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