The parents of an activist fatally shot by the Georgia State Patrol SWAT team in 2023 have filed a lawsuit against three law enforcement officers that they say violated their child’s First and Fourth Amendment rights.
Manuel Esteban Paez Terán — better known as Tortuguita — was a 26-year-old nonbinary environmental activist who was protesting the razing of South River Forest to construct the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, also called “Cop City.” The facility has been polarizing on two fronts due to concern about its environmental impact and fear that it could encourage anti-Black police brutality.
“The lawsuit is about what happened before [the shooting], how this event transpired, such that it was a terrible situation for everyone involved,” said Jeff Filipovits, one of the attorneys representing the parents, Joel Paez and Belkis Terán.
In the complaint filed on Dec. 17 in federal court, they name GBI officer Ryan Long, who they claim helped plan the operation, and two Georgia State Patrol officers, Mark Lamb and Bryland Myers, as the arresting officers.
According to the family, the lawsuit’s objective is to reveal what happened in the leadup to the Jan.18, 2023, raid that took Paez Terán’s life. On that day, a number of activists dubbed “forest defenders” were camping in Intrenchment Creek Park when a coalition of state and local law enforcement conducted a sweep to clear people out of the area.
“Forest defenders are not terrorists,” said Joel Paez at a Tuesday press conference announcing the lawsuit at Historic DeKalb Courthouse in Decatur. “They are — and my child was — individuals concerned against environmental injustice. They are peaceful using their civil liberties and rights.”
Paez Terán’s parents say they have been denied answers about the circumstances surrounding their child’s death ever since the day they became the first environmental activist killed in the United States while protesting nearly two years ago, according to the lawsuit.
“I beg the authorities to help me to understand this situation, to have answers for this horrible crime that is bigger than just a problem here in Atlanta,” said Belkis Terán, arguing that her child was killed for their political beliefs.
The family says Paez Terán’s activism in Intrenchment Creek Park was protected under the First Amendment and because Long helped plan the raid based on the protesters’ political beliefs, he violated their right to protest.
Similarly, by trying to arrest Paez Terán even though they were on public property and not giving them adequate time to depart the public park before placing them under arrest, the officers violated the activist’s Fourth Amendment rights, the lawsuit claims. They also allege that the officers used excessive force by shooting pepper balls into Paez Terán’s tent.
This is where the accounts of what happened that morning diverge. According to the GBI, Paez Terán responded to the pepper balls by shooting their gun through the tent four times, with one shot hitting and non-fatally injuring a Georgia State trooper. The other troopers then returned gunfire and killed Paez Terán.
Their family and friends however have questioned this timeline of events based on what information they have been able to gather about what happened. First, they were able to get the body camera footage from Atlanta police officers who were part of the operation but in a different part of the forest at the time of the shooting. On the tape, officers are heard speculating that the trooper was actually hit by friendly fire.
The DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s report revealed that Paez Terán had no gunshot residue on their hands. The autopsy showed 57 gunshot wounds and that they were seated in a cross-legged position with their hands raised and palms facing backward when the shooting began.
“The Georgia Bureau of Investigation decided that not only did they oversee this operation, but decided that they would be the ones who would control the investigation,” said Brian Spears, another attorney representing the family. “They have refused to release to the parents of Manuel the results of that investigation.”
The lawsuit only names three officers but leaves out others who also discharged their weapons at the scene because of how poorly conceived the operation was from the outset, the attorneys said.
“How this was planned [and] carried out, [the officers] were put in a terrible position, just as Manuel was,” said Filipovits.
Cop City rages on
A few miles away, scheduled at the same time as the aforementioned press conference, the City of Atlanta hosted Capital B and other media outlets for a tour of the new training center that Paez Terán died trying to prevent.
“Finishing touches are taking place, and you will see us start occupying this space with training officers and firefighters and EMTs in the first quarter of next year,” Mayor Andre Dickens said at the start of the tour.
The 90-acre facility has stables for horses, an emergency vehicle operations course, a burn tower, a shooting range, and the mock city from which the facility’s nickname was born. SWAT personnel dressed in army green uniforms occupied the grounds.
The facility sits in a predominantly Black community in southern DeKalb County, which had no say in the decision to tear down several acres of forest for its construction. While some believe Cop City will allow better training for law enforcement, opponents feel it will negatively impact policing in Atlanta.
Militarization of the Atlanta Police Department has long been a concern for racial justice activists. APD, like most other law enforcement departments in large cities, already has tanks and snipers in its arsenal. The training center offers law enforcement the opportunity to practice using their weapons in buildings that are meant to replicate apartments, a two-story house, a convenience store, and a nightclub.
Classroom training will take place at the training center in the academic building, and a 0.9-mile walking trail around the grounds will be open to the public.
“Today, I know that some of you have a tour of the new training center,” Filipovits said at the DeKalb courthouse. “I hope that you’ll ask how they intend to change policing, if this is just designed to lock more people up in the Fulton County Jail, in the Georgia prisons, or if there’s some meaningful change that’s coming… We have not seen any change. We have just seen more draconian enforcement.”
