Lawyers for the family of the environmental and social justice activist Manuel Paez Terán, known as Tortuguita, have filed a federal lawsuit against three officers involved in the killing of the “Stop Cop City” protester in a forested public park south-east of Atlanta nearly two years ago.
The complaint alleges Paez Terán’s fourth amendment rights were violated during the early morning raid on the forest on 18 January 2023, when officers from two agencies threatened to arrest them as they camped in protest against a controversial police training center known as “Cop City”.
It also alleges a violation of the activist’s first amendment rights, in retaliation for opposing the training center.
The suit, announced by Atlanta law firm Spears & Filipovitz, is the most prominent among many legal filings surrounding the protest movement against Cop City to zero in on a key fact: that dozens of officers in Intrenchment Creek Park that day were under orders to clear out “criminal trespassers”.
However, the park in question was public land, with no publicly-posted schedule, curfew or prohibition on camping, and is about a mile from the future police-training center that activists were protesting against. DeKalb county owns the park, while Atlanta owns the Cop City site.
These facts form the basis for the complaint’s “false arrest” fourth amendment claim.
The three officers named in the suit, from the Georgia bureau of investigation and state patrol, had taken part in a pattern of escalating raids in the forest and in Atlanta, targeting a broad-based movement against the training center.
Now in its fourth year, the movement against Cop City has drawn national and global headlines, particularly after police shot and killed Paez Terán – the first such incident of its kind in US history.
Opposition to the project has come from a wide range of local and national supporters of causes like unchecked police militarization and the clearing of forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police say the center is needed for “world-class” training.
The second fourth amendment claim named in the suit alleges excessive use of force by two of the three officers, when they shot pepper balls into the tent where Paez Terán had been sleeping.
“Any person trapped inside a tent that is filled with [pepper balls] would reasonably believe that they were going to die,” the complaint says. “At the time … [the officer] shot pepper balls into Manuel’s tent, Manuel had not engaged in any crime.”
Finally, the complaint alleges “retaliation in violation of the first amendment”. It says that the activist’s “participation in the activities in Intrenchment Creek Park, including camping […] constituted core political speech”, and that “the operation to clear Intrenchment Creek Park followed from a months-long effort by state and local law enforcement agencies to portray those opposed to the construction of the police training center as domestic terrorists”.
The raid’s purpose and “[defendant and GBI officer Ryan Long’s] order to arrest everyone in Intrenchment Creek Park” was to “end the ongoing protest against the training center”, the complaint says.
One of the state’s claims in deciding, after nine months of investigation, that the officers’ actions had been justified, was that Paez Terán had a gun, and wounded one of them. But none of the officers were wearing body-cameras, and the state refused to release the investigative file underpinning its conclusions, citing a separate sprawling prosecution of 61 activists.
Nonetheless, members of a handful of other agencies were nearby during the incident. Atlanta police released some body-cam videos taken from those officers; they appeared to show officers talking about hearing friendly fire.
Within weeks, the GBI asked the police not to release more of them, citing the investigation into the shooting.
Asked about the alleged exchange of gunfire, attorney Brian Filipovits answered: “We don’t know”, referring to the lack of information about the incident.
“That’s our goal with this lawsuit: to get information for the family and, if someone is liable, hold them responsible.”
