact that Manny faced a firing squad when
those shots were fired. Or who fired them. While the
(16:41):
GBI has publicly stated there's no body camera footage of
the shooting, it has not stated whether there is any
audio or other video from other sources, such as aerial
drones or helicopters that were used during the time of
the incident. The family has contacted the GBI and specifically
requested that it released whatever audio and video exists of
the incident, or any other information that would shed light
(17:03):
on what happened. Any evidence, even if it's only an
audio recording, will help the family piece together what happened
on the morning of January eighteenth. This information is critical
and it is being withheld, said Brian Spears, a civil
rights attorney with nearly five decades of experience litigating police shootings.
Whatever you believe about the exact series of events that
(17:25):
led to towards death, personally, I doubt that we'll ever
know what happened for sure, but regardless, the killing of
a forced defender at the hands of police, coupled with
the domestic terrorism charges, marks a significant escalation in the
fight against copp City and even environmental activism in this
country at large, as this seems to be the first
(17:47):
killing of an environmental protester by US law enforcement. As
horrific as this escalation is, it's not out of the
blue as one might think. All the way back in
May of twenty twenty two, police were already talking on
scanners about using deadly force against Stop Coop City protesters.
Speaker 6 (18:08):
Oh yeah, right, how old you four encounter?
Speaker 1 (18:13):
So last time I was like in the woods for
a decent amount of time was like last last spring,
last summer. What how is? In what ways has like
living in the woods changed since then? Like what sort
of developments I guess has there been?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Well, one thing that's changed in the day to day
life in the woods and the past several months is
that the raids by the police have been more thorough
and so it's required a lot of more vigilance to
live in the woods and a lot more being aware
of places to run and hide and escape routes.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
The past few months, police raids have been increasingly violent
and destructive, from the demolition of the gazebo in Willane
People's Park to the flattening of community gardens and the
trashing of makes shift cafes and kitchens within the forest,
using consistently escalated violent tactics. Police have routinely attacked protesters
(19:09):
with chemical weapons and rubber bullets, have cut tree limbs
and safety lines from under them, and reportedly threatened lethal force,
often targeting just peaceful people who were sitting in trees
or walking through the public park. In an article for
The Bitter Southerner, an unnamed tree sitter spoke about a
(19:30):
police raid in September twenty twenty two, where they described
their interactions with law enforcement as such, quote, they threatened
to shoot me. They didn't draw their guns, but they
talked about it. Several showed their sight arms while locking
eyes with me. They very easily could have killed my
friend in the other tree sit. It was fucking nuts unquote.
(19:53):
And here's a bit from Peter again.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Ever since the beginning, it's it's been on my mind that,
you know, there's a possibility of people dying in the woods,
ever since I started living in the woods, beginning of
the encampments. It was just something that kept coming up
into my mind as a possibility. I think before this happened, though,
people were generally under the impression that the police wouldn't
murder forest defenders because it would look bad for them.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Just a month prior to the deadly January raid. Another
police raid took place a couple weeks before Christmas, which
resulted in the first domestic terrorism charges being levied against
people arrested near the forest. In the aftermath of this raid,
a spokesperson for the Atlanta Solidarity Fund talked about the
developing pattern of police escalation against the protest movement and
(20:41):
warned that steadily increasing police repression would lead to protesters
being killed.
Speaker 8 (20:48):
And it's clear that if the public doesn't respond, if
the public doesn't do something about this, that escalation is
going to continue. Are we going to end up in
a situation where the police are murdering protesters in order
to advance not public safety but their particular political agenda
in building Copcity.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
The use of infleeted charges like domestic terrorism not only
make life for the people charged a living hell, it
also lays the narrative groundwork to justify extreme physical escalations
of force and increasingly brutal crackdowns. Take it from the
GBI director himself.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
As director of MIELS said, I'm Director Mike Register of
the GBI, and over the last several months, law enforcement
and portions of our community have experienced growing criminal behavior
and terroristic acts committed by individuals and groups concerning the
building of Atlanta's new public safety training center. These individuals
(21:47):
and groups have attempted to disguise their activities as being
protests against the building of this facility.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I'm going to read a short quote from an article
for the Inhabit Territories newsletter that sums this up nicely. Quote.
The violent escalation which led to this murder comes during
increased and coordinated repression against the movement to Defend the
Atlanta Forest, where the movement has built a diverse and
welcoming community through years of organizing. The police have used
(22:17):
every tactic to bad mouth, harass, threaten, surveil, criminalize, and
attack participants. Unquote. One of the forced offenders I spoke with,
who goes by Noah, talked about coming to terms with
something that everyone kind of knew was the possibility, but
still had this element of shock and disbelief.
Speaker 9 (22:38):
I think it was really personally shocking. I think anytime
you introduced police into a situation, you have the possibility
of somebody dying batch what cap to do the murder
with impunity. So I think like anybody who was there
in the forest. Anybody who spent time in around activism
against the police knows that this is like a thing
(23:00):
that can happen to people fighting against various types of
state power. But it was It was really really shocked.
Speaker 6 (23:09):
And I think everyone was just kind of an a loss.
Speaker 9 (23:11):
I personally, I mean, it's just kind of like, I
don't know, I sat with it for a really long time.
It was just kind of like there was an error
of disbelief to it.
Speaker 6 (23:21):
Just kind of knowing that like.
Speaker 9 (23:25):
These were the people we were, that we were and
we were fighting against them, like this is the type
of thing that they're capable of begs being very shocked
and really scared that like this is where we were,
that like the police were now killing activists and you know,
in all likelihood going to get away with it. It
was a really terrifying implication for the future of the movement,
(23:46):
for the future of all all social strugles.
Speaker 6 (23:48):
In the US.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Following news of the shooting, the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which
provides bail and legal assistance to political prisoners, protesters and activists,
put out a statement saying, quote Georgia State Patrol's story
is suspect they've released few details. We are concerned a
police cover up could be underway. We are preparing a
(24:30):
legal team to investigate and pursue a wrongful death suit. Unquote.
Here's Cricket again talking about the trustworthiness of the official
information being released about the shooting.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
And I mean, we still have so little information, and
though the information that we do have is so tainted,
it's so untrustworthy that it doesn't actually feel like information
at all. It doesn't feel like we can it doesn't
feel like information we can trust. That's sort of the
long and short of it.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Last month, over thirteen hundred climate justice and racial justice
groups from across the United States joined Atlanta residents and
community organizations in calling for an independent investigation into the
killing of Tortaquita.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
In any police shooting, you'd like to see an independent
investigation because how can you let the person who shot
the gun investigate the crime? Right, So it was a
pretty easy thing to call for, but especially given the
inconsistencies in everyone's story. You know, the GBI has said
has changed a couple times, like the sequence of events,
(25:36):
and that first like tort surprised them, then they surprised Tort.
Then Tort was in a tent. You know, the narrative
has changed a couple times. GSP Georgia State Patrol also
does not wear body cams, and that's not that's just
a day to day thing for them. That's hate to
(25:56):
say it, but that's not something they did specifically for
this raide. Just to screw the movement over, that's it.
It's actually the pretty well known issue in the state.
There were chosy to wear body camps considering how many
people they kill every year.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Has come up that APD says that they have body
camps after the incident.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yes, we know. The raid was kind of a joint
operation between Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia State Patrol, Atlanta
Police Department, a Cab County Police Department, and some other
state agencies. Georgia State Patrol seems to have been the
ones in the immediate area when it seems to have
been a trooper that the shot tort. Atlanta Police first
(26:40):
came out and said that there was no body cam footage,
that they weren't there, and it seems to be true
that they weren't in the immediate area when the shot
was fired, but they kind of later had to correct
themselves and say, well, we have bodycam or the incident,
but we're not going to release it like.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Of the incident itself, like during the time of yes.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Of what their officers were doing in the part of
the raid they were enacting when.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
We was shot. I have seen claims from both local
media and law enforcement that the GBI investigation does qualify
as independent, framing the GBI's investigation into the actions of
the Georgia State Patrol as this separate, non biased operation,
despite the GBI being fellow participants in the deadly raid.
(27:33):
As an interesting little side note, the Georgia State Patrol
and the Bureau of Investigation began in late nineteen thirties
as two branches of the same agency, the Georgia Department
of Public Safety.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
So the standard in the state. I'm sure a lot
of places when a person is shot by the police,
you get a supposedly independent agency to review it. In Georgia,
it's usually the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, But the GBI
was a participant in the raid. The GBI has been
involved in. The GBI has been present for several forest raids.
(28:13):
Open records requests show that They've been involved in emails
and conversations about the forest for quite some time.
Speaker 9 (28:19):
Now.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
We know their agents were unsecene or probably in the
woods when Tourt was shot. In addition to that, they're
most state agencies. In addition to that, there's still police.
Police are going to cover for each other. We know
this by now.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
A day after the shooting, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
stated that there was no bodycam footage of the incident,
but open records requests were filed asking for bodycam footage
from the forest around the time of the incident, not
only from the State Patrol, but also from the Atlanta
and Decab County police departments. Two days after the police killing,
(29:00):
when Atlanta PD spokesperson said that APD officers were not
in the area of the shooting and that no footage
from Wednesday's operation would be released, citing the ongoing investigation.
And then a whole three weeks after the shooting, on
February eighth, the Atlanta Police Department released bodycam footage from
(29:21):
four officers who were in the woods at the time
of the shooting. An officer in the group estimated that
they were just one hundred feet away I'm not going
to play audio of the gunshots or any use of
police weapons, but I'll be including a few brief snippets
of police chatter that I and others found relevant. Most
(29:42):
of the clips will only be a few seconds long,
so you can skip ahead if you want. I'll give
you a heads up at time of recording. There are
four videos released, and they show a self described quote
unquote clearing operation being done by a single group of
APD officers. Shortly after tearing apart and slicing up two
(30:02):
tents with a pocket knife, suddenly four gunshots are heard
near by, followed a second and a half later by
a large volume of gunfire. I estimate over thirty gun
shots fired by multiple weapons. No verbal commands were picked
up by the microphone. Two chest mounted cameras were rolling
before the shooting. Forty five seconds after the gunfire, APD
(30:26):
officers were told to turn on their body cams and
two more cameras began rolling. At that point, Officer down
started getting repeated over the radio, but initially there were
questions among officers about how much of the sounds heard
were fireworks versus gunshots. Multiple officers identified hearing suppressed gunfire,
(30:47):
meaning the use of a quote unquote silencer. Here's two
clips totaling around fifteen seconds.
Speaker 8 (30:56):
As that sounded like suppressed gun fire.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Just minutes after police opened fire and killed Tortigita, an
APD officer on the ground said this in response to
the Georgia State Patrol trooper that was shot.
Speaker 9 (31:19):
You fucked your own officer.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
You fucked your own officer up, possibly said in response
to other officers noting that the gunshots sounded suppressed. Confirmation
spread on the ground that a state trooper was shot,
but never once mentioning anything about a protester firing. Police
continued advancing toward a nearby tent with guns drawn and
(31:44):
officers yelling back and forth to check their crossfire. As
teams were organizing the evac of the injured trooper and
warning about crossfire. Police stated that they did not want
to cause another incident.
Speaker 7 (32:05):
You know, I'm just we just need a haul till
we can get them out, get the assid out first.
We don't want to cause another incident.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
At this point, there was a great deal of intentional
coordination of officer movement and a lot of effort being
put into preventing police officers from being in each other's
line of fire. This next batch of audio will be
a little bit longer, about a minute.
Speaker 10 (32:30):
Hey, watch cause fire over there.
Speaker 6 (32:33):
What's calls fire?
Speaker 3 (32:37):
We're on all the side.
Speaker 10 (32:40):
Let's say listen, listen. Let me say everyone is back here,
so we need to shift. There's everyone is back here.
So if y'all shoot from that side, there's more offices
over here, So we need to shift back like this side.
Pumping ta Hey, saw it.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
Saw the heel potter come this way. We want to
shift this way, particle.
Speaker 10 (33:02):
You're right all right?
Speaker 7 (33:07):
Okay, cool, we're going on the other side.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Got you gotta.
Speaker 11 (33:15):
Right there, I got you, I got you. Wait right there,
This is the banks of mark of our semi circle.
Everyone needs to stick back this way.
Speaker 10 (33:30):
Hey, keep coming this way. He's coming back this way.
Speaker 9 (33:36):
Anybody get in contact with the didn't want to Who
is talking about here?
Speaker 6 (33:43):
The chandler they need who.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Police started firing off flash bangs and prepping chemical weapons
as they moved further into the woods near where the
deadly police shooting just took place. Moments prior, police heyne
or you won't be bait fuck, come up and you
gotta find out from another angle, you can hear a
(34:06):
cop laugh in response to his fellow officer threatening fuck
around and find out. Just minutes after police killed a protester.
If you listen carefully, you can hear an officer muttering
about how large the police presence is, saying, we've got
so many resources. We don't need to rush this shit.
Speaker 6 (34:29):
There's some sandwich with sam mine. Second guess, so many
resources to rush this shit.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Cops shot off quote unquote less lethal pepperballs at an
unoccupied green tent and only ended up gassing themselves as
they had to walk through the peppered up trees on
their way to the tent. Literally, there was over a
minute and a half of just straight coughing. When they
arrived at the tent, officers got into a brief conversation
(34:56):
about the deadly shooting that just took place and the
injured trooper.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
Didn't shoot their own there.
Speaker 9 (35:06):
Huh, we don't know, league shaba that non first lars
any work at first, one say, with suppressed pect no
party luckly round the main high one.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Remember that just two hours after the shooting, even before
the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's first press conference, the defendive forest.
Twitter account said quote, we have reason to believe the
officer shot today was hit by friendly fire and not
by the protester who was killed unquote in an extremely
uncharacteristic move. The GBI put out a statement commenting on
(35:45):
the evidence during their ongoing investigation, cautioning against quote unquote
speculation and that quote memory and perception are fragile and
the myriad of factors can influence perception and memory unquote.
The morning after sure the bodycam footage went public, a
statement was released by Tortiguita's family, saying, quote, the videos
(36:07):
show the clearing of the forest was a paramilitary operation
that set the stage for the excessive use of force
and also call into question previous reporting regarding the events
leading up to the police shooting unquote. Tort's own mother,
who recently arrived in the United States on an emergency visa,
(36:27):
said weeks ago in an interview for The Guardian, quote,
I will go to the US to defend Manuel's memory.
I'm convinced that they were assassinated in cold blood, and
I'm going to clear Manuel's name. They killed them like
they tear down the trees in the forest, A forest
manual loved with a passion unquote. There is an official
(36:51):
GoFundMe for Tortigita, managed by and for their family, with
funds going to funeral expenses plus travel, legal cause, and
to support the family in general during this time of
emense grief. The fundraiser will be linked in the show notes.
This first episode has been a lot tackling many of
(37:12):
the most gruesome aspects of the struggle thus far. Cricket
talked about one way of responding to this influx of
anger and grief that everyone's been experiencing since the shooting.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
Yeah, I mean there's just been There's been so much
grief and so much anger, and so many people coming
together and so many people trying to support one another.
There's been, at least among the folks I know, a
lot of trying to think through like what would Torte
do WWTD and like loving one another and supporting one
another keeps being one of the first things on that list.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
We will hear more about Torti Guita in the next episode.
Memories and stories from friends, partners, and comrades based on
conversations and moments from the vigil. But I'll leave us
with the words of Tortigita quote. The abolitionist mission isn't
done until every prison is empty, when there are no
more cops, when the land has been given back, that's
(38:10):
when it's over. I don't expect to live to see
that day necessarily. I mean, I hope so, but I
smoke unquote. Music for this episode by the Narcissist's cookbook
and propaganda see you on the other side.
Speaker 5 (38:27):
Yeah, and the rain on leaves tickling the earliest the veinstruments.
The melody we mimic. It is the sound of wind
whistling long before the safe begets channing under the stars,
camped under for canopy, she sang all song, and she
was far from silent, no virus of violence with the
fragrance of her flowers that continue to invite us of medicine.
Cereals are vitamins and minerals and all that is essential,
(38:50):
which just grew right beside us entice the starting fighting
over the gifts that she provide us, scorching of the
soil that all the.
Speaker 11 (38:57):
Us derived from.
Speaker 5 (38:58):
And when impious learning came with stand by you, we
returned to the land where we're ancestors. Rain dance.
Speaker 9 (39:04):
We have all her creaches.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
We still bear her features.
Speaker 5 (39:07):
The one and only reason all living things is breathe,
and the cities deceive and leave. Go see the jart Young,
Go be among the lungs of mother Earth because.
Speaker 6 (39:27):
Yeah shut him down. It was a forest.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly,
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Thanks for listening.
Around eight am Wednesday, January eighteenth, a forest defender who
went by Tortegita sent out a text message that read
morning raid. Please help. Just minutes prior, a multi agency
coalition of heavily armed law enforcement officers led by the
Georgia State Patrol began a raid on the Wallauni Forest
(00:43):
in southeast Atlanta. Encampments have sprung up throughout the forest
since November of twenty twenty one in protest and militant
opposition to a proposed militarized police training facility with a
mock city to practice combating civil unrest in the wake
of the corporate funded Atlanta Police Foundation seeks to control
(01:05):
over three hundred acres of the Wallauni or South River
Forest to construct this sprawling, state of the art police
compound with a starting budget of ninety million dollars for
its first phase of construction. The police raid on January eighteenth,
twenty twenty three, started off pretty similar to previous raids
(01:25):
that had taken place in the prior months, but for
the Georgia State Patrol, seemingly it was their first time
leading such a raid. In the woods. Police shut down
the parking lot at entrenchment, Creek Park and nearby streets
before entering the tree line with guns drawn. Within the
first hour, swat teams arrested two people in the woods
(01:46):
and destroyed multiple tents, and then shortly after nine am,
forest defenders in the woods reported hearing a rapid sequence
of about a dozen gun shots. Quickly, news spread that
Georgia State Patrare officers shot and killed a protester in
the woods who was defending the forest, and that a
(02:06):
state trooper was being sent to Grady Hospital with a
bullet wound. After the gunshots rang in the air, police
were quick to publicize a palatable sequence of events depicting
an exchange of gunfire rather predictably. The police claimed that
the deceased force defender had surprised to the armored swat
team and fired first. This is Peter, a force defender
(02:30):
I talked with a few days after the shooting.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So luckily I was in the woods on that day.
Just in a whim, I decided to stay in town.
The day of the shooting was really jarring. Trying to
figure out who was safe and who was unaccounted for
was like the main thing on my mind for most
of the day, and by the afternoon I realized that
it was probably taut. The last message that they sent
was at eight am saying morning raid, Please help, and
(02:56):
the shooting was at nine am. It was a weird
space to be in, knowing that it was likely toward
a GIDA that had died, but not being able to
grieve yet because not really having confirmation. The only eyewitnesses
were the police, and then all the other witnesses just
like heard noises.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
In contradiction to the exchange of gunfire narrative, activists on
the ground reported hearing a single burst of gunfire and
suspected that the injured trooper was hit by friendly fire,
and cautioned against taking police narrative as fact due to
cops track record of lying about police killings and covering
for fellow officers. Here's Sam from the Atlanta Community Press
(03:37):
Collective for more information about the sequence of events that day.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
We know from speaking to people who were in the
area on that day that PD the various police agencies
that were involved in the raid began the operation around
maybe seven thirty or eight. Records show that two people
(04:02):
were arrested maybe thirty to forty minutes before tort was shot.
Tort was shot around nine am. Some of our sources
that were in the woods at the time say they
only heard like one I guess you could call it
(04:24):
a volley of gunfire followed by a large boom. You
can speculate a lot about those statements, but they were
pretty independent. They were almost all identical and independent of
each other. We know that. Sorry, it's hard to talk about.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah. It wasn't until late into the night that people
in the movement were able to confirm that the person
killed by the Georgia State Patrol was Manuel Tehran, also
known by their forest name to to Gita, which means
little turtle. Torti Guita was a young Queer Afro Venezuelan
(05:07):
twenty six year old forest defender, described by friends and
loved ones as your friendly neighborhood anarchist, as a kind, earnest, fierce, welcoming, funny,
exceedingly helpful and brave person. They were an artist, an
urban farmer, a trained street medic, and heavily involved in
(05:28):
mutual aid all across the South. This is it could
happen here. I'm Garrison Davis or just Gare And after
checking in with friends and various people I know in
the movement. I made my way down to Atlanta late
Wednesday night. I've been reporting on and writing about the
Defend the Forest and Stop cop City movement since summer
(05:51):
of twenty twenty one. Last year, in twenty twenty two,
I put out around six hours of audio related to
the Forest encampment's protests, organized weeks of action, and the
forgotten history of the prison farm that operated on the
land cop City is slated to be built on. But
these new episodes serve as a follow up to the
(06:12):
two part series from last May titled on the Ground
at Defend the Atlanta Forest, but the various updates put
out since then will certainly help fill in the gaps.
This four part series will feature interviews with forest defenders,
audio clips from on the ground in Atlanta, and accounts
on what's changed the past few months. Episode one, What
(06:35):
You're listening to right Now will largely cover the events
around the shooting itself. Episode two will get into who
Tortigita was as a person and the stories about them
from friends and comrades. Episode three and four will cover
protests in the wake of the police killing, state repression,
(06:56):
and how the movement might evolve going forward due to
increasing state repression. We will be using a mix of
voice distortion and re dubbed voice replacement for some of
the interviews and discussions I had with forest defenders on
the ground in Atlanta. Speaking of the next forest defender
you're going to hear from is Cricket talking about their
(07:18):
experiences the day of the shooting.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
God, I mean, I can only obviously only speak for myself.
For me, it was terrifying. We had obviously already lived
through the raid in December, but when we heard someone
had been shot and killed, it was it was terrifying,
and in part because of the complete lack of information.
We had so few details for so long, and it
wasn't at least for me. It wasn't until the following
day that I found out that it was taught and
(07:44):
it it was just devastating. I mean, there's not really
words for it. It was like it felt like the
world stopped and then kept going. But it shouldn't have
like it felt like it should have stayed stopped like
it it shouldn't have kept turning.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
After the dead shooting in the morning, the police continued
their multi agency raid of the Wallani Forest in a
pretty regular fashion, with cops reportedly firing pepperballs at people
up in treehouses and making arrests throughout the day, into
the night, and even the next morning.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
I think a total of seven folks were arrested in
the forest that day. It might have been six. Six
arrested on the day Tourt died, and then one person remained.
The last tree.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Setter, the last person arrested in the deadly police raid,
was up in the trees overnight and surrounded by police
for about twenty hours straight. All seven people arrested in
the forest were charged with criminal trespassing and domestic terrorism.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
There was one person who remained in a tree set
because we had some communication with them throughout the night.
They were just like perched in and their climbing rig
in a tree for about twelve hours until a little
after sunrise when dekeb County SWAT moved in and took
(09:13):
them into custody. I guess you could say as they
were trying to repel back up the tree. They had
been in the tree pretty much the whole day and
then all night. They ran out of food and water
I think sometime after nightfall, and then after dark. They
were turning their phone on and off to conserve battery,
(09:35):
so it was a little sporadic. They were able to
send us some pictures of two cops standing in the
platform of like a trucuity used to work on a
telephone pole, and they both had like the SWAT operator
helmets on, and one of them had a long gun.
And then later on in the evening, four or five
police cars just like backed up to the tree and
(09:58):
just like surrounded the tree and shown their spotlights up
in the tree. And they didn't the cops didn't that
were there over night. They didn't say anything. They were
just waiting. They were just waiting for the sun to
come up so SWAT could move.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
In the night of the shooting, before we even knew
who was killed, there was a small vegil turned to
march in the Little Five Points neighborhood of Atlanta. The
first twenty four hours after the shooting were extremely hectic,
as many people were not even sure who the police
had killed.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Obviously, the first thing on everyone's mind was who was killed,
and by late Wednesday night, some folks that help us
source our reporting came to us saying that they believed
it was this person that they believed it was Taut.
(10:53):
A lot of people's friend was just murdered by the police,
and folks wanted to get ahead of the police narrative,
and as a community press collective, of course, we wanted
to support the community in that, so we just immediately
offered like to post whatever Towart's family and I believe
(11:17):
their their partner consented to that. That was the primary thing.
Once the community had kind of definitive definitively identified that
it was Tort, was obtaining consent from from those closest
to Tort to publish their name, any pictures, details, and
(11:39):
we wanted to give people a way to help tell
everyone who was about to be paying a lot of
attention to the story whose Tot actually was and not
who the police would like people to think Torque was.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
State agencies were swift in their attempts to control the
narrative surrounding the deadly raid. Hours after the killing, the
Georgia Bureau of Investigation set up a press conference as
the raid was very much still ongoing. First, a GBI
spokesperson explained the purpose of the raid.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
The operations goal is to secure the site of the
future City of Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Next, GBI Director Mike Register gave his account of the
day's events so far.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
As you are aware.
Speaker 7 (12:48):
A few weeks ago, several individuals were arrested for domestic
terrorism in the area around the future site of the
public safety training facility. This morning, the GBI, with a
other local state law enforcement agencies such as the CABPD,
Atlanta PD, the Georgia State Patrol, and Georgia DNR, conducted
(13:09):
a plan clearing operation to remove the individuals who were
illegally occupying the area. At approximately nine o'clock this morning,
as law enforcement was moving through various sectors of the property,
an individual, without warning, shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper.
Other law enforcement person there returned fire and self defense
(13:31):
and evacuated the trooper to a safe area. The individual
who fired upon law enforcement and shot the trooper was
killed in the exchange of gunfire. The GBI is working
the officer involved shooting and the investigation is still active
and fluid. The circumstances was an individual confronted law enforcement
(13:53):
and I don't think that he was seen until he fired.
I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Right leader that day, a GABI statement claimed that officers
located tort inside a tent in the woods and that
they did not comply with verbal commands from law enforcement officers.
The day after the shooting, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
also announced that there is no body cam footage of
the incident. They also claimed that twenty five campsites were
(14:20):
located and removed Wednesday and that quote mortar style fireworks,
edged weapons, pellet rifles, gas masks, and a blowtorch were
recovered unquote, after people pointed out that the list of
recovered items was absent any firearms. The next day, the
GBI released a photo of a nine millimeter handgun allegedly
(14:43):
found at this scene of the shooting. It was the
only firearm police claim they found in their extensive sweep
of the forest.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
The GBI has been as the independent agency investigating all
of this. Has changed their story a little bit, which
it was a breaking news story. I think they first
went before the cameras at noon when it happened at
nine am, not to grant the police any kind of
flee weigh at all, because Fuckham. But it was a
(15:14):
rapidly evolving situation, as they say. That said, the story
changed kind of dramatically over the first few days. They
released an initial list of items that had recovered, but
it didn't mention a gun. And then when the community
kind of said, hey, you said, tort shot this trooper,
(15:37):
where's the gun? Then a gun was produced. Then when
people still didn't believe it, the GBI said that they
had a bill of sale for the gun. The GBI
and Georgia State Patrol have also come out and said
that they won't release the identity of the trooper for
concerns about their safety.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Results from an independent autopsy were released on February third.
It found thirteen gun shot wounds. Attached to the report
was a statement from Tortighito's family, of which I will
read quote. The GBI has claimed that Manny shot an
officer and that the bullet matches the gun possessed by Manny,
but even if that is true, there are still many
(16:20):
unanswered questions. The GBI has selectively released information about Manny's death,
says civil rights attorney Jeff Philipovitz. They claim many failed
to follow orders. What orders. The GBI has not talked
about the fact that Manny faced a firing squad when
those shots were fired. Or who fired them. While the
(16:41):
GBI has publicly stated there's no body camera footage of
the shooting, it has not stated whether there is any
audio or other video from other sources, such as aerial
drones or helicopters that were used during the time of
the incident. The family has contacted the GBI and specifically
requested that it released whatever audio and video exists of
the incident, or any other information that would shed light
(17:03):
on what happened. Any evidence, even if it's only an
audio recording, will help the family piece together what happened
on the morning of January eighteenth. This information is critical
and it is being withheld, said Brian Spears, a civil
rights attorney with nearly five decades of experience litigating police shootings.
Whatever you believe about the exact series of events that
(17:25):
led to towards death, personally, I doubt that we'll ever
know what happened for sure, but regardless, the killing of
a forced defender at the hands of police, coupled with
the domestic terrorism charges, marks a significant escalation in the
fight against copp City and even environmental activism in this
country at large, as this seems to be the first
(17:47):
killing of an environmental protester by US law enforcement. As
horrific as this escalation is, it's not out of the
blue as one might think. All the way back in
May of twenty twenty two, police were already talking on
scanners about using deadly force against Stop Coop City protesters.
Speaker 6 (18:08):
Oh yeah, right, how old you four encounter?
Speaker 1 (18:13):
So last time I was like in the woods for
a decent amount of time was like last last spring,
last summer. What how is? In what ways has like
living in the woods changed since then? Like what sort
of developments I guess has there been?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Well, one thing that's changed in the day to day
life in the woods and the past several months is
that the raids by the police have been more thorough
and so it's required a lot of more vigilance to
live in the woods and a lot more being aware
of places to run and hide and escape routes.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
The past few months, police raids have been increasingly violent
and destructive, from the demolition of the gazebo in Willane
People's Park to the flattening of community gardens and the
trashing of makes shift cafes and kitchens within the forest,
using consistently escalated violent tactics. Police have routinely attacked protesters
(19:09):
with chemical weapons and rubber bullets, have cut tree limbs
and safety lines from under them, and reportedly threatened lethal force,
often targeting just peaceful people who were sitting in trees
or walking through the public park. In an article for
The Bitter Southerner, an unnamed tree sitter spoke about a
(19:30):
police raid in September twenty twenty two, where they described
their interactions with law enforcement as such, quote, they threatened
to shoot me. They didn't draw their guns, but they
talked about it. Several showed their sight arms while locking
eyes with me. They very easily could have killed my
friend in the other tree sit. It was fucking nuts unquote.
(19:53):
And here's a bit from Peter again.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Ever since the beginning, it's it's been on my mind that,
you know, there's a possibility of people dying in the woods,
ever since I started living in the woods, beginning of
the encampments. It was just something that kept coming up
into my mind as a possibility. I think before this happened, though,
people were generally under the impression that the police wouldn't
murder forest defenders because it would look bad for them.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Just a month prior to the deadly January raid. Another
police raid took place a couple weeks before Christmas, which
resulted in the first domestic terrorism charges being levied against
people arrested near the forest. In the aftermath of this raid,
a spokesperson for the Atlanta Solidarity Fund talked about the
developing pattern of police escalation against the protest movement and
(20:41):
warned that steadily increasing police repression would lead to protesters
being killed.
Speaker 8 (20:48):
And it's clear that if the public doesn't respond, if
the public doesn't do something about this, that escalation is
going to continue. Are we going to end up in
a situation where the police are murdering protesters in order
to advance not public safety but their particular political agenda
in building Copcity.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
The use of infleeted charges like domestic terrorism not only
make life for the people charged a living hell, it
also lays the narrative groundwork to justify extreme physical escalations
of force and increasingly brutal crackdowns. Take it from the
GBI director himself.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
As director of MIELS said, I'm Director Mike Register of
the GBI, and over the last several months, law enforcement
and portions of our community have experienced growing criminal behavior
and terroristic acts committed by individuals and groups concerning the
building of Atlanta's new public safety training center. These individuals
(21:47):
and groups have attempted to disguise their activities as being
protests against the building of this facility.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I'm going to read a short quote from an article
for the Inhabit Territories newsletter that sums this up nicely. Quote.
The violent escalation which led to this murder comes during
increased and coordinated repression against the movement to Defend the
Atlanta Forest, where the movement has built a diverse and
welcoming community through years of organizing. The police have used
(22:17):
every tactic to bad mouth, harass, threaten, surveil, criminalize, and
attack participants. Unquote. One of the forced offenders I spoke with,
who goes by Noah, talked about coming to terms with
something that everyone kind of knew was the possibility, but
still had this element of shock and disbelief.
Speaker 9 (22:38):
I think it was really personally shocking. I think anytime
you introduced police into a situation, you have the possibility
of somebody dying batch what cap to do the murder
with impunity. So I think like anybody who was there
in the forest. Anybody who spent time in around activism
against the police knows that this is like a thing
(23:00):
that can happen to people fighting against various types of
state power. But it was It was really really shocked.
Speaker 6 (23:09):
And I think everyone was just kind of an a loss.
Speaker 9 (23:11):
I personally, I mean, it's just kind of like, I
don't know, I sat with it for a really long time.
It was just kind of like there was an error
of disbelief to it.
Speaker 6 (23:21):
Just kind of knowing that like.
Speaker 9 (23:25):
These were the people we were, that we were and
we were fighting against them, like this is the type
of thing that they're capable of begs being very shocked
and really scared that like this is where we were,
that like the police were now killing activists and you know,
in all likelihood going to get away with it. It
was a really terrifying implication for the future of the movement,
(23:46):
for the future of all all social strugles.
Speaker 6 (23:48):
In the US.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Following news of the shooting, the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which
provides bail and legal assistance to political prisoners, protesters and activists,
put out a statement saying, quote Georgia State Patrol's story
is suspect they've released few details. We are concerned a
police cover up could be underway. We are preparing a
(24:30):
legal team to investigate and pursue a wrongful death suit. Unquote.
Here's Cricket again talking about the trustworthiness of the official
information being released about the shooting.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
And I mean, we still have so little information, and
though the information that we do have is so tainted,
it's so untrustworthy that it doesn't actually feel like information
at all. It doesn't feel like we can it doesn't
feel like information we can trust. That's sort of the
long and short of it.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Last month, over thirteen hundred climate justice and racial justice
groups from across the United States joined Atlanta residents and
community organizations in calling for an independent investigation into the
killing of Tortaquita.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
In any police shooting, you'd like to see an independent
investigation because how can you let the person who shot
the gun investigate the crime? Right, So it was a
pretty easy thing to call for, but especially given the
inconsistencies in everyone's story. You know, the GBI has said
has changed a couple times, like the sequence of events,
(25:36):
and that first like tort surprised them, then they surprised Tort.
Then Tort was in a tent. You know, the narrative
has changed a couple times. GSP Georgia State Patrol also
does not wear body cams, and that's not that's just
a day to day thing for them. That's hate to
(25:56):
say it, but that's not something they did specifically for
this raide. Just to screw the movement over, that's it.
It's actually the pretty well known issue in the state.
There were chosy to wear body camps considering how many
people they kill every year.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Has come up that APD says that they have body
camps after the incident.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yes, we know. The raid was kind of a joint
operation between Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia State Patrol, Atlanta
Police Department, a Cab County Police Department, and some other
state agencies. Georgia State Patrol seems to have been the
ones in the immediate area when it seems to have
been a trooper that the shot tort. Atlanta Police first
(26:40):
came out and said that there was no body cam footage,
that they weren't there, and it seems to be true
that they weren't in the immediate area when the shot
was fired, but they kind of later had to correct
themselves and say, well, we have bodycam or the incident,
but we're not going to release it like.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Of the incident itself, like during the time of yes.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Of what their officers were doing in the part of
the raid they were enacting when.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
We was shot. I have seen claims from both local
media and law enforcement that the GBI investigation does qualify
as independent, framing the GBI's investigation into the actions of
the Georgia State Patrol as this separate, non biased operation,
despite the GBI being fellow participants in the deadly raid.
(27:33):
As an interesting little side note, the Georgia State Patrol
and the Bureau of Investigation began in late nineteen thirties
as two branches of the same agency, the Georgia Department
of Public Safety.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
So the standard in the state. I'm sure a lot
of places when a person is shot by the police,
you get a supposedly independent agency to review it. In Georgia,
it's usually the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, But the GBI
was a participant in the raid. The GBI has been
involved in. The GBI has been present for several forest raids.
(28:13):
Open records requests show that They've been involved in emails
and conversations about the forest for quite some time.
Speaker 9 (28:19):
Now.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
We know their agents were unsecene or probably in the
woods when Tourt was shot. In addition to that, they're
most state agencies. In addition to that, there's still police.
Police are going to cover for each other. We know
this by now.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
A day after the shooting, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
stated that there was no bodycam footage of the incident,
but open records requests were filed asking for bodycam footage
from the forest around the time of the incident, not
only from the State Patrol, but also from the Atlanta
and Decab County police departments. Two days after the police killing,
(29:00):
when Atlanta PD spokesperson said that APD officers were not
in the area of the shooting and that no footage
from Wednesday's operation would be released, citing the ongoing investigation.
And then a whole three weeks after the shooting, on
February eighth, the Atlanta Police Department released bodycam footage from
(29:21):
four officers who were in the woods at the time
of the shooting. An officer in the group estimated that
they were just one hundred feet away I'm not going
to play audio of the gunshots or any use of
police weapons, but I'll be including a few brief snippets
of police chatter that I and others found relevant. Most
(29:42):
of the clips will only be a few seconds long,
so you can skip ahead if you want. I'll give
you a heads up at time of recording. There are
four videos released, and they show a self described quote
unquote clearing operation being done by a single group of
APD officers. Shortly after tearing apart and slicing up two
(30:02):
tents with a pocket knife, suddenly four gunshots are heard
near by, followed a second and a half later by
a large volume of gunfire. I estimate over thirty gun
shots fired by multiple weapons. No verbal commands were picked
up by the microphone. Two chest mounted cameras were rolling
before the shooting. Forty five seconds after the gunfire, APD
(30:26):
officers were told to turn on their body cams and
two more cameras began rolling. At that point, Officer down
started getting repeated over the radio, but initially there were
questions among officers about how much of the sounds heard
were fireworks versus gunshots. Multiple officers identified hearing suppressed gunfire,
(30:47):
meaning the use of a quote unquote silencer. Here's two
clips totaling around fifteen seconds.
Speaker 8 (30:56):
As that sounded like suppressed gun fire.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Just minutes after police opened fire and killed Tortigita, an
APD officer on the ground said this in response to
the Georgia State Patrol trooper that was shot.
Speaker 9 (31:19):
You fucked your own officer.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
You fucked your own officer up, possibly said in response
to other officers noting that the gunshots sounded suppressed. Confirmation
spread on the ground that a state trooper was shot,
but never once mentioning anything about a protester firing. Police
continued advancing toward a nearby tent with guns drawn and
(31:44):
officers yelling back and forth to check their crossfire. As
teams were organizing the evac of the injured trooper and
warning about crossfire. Police stated that they did not want
to cause another incident.
Speaker 7 (32:05):
You know, I'm just we just need a haul till
we can get them out, get the assid out first.
We don't want to cause another incident.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
At this point, there was a great deal of intentional
coordination of officer movement and a lot of effort being
put into preventing police officers from being in each other's
line of fire. This next batch of audio will be
a little bit longer, about a minute.
Speaker 10 (32:30):
Hey, watch cause fire over there.
Speaker 6 (32:33):
What's calls fire?
Speaker 3 (32:37):
We're on all the side.
Speaker 10 (32:40):
Let's say listen, listen. Let me say everyone is back here,
so we need to shift. There's everyone is back here.
So if y'all shoot from that side, there's more offices
over here, So we need to shift back like this side.
Pumping ta Hey, saw it.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
Saw the heel potter come this way. We want to
shift this way, particle.
Speaker 10 (33:02):
You're right all right?
Speaker 7 (33:07):
Okay, cool, we're going on the other side.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Got you gotta.
Speaker 11 (33:15):
Right there, I got you, I got you. Wait right there,
This is the banks of mark of our semi circle.
Everyone needs to stick back this way.
Speaker 10 (33:30):
Hey, keep coming this way. He's coming back this way.
Speaker 9 (33:36):
Anybody get in contact with the didn't want to Who
is talking about here?
Speaker 6 (33:43):
The chandler they need who.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Police started firing off flash bangs and prepping chemical weapons
as they moved further into the woods near where the
deadly police shooting just took place. Moments prior, police heyne
or you won't be bait fuck, come up and you
gotta find out from another angle, you can hear a
(34:06):
cop laugh in response to his fellow officer threatening fuck
around and find out. Just minutes after police killed a protester.
If you listen carefully, you can hear an officer muttering
about how large the police presence is, saying, we've got
so many resources. We don't need to rush this shit.
Speaker 6 (34:29):
There's some sandwich with sam mine. Second guess, so many
resources to rush this shit.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Cops shot off quote unquote less lethal pepperballs at an
unoccupied green tent and only ended up gassing themselves as
they had to walk through the peppered up trees on
their way to the tent. Literally, there was over a
minute and a half of just straight coughing. When they
arrived at the tent, officers got into a brief conversation
(34:56):
about the deadly shooting that just took place and the
injured trooper.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
Didn't shoot their own there.
Speaker 9 (35:06):
Huh, we don't know, league shaba that non first lars
any work at first, one say, with suppressed pect no
party luckly round the main high one.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Remember that just two hours after the shooting, even before
the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's first press conference, the defendive forest.
Twitter account said quote, we have reason to believe the
officer shot today was hit by friendly fire and not
by the protester who was killed unquote in an extremely
uncharacteristic move. The GBI put out a statement commenting on
(35:45):
the evidence during their ongoing investigation, cautioning against quote unquote
speculation and that quote memory and perception are fragile and
the myriad of factors can influence perception and memory unquote.
The morning after sure the bodycam footage went public, a
statement was released by Tortiguita's family, saying, quote, the videos
(36:07):
show the clearing of the forest was a paramilitary operation
that set the stage for the excessive use of force
and also call into question previous reporting regarding the events
leading up to the police shooting unquote. Tort's own mother,
who recently arrived in the United States on an emergency visa,
(36:27):
said weeks ago in an interview for The Guardian, quote,
I will go to the US to defend Manuel's memory.
I'm convinced that they were assassinated in cold blood, and
I'm going to clear Manuel's name. They killed them like
they tear down the trees in the forest, A forest
manual loved with a passion unquote. There is an official
(36:51):
GoFundMe for Tortigita, managed by and for their family, with
funds going to funeral expenses plus travel, legal cause, and
to support the family in general during this time of
emense grief. The fundraiser will be linked in the show notes.
This first episode has been a lot tackling many of
(37:12):
the most gruesome aspects of the struggle thus far. Cricket
talked about one way of responding to this influx of
anger and grief that everyone's been experiencing since the shooting.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
Yeah, I mean there's just been There's been so much
grief and so much anger, and so many people coming
together and so many people trying to support one another.
There's been, at least among the folks I know, a
lot of trying to think through like what would Torte
do WWTD and like loving one another and supporting one
another keeps being one of the first things on that list.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
We will hear more about Torti Guita in the next episode.
Memories and stories from friends, partners, and comrades based on
conversations and moments from the vigil. But I'll leave us
with the words of Tortigita quote. The abolitionist mission isn't
done until every prison is empty, when there are no
more cops, when the land has been given back, that's
(38:10):
when it's over. I don't expect to live to see
that day necessarily. I mean, I hope so, but I
smoke unquote. Music for this episode by the Narcissist's cookbook
and propaganda see you on the other side.
Speaker 5 (38:27):
Yeah, and the rain on leaves tickling the earliest the veinstruments.
The melody we mimic. It is the sound of wind
whistling long before the safe begets channing under the stars,
camped under for canopy, she sang all song, and she
was far from silent, no virus of violence with the
fragrance of her flowers that continue to invite us of medicine.
Cereals are vitamins and minerals and all that is essential,
(38:50):
which just grew right beside us entice the starting fighting
over the gifts that she provide us, scorching of the
soil that all the.
Speaker 11 (38:57):
Us derived from.
Speaker 5 (38:58):
And when impious learning came with stand by you, we
returned to the land where we're ancestors. Rain dance.
Speaker 9 (39:04):
We have all her creaches.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
We still bear her features.
Speaker 5 (39:07):
The one and only reason all living things is breathe,
and the cities deceive and leave. Go see the jart Young,
Go be among the lungs of mother Earth because.
Speaker 6 (39:27):
Yeah shut him down. It was a forest.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly,
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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