New podcast, citing leaked docs, reveals details on training center protester's killing

In January 2023, a protester was killed while opposing the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center known to opponents as "Cop City." Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, also known as Tortuguita, was shot by Georgia state troopers after first firing from inside a tent. What followed were protests and a renewed effort to stop the construction of the training facility. A new podcast examines Tortuguita's killing through a wider lens: the power imbalance between those who want to legally protest and the law enforcement and government agencies determined to build the training center. It's called We Came to the Forest and can be accessed through Wondery. Host and journalist Matt Shaer spoke with GPB's Peter Biello.

Peter Biello: So this podcast covers a lot of familiar ground for those who've been following the story. But what's new, you're alleging here, is the evidence that could influence the ongoing lawsuit that Tortuguita's parents filed. They're claiming excessive force, among other things. What new evidence did you find about what law enforcement did that day that was excessive?

Matt Shaer: So listeners who have followed this story at all will probably know the basics. And you got at some of this in your introduction. In January, January two years ago, police launched this massive raid on a forest southeast of Atlanta proper where there were the remnants of a much larger camp that had been raided previously by police. In the previous raids, a bunch of people had been arrested, a bunch of activists, and they'd been charged with domestic terrorism. Later, those charges were put under a superseding RICO indictment. This raid was much bigger in a sense, and the police came in and their narrative for a long time was that they came to a tent in which Tort was lying down and they interacted with Tort and asked them to leave and exit the tent and that Tort fired back through the tent and that the troopers responded with fire of their own. On the most basic level, the files that we've reviewed, that were leaked to us, show that this part at least is broadly accurate. However, it's a far more complicated story than the GBI report initially suggested.

Peter Biello: So you found ultimately that while Tortuguita did fire the first shot — that's not really in dispute anymore, at least on the official record — and in your podcast, that's not in dispute. What might be in dispute, however, is whether or not the officers should have fired the pepper bullets first into Tortuguita's tent, which may have scared them and prompted them to think they were being fired upon, in which case they may have thought they were acting in self-defense. That's one theory in your podcast — which may change the outcome, in your view, of the lawsuit that Tortuguita's parents have filed. Am I summarizing that correctly?

Matt Shaer: You're summarizing it exactly correctly. If we looked at the shooting itself, the exchange of lethal gunfire in a little encapsulated vacuum, and we said "what actually happened?" The evidence strongly suggests that the GBI's account of the order of shooting, the order of exchange of fire, is correct. However, when we set out to find this information, one question that we bumped up against is: Okay, if this is what the GBI alleges happened in this forest, why are they so reticent to give us these files? And I think now, having reviewed them really carefully, I understand why. Part of it is what you're saying here with the pepper balls. So on the one hand, you've got that. You've got just the fact that these are fired at very close range into a tent. But there are a few other factors here which are really important. One is the length of time that elapses between when troopers first make contact with Tort and when they disperse the pepper balls.

Peter Biello: That was three minutes.

Matt Shaer: Three minutes. Now we know that there's some sort of interaction between Tort and the troopers. In the depositions which we obtained, the troopers come back and they recall Tort said, "I'm not coming out of the tent. I refuse to come out of the tent." They very quickly escalated to pepper ball usage, which was, again, not included as an option in the — in the planning document. Which doesn't mean you can't use it. I mean, there are all sorts of tactics available to you. However, this is a marked escalation in the sort of terms of negotiation. It's going from talking within just, you know, a matter of seconds, really, to firing these pepper balls into the tent. Now we interview the use of force expert in the show. And I've since spoken to other people in law enforcement. There were other ways this could have gone. It's as simple as that.

Peter Biello: By the time of their killing, Tort had loved ones who had been charged with domestic terrorism just for allegedly being on that part of the public land. Vienna Forrest, who still faces terrorism charges, is a focus of this podcast. Normally when people have ongoing trials, they're reluctant to speak to the press. But Vienna spoke to you quite a bit. How did you connect with Vienna?

Matt Shaer: I met Vienna through attending the various criminal proceedings. I met her outside of the court and introduced myself. She had at that point spoken to some press and in a limited fashion. And, you know, I wondered the same thing when we first started talking. And Vienna is a thoughtful, careful person. She was always careful to speak within the scope of what she felt comfortable with. And one thing that she was always super careful about is not talking about other people's experiences. She wanted to talk about her own. And, you know, she has a pretty clear reason to do that. In her mind — and I'll tell you right now, I don't agree with her fully about everything, but I agree with her to a fair extent on this particular topic — that she was subject to state forces that were going to shut down every means and mode of dissent and protest available to the protesters in whatever way they could, whether through militarized raids, whether through these unprecedented RICO indictments and domestic terrorism charges, whether through more prosaic stuff like delaying the referendum vote for Cop City itself and finding out ways to sort of press it down. I've never seen a situation like this before where a city and a state seems to have said, "We are going to get this done. This is going to get done. This training facility is going to get built. And whatever dissent we encounter is going to be steamrolled." And the tragic part is that that was largely successful, wasn't it? You know, this training facility is completed and classes are going to start there soon. There, the movement to "Stop Cop City," as it's called, is still there, but what Vienna worries about, and why she wanted to talk to us, is she worries about the precedent that this sets all over the country for activists of any kind.

Peter Biello: What would you say the precedent is?

Matt Shaer: To me, the precedent is this, that that the state is going to determine how and where and when you are allowed to express your voice and express your resistance and your dissent to something.