Lawyers for the family of slain environmental and social justice activist Manuel Paez Terán, known as Tortuguita, have filed a federal lawsuit against three officers involved in the shooting and killing of the “Stop Cop City” protester in a wooded public park near southeast of Atlanta, almost two years ago.
The complaint alleges that Paez Terán’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated during an early morning raid on the woods on January 18, 2023, when officers from two agencies threatened to arrest them as they camped in protest of a controversial police training center planned nearby and is known as “Cop City”.
It also alleges a violation of the activist’s First Amendment rights in retaliation for his opposition to the training center.
The lawsuit, announced Tuesday by Atlanta law firm Spears & Filipovitz, is the most prominent of many legal filings surrounding the anti-Cop City protest movement that focuses on a key fact: the dozens of officers at Intrenchment Creek Park that day were ordered to ” criminal offenders’.
However, the park in question was public land, with no public schedule, curfew or camping ban, and is about a mile from the future police training center that activists were protesting. Not only that, but DeKalb County owns the park, while Atlanta owns the Cop City property.
These facts form the basis for the complaint’s Fourth Amendment “false arrest” claim.
The three officers named in the lawsuit, from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and State Patrol, had participated in a pattern of escalating attacks in the woods and in Atlanta, targeting a broad movement against the training center.
The movement against Cop City, now in its fourth year, has made national and global headlines, especially after the police shooting of Paez Terán – the first incident of its kind in US history.
Opposition to the project comes from a wide range of local and national advocates of causes such as unchecked militarization of police and 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 cited in the lawsuit 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. “Every person stuck in a tent filled with [pepper balls] would reasonably believe that they would die,” the complaint states. “At that time… [the officer] had shot pepper balls into Manuel’s tent, Manuel had committed no crime.
Finally, the complaint alleges “retaliation in violation of the First Amendment.” It says the activist “participated in the activities at Intrenchment Creek Park, including camping […] constituted a core political speech,” and that “the operation to clear Intrenchment Creek Park was the result of a months-long effort by state and local law enforcement agencies to portray those who opposed the construction of the police training center as domestic terrorists.”
The purpose of the raid and “[defendant and GBI officer Ryan Long’s] The order to arrest everyone at Intrenchment Creek Park” was to “end the ongoing protest against the training center,” the complaint said.
One of the state’s claims when, after nine months of investigation, it decided that the officers’ actions were justified was that Paez Terán had a gun and injured one of them. But none of the officers had body cameras, and the state declined to release the investigative file that supported its conclusions, citing a separate mass prosecution of 61 activists.
Nevertheless, members of a handful of other agencies were in the area during the incident. The Atlanta Police Department released some bodycam videos taken of those officers; they appeared to show officers talking about hearing friendly fire.
Within weeks, the GBI asked police not to release any more of them, citing the ongoing investigation into the shooting.
Asked about the alleged shooting, attorney Brian Filipovits said, “We don’t know,” referring to the lack of information about the incident. “That is our goal with this lawsuit: to get information for the family and, if someone is liable, to hold them accountable.”
