Latest news with #ManuelPaezTerán
The Guardian
18-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Chilling' effect on protesters as Cop City prosecution drags into second year
Nearly two years into the largest Rico, or conspiracy, prosecution against a protest movement in US history, the case is mired in delays and defence claims that proceedings are politically motivated and ruining the lives of the 61 activists and protesters who face trial. Rico cases are usually brought against organized crime, and are associated with the mafia, but in Georgia a sprawling prosecution has been brought against dozens of people opposed to a police training center near Atlanta known as Cop City. The controversial training center – which officially opened its doors last months in an invitation-only ceremony – attracted global headlines after police shot dead Manuel Paez Terán, or 'Tortuguita', an environmental activist protesting against the project, in January 2023. Opposition to the training center, built on a 171-acre footprint in a forest south-east of Atlanta, has included local and national organizations and protesters, centered on concerns such as unchecked police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police officials say the center is needed for 'world-class' training, and to attract new officers. Last week, defense attorneys in the halls of Fulton county superior court were still unclear on or unhappy with the results of the most recent hearing in the case. 'So when is it that the trial would begin?' one veteran defense attorney asked another – after the day's proceedings were supposed to have answered at least that question. Another highlighted how the state had introduced more alleged evidence against the 61 defendants tied to a movement to stop Cop City the same morning – despite the court already having given prosecutors two deadlines for discovery material, the last one a year ago. The state's indictment alleges that actions ranging from throwing molotov cocktails to paying for camping supplies for protestors who occupied woods near the proposed site of the training center were 'in furtherance of the conspiracy'. There were already more than five terabytes of evidence that one defense attorney described as 'unorganized, not date-stamped, with some files corrupted' during the hearing. Chaos has accompanied the case since Georgia attorney general Chris Carr's August 2023 indictment of 61 people used Rico to prosecute the case, several defense attorneys said. As the case drags on, 'it's not just your case and your freedom, but what you do in your everyday life that is on hold,' said attorney Xavier T de Janon. De Janon mentioned his client, Jamie Marsicano, as an example: they have graduated law school and passed the North Carolina bar – but won't be admitted until the charges are resolved. Also, the case's high profile means 'a precedence could be set, a potential chilling effect: when people are protesting against the government, they see other people prosecuted for Rico,' said defense attorney Brad Thomson, with the People's Law Office. This is particularly important right now, Thomson added: 'We're seeing with the Trump administration that people are even being deported for protesting.' Judge Kevin Farmer, newly assigned to the case after the previous judge left for another court, reminded a full courtroom at least four times that Georgia's attempt to charge the protesters with criminal conspiracy was already nearly two years old. Defense attorneys reminded the court that numerous irregularities had already occurred. 'Y'all brought this case, at the time you brought it – that was your choice,' Farmer told Georgia's deputy attorney general, John Fowler, at one point, referring to several missed deadlines set by the court. At Wednesday's proceedings, Atlanta's police presence included officers standing across the street taking photos of protesters urging the state to drop the charges, posting up on the corner and parking along the street in front of the courthouse. An overflow courtroom had to be arranged for supporters and media trying to follow along. Farmer, in his first hearing as the new judge on the case, acknowledged its scale. 'I have a 61-person elephant. Normally you try to eat the elephant one bite at a time. I'm gonna try to eat the elephant four or five bites at a time,' he said. The plan: hold trials of small groups of defendants, each one lasting around a month, and then fewer over time, according to Fowler. Farmer said trials could begin as early as June – but then the day's proceedings included the state's intention to release more evidence, recovered from undercover agents, according to Fowler. De Janon said evidence already included 37 days of bodycam and surveillance video and 29 days of audio files. Farmer also said he wanted defense attorneys to file individual motions on behalf of their clients by 30 May, rather than sign on to each other's, as many have done until now. This means the number of motions – on issues such as alleged first amendment violations or misuse of Georgia's Rico statute – could balloon from more than 250 to three or four times that amount, De Janon said. Another wrinkle in the proceeding: the case's former judge, Kimberly M Esmond Adams, issued an order at 10.50pm the night before, denying motions to dismiss filed from one group of defendants – including members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund (ASF), or ASF, a bail fund whose members are mentioned more than 100 times in the original indictment's 109 pages. Their attorney, Don Samuel, told the court he did not understand why Adams would respond to motions received in September on the night before the hearing, and that the order did not address issues raised in his motions. The ASF defendants may be in the first group to face trial as early as next month, according to the court. An attorney with more than a decade's experience in Atlanta who observed the proceeding said he had 'never seen a judge who was no longer on a case blindside an attorney or group of attorneys with an order sent at the last minute the night before a hearing'. Outside the courthouse afterward, ASF member and defendant Marlon Kautz pointed to the case's continuing impact: 'As long as 61 people are facing decades in prison … simply for being associated with a political movement, protest everywhere is chilled and intimidated.'
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Cop City' legal case could cast spotlight on US police foundations' activities
A legal case in Atlanta stemming from the controversial 'Cop City' project is being closely watched because it has the potential to cast a spotlight on the activities of police foundations nationwide. The case raises the issue of state open records laws, and whether they apply to police foundations. The private foundations exist in every major US city, with more than 250 nationwide, according to a 2021 report by research and activist groups Little Sis and Color of Change. The foundations have been used to pay for surveillance technologies in cities like Baltimore and Los Angeles without the contracts being subject to public scrutiny, according to the report. In the Atlanta case, a judge is considering 12 hours of testimony, related case law and evidence in a lawsuit that concerns whether records such as board meeting minutes from the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) are subject to the state's open records law. If they are, they must be released to plaintiffs – a local digital non-profit news outlet and a Chicago-based research organization. Although it is a private entity, the police foundation is the driving force behind the controversial police training center colloquially known as 'Cop City' and which has attracted global headlines after police shot dead Manuel Paez Terán, or 'Tortuguita', an environmental activist protesting the project. At the same time, the prosecution of anti-'Cop City' activists – especially using Rico laws usually reserved for organized crime – has prompted accusations that the state is using police and the courts to crush dissent and free speech. The open records complaint, filed last year on behalf of non-profit news outlet Atlanta Community Press Collective (ACPC) and digital transparency research organization Lucy Parsons Labs, details how numerous records queries to the foundation under Georgia's Open Records Act were ignored. After a two-day bench trial last week, Fulton county superior court judge Jane Barwick must now decide whether to order the foundation to release those records, including a 'line-item construction budget' and contracts. It was probably the first such lawsuit nationwide, University of Chicago sociology professor Robert Vargas told the Guardian last year – and is being followed closely by researchers and activists alike. One of the hallmarks of police foundations is how difficult it is to get information out of them,' said Gin Armstrong, executive director at LittleSis and the Public Accountability Initiative. 'From a research point of view, this case could open up possibilities … in understanding where money is coming from for policing.' 'A ruling here that the Atlanta police foundation is subject to meaningful public oversight [by releasing the records] would send a very important signal,' said Jonathan Manes, senior counsel at the MacArthur Justice Center. One reason, he said, was the high profile of the $109m training center project. Built on a 171-acre (70-hectare) footprint in a forest south-east of Atlanta, opposition to the center has come from a wide range of local and national organizations and protesters and is centered on concerns such as unchecked police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police, and the foundation, say the center is needed for 'world-class' training and to attract new officers. The movement against the center dates to 2021 and has included the destruction of construction equipment and the arson of Atlanta police motorcycles and a car. It has also included efforts to mount a referendum on the training center that gathered signatures from more than 100,000 voters – and continues to languish in court – as well as historic levels of public participation in city council meetings, lawsuits, numerous protests, and support from national environmental and civil rights groups. Despite the years of protests and worldwide media coverage – and although the APF built the center, with corporate and taxpayer funds – the foundation and its CEO, former Secret Service leader Dave Wilkinson, have largely escaped public notice. Most attention has centered on Atlanta's police department, which will be using the center, and local and state governments. Because of this, the lawsuit, and last week's bench trial – meaning the judge decides, not a jury – draw attention to the APF. The APF is one of the nation's largest and most well-funded police foundations, with support from companies like Delta, Wells Fargo and Home Depot. Wilkinson is also the highest-paid among police foundation CEOs nationwide, with a 2022 salary of $500,000. In his hours of testimony last week, Wilkinson revealed his take on ACPC, which began reporting on the training center in late 2021, filling a vacuum left in local media exemplified by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution failing to disclose in much of its news and opinion coverage of the project that Alex Taylor, CEO of the paper's owner, Cox Enterprises, had led a multimillion-dollar fundraising drive for the foundation. Wilkinson testified that he thought ACPC would be 'giving information to … anarchists' – referring to protestors who committed acts of property destruction or vandalism – and that, in withholding information, he was 'trying to protect people from harm'. He and others – including Alan Williams, project manager for the training center – offered hours of detailed descriptions of protests, including cellphone videos and news clips showing protestors throwing rocks, lighting fireworks and screaming such chants as 'Fuck you Alan!' Matt Scott, executive director of ACPC, said: 'They were doing the best they could to make ACPC look like an organization intent on causing harm – but they brought no evidence against ACPC.' Manes found the APF's stance 'deeply chilling – the idea that the press is responsible for how people use or react to information'. In her closing argument, Joy Ramsingh – one of three attorneys who represented plaintiffs pro bono, along with Samantha C Hamilton and Luke Andrews – said that Wilkinson 'clearly believes that if … he feels [open records requestors] are bad people, then they should be denied Open Records Act requests. But [the law] is not governed by our feelings.' The police foundation and its lawyer, former Georgia supreme court chief justice Harold Melton, also argued that the foundation was no different from other private entities that work with government, whether corporations such as Chick-fil-A or other non-profit organizations – and so, like these entities, it should not be subject to open records laws. Melton declined to comment on the case. The APF did not respond to a query from the Guardian. Ramsingh countered this notion rhetorically in court: 'Is there any Chick-fil-A that calls itself Atlanta police Chick-fil-A and only serves chicken nuggets to APD?' Ed Vogel, a researcher at Lucy Parsons Labs, said: 'If APD didn't exist, APF wouldn't exist – it gives the ability to wealthy people and corporations to organize and mobilize funds in a way that supports their interests, without any public oversight.' Ramsingh said she hopes the case 'helps shine a light on what police foundations do, and illuminates their reach'. In Atlanta, that includes not just raising money for the training center, but building and managing it. 'Most people have no idea there's this whole other entity making decisions on public safety.'
The Guardian
11-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Cop City' legal case could cast spotlight on US police foundations' activities
A legal case in Atlanta stemming from the controversial 'Cop City' project is being closely watched because it has the potential to cast a spotlight on the activities of police foundations nationwide. The case raises the issue of state open records laws, and whether they apply to police foundations. The private foundations exist in every major US city, with more than 250 nationwide, according to a 2021 report by research and activist groups Little Sis and Color of Change. The foundations have been used to pay for surveillance technologies in cities like Baltimore and Los Angeles without the contracts being subject to public scrutiny, according to the report. In the Atlanta case, a judge is considering 12 hours of testimony, related case law and evidence in a lawsuit that concerns whether records such as board meeting minutes from the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) are subject to the state's open records law. If they are, they must be released to plaintiffs – a local digital non-profit news outlet and a Chicago-based research organization. Although it is a private entity, the police foundation is the driving force behind the controversial police training center colloquially known as 'Cop City' and which has attracted global headlines after police shot dead Manuel Paez Terán, or 'Tortuguita', an environmental activist protesting the project. At the same time, the prosecution of anti-'Cop City' activists – especially using Rico laws usually reserved for organized crime – has prompted accusations that the state is using police and the courts to crush dissent and free speech. The open records complaint, filed last year on behalf of non-profit news outlet Atlanta Community Press Collective (ACPC) and digital transparency research organization Lucy Parsons Labs, details how numerous records queries to the foundation under Georgia's Open Records Act were ignored. After a two-day bench trial last week, Fulton county superior court judge Jane Barwick must now decide whether to order the foundation to release those records, including a 'line-item construction budget' and contracts. It was probably the first such lawsuit nationwide, University of Chicago sociology professor Robert Vargas told the Guardian last year – and is being followed closely by researchers and activists alike. One of the hallmarks of police foundations is how difficult it is to get information out of them,' said Gin Armstrong, executive director at LittleSis and the Public Accountability Initiative. 'From a research point of view, this case could open up possibilities … in understanding where money is coming from for policing.' 'A ruling here that the Atlanta police foundation is subject to meaningful public oversight [by releasing the records] would send a very important signal,' said Jonathan Manes, senior counsel at the MacArthur Justice Center. One reason, he said, was the high profile of the $109m training center project. Built on a 171-acre (70-hectare) footprint in a forest south-east of Atlanta, opposition to the center has come from a wide range of local and national organizations and protesters and is centered on concerns such as unchecked police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police, and the foundation, say the center is needed for 'world-class' training and to attract new officers. The movement against the center dates to 2021 and has included the destruction of construction equipment and the arson of Atlanta police motorcycles and a car. It has also included efforts to mount a referendum on the training center that gathered signatures from more than 100,000 voters – and continues to languish in court – as well as historic levels of public participation in city council meetings, lawsuits, numerous protests, and support from national environmental and civil rights groups. Despite the years of protests and worldwide media coverage – and although the APF built the center, with corporate and taxpayer funds – the foundation and its CEO, former Secret Service leader Dave Wilkinson, have largely escaped public notice. Most attention has centered on Atlanta's police department, which will be using the center, and local and state governments. Because of this, the lawsuit, and last week's bench trial – meaning the judge decides, not a jury – draw attention to the APF. The APF is one of the nation's largest and most well-funded police foundations, with support from companies like Delta, Wells Fargo and Home Depot. Wilkinson is also the highest-paid among police foundation CEOs nationwide, with a 2022 salary of $500,000. In his hours of testimony last week, Wilkinson revealed his take on ACPC, which began reporting on the training center in late 2021, filling a vacuum left in local media exemplified by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution failing to disclose in much of its news and opinion coverage of the project that Alex Taylor, CEO of the paper's owner, Cox Enterprises, had led a multimillion-dollar fundraising drive for the foundation. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Wilkinson testified that he thought ACPC would be 'giving information to … anarchists' – referring to protestors who committed acts of property destruction or vandalism – and that, in withholding information, he was 'trying to protect people from harm'. He and others – including Alan Williams, project manager for the training center – offered hours of detailed descriptions of protests, including cellphone videos and news clips showing protestors throwing rocks, lighting fireworks and screaming such chants as 'Fuck you Alan!' Matt Scott, executive director of ACPC, said: 'They were doing the best they could to make ACPC look like an organization intent on causing harm – but they brought no evidence against ACPC.' Manes found the APF's stance 'deeply chilling – the idea that the press is responsible for how people use or react to information'. In her closing argument, Joy Ramsingh – one of three attorneys who represented plaintiffs pro bono, along with Samantha C Hamilton and Luke Andrews – said that Wilkinson 'clearly believes that if … he feels [open records requestors] are bad people, then they should be denied Open Records Act requests. But [the law] is not governed by our feelings.' The police foundation and its lawyer, former Georgia supreme court chief justice Harold Melton, also argued that the foundation was no different from other private entities that work with government, whether corporations such as Chick-fil-A or other non-profit organizations – and so, like these entities, it should not be subject to open records laws. Melton declined to comment on the case. The APF did not respond to a query from the Guardian. Ramsingh countered this notion rhetorically in court: 'Is there any Chick-fil-A that calls itself Atlanta police Chick-fil-A and only serves chicken nuggets to APD?' Ed Vogel, a researcher at Lucy Parsons Labs, said: 'If APD didn't exist, APF wouldn't exist – it gives the ability to wealthy people and corporations to organize and mobilize funds in a way that supports their interests, without any public oversight.' Ramsingh said she hopes the case 'helps shine a light on what police foundations do, and illuminates their reach'. In Atlanta, that includes not just raising money for the training center, but building and managing it. 'Most people have no idea there's this whole other entity making decisions on public safety.'
The Guardian
28-01-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
New documents shed light on police killing of Georgia ‘Cop City' activist
Previously unavailable records obtained by the Guardian shed light on the killing of environmental and social activist Manuel Paez Terán during a police operation aimed at clearing out less than two dozen people from an Atlanta-area forest as they protested against a training center planned to be built nearby known as 'Cop City'. The incident was the first of its kind in US history, and Georgia authorities have released scant information about what happened during the police operation two-plus years ago. None of the Georgia state patrol officers involved were wearing body cams, so no video evidence of the shooting exists. Paez Terán's death catapulted the broad-based movement against Cop City to national headlines, then in its second year. Apart from the so-called 'forest defenders' who camped in the forest, the movement has included efforts at mounting a referendum on the training center, record public participation in city council meetings, lawsuits, numerous protests and environmental and civil rights groups. Police say the center is needed for 'world-class' training. The records appear to confirm that Paez Terán fired a gun at police from inside a tent, as Georgia authorities have stated since the 18 January 2023 incident – and that six officers fired back, filling the activist's body with 57 bullet wounds, instantly causing death. But the records also show 'a series of events before and during the operation' that made such an outcome more likely, according to a use-of-force expert and veteran police officer consulted by the Guardian. The expert drew attention to issues ranging from the legal basis underpinning the operation to the shooting of pepper balls into Paez Terán's tent immediately before gunshots began, as well as national 'best practices' in planning such operations. The records include police planning documents, 'crime scene' photos, police deposition transcripts and other parts of the Georgia bureau of investigation's file on the incident. The state has withheld the file from the public, press and Paez Terán's family since the incident – even though it cleared the officers involved of any wrongdoing. But journalists behind a podcast series premiering this week called We Came to the Forest obtained the records, and exclusively shared them with the Guardian. Details drawn from the records paint a picture that Paez Terán was 'not the violent domestic terrorist who shot at police' or 'the martyred activist who was assassinated', said magazine journalist Matt Shaer, who created the series, together with radio and podcast journalist Tommy Andres. 'The reality is more complicated and tangled.' Those details include: about 110 officers from five agencies took part in the raid, 50 from Atlanta, together with a helicopter equipped with an infrared camera, ATV vehicles, and a K9 officer – to clear the forest of about 20 people. Officers were told they were clearing the future site of Cop City, but the operation took place in a 140-acre public park about a mile away. The activists in the forest were labelled 'domestic terrorists' in the operation's planning document – but only a handful had been arrested and charged with that crime, a month earlier. None have been found guilty, two years later. The operation's stated location is important because the future Cop City site was private property, owned by the Atlanta police foundation and leased to Atlanta – so anyone found there would legally have been trespassing. But the park where the operation took place was open to the public and had no signs about trespassing. Although the operation's planning document repeatedly calls the activists who were camped in the forest 'domestic terrorists', the only notation under the planning document's 'History of violence/ weapons' category is '[p]reviously attacked officers with fireworks and slingshots'. Importantly, the document also authorizes officers to shoot pepper balls if they find a protester in a tree house, and that '[t]he pepper ball will not be targeted at the suspect, but at the area around them'. It says nothing about shooting pepper balls into tents. Pepper balls can result in permanent injury, according to research. Other records show officers received a last-minute change in orders on the operation's goals, via radio – after they were already advancing through the woods. During the early-morning briefing nearby, they were told to allow any protesters they came across to leave, after checking their IDs. But an unnamed official changed the orders, telling officers to arrest everyone they came across, according to the deposition of Georgia state patrol captain Gregory Shackleford, who is listed on the planning document as the operation's tactical commander. As for the shooting itself: ballistics evidence appears to confirm that a bullet that wounded one of six Georgia state patrol officers surrounding Paez Terán's tent matched a gun belonging to the activist. A hail of gunfire from the six officers followed, causing Paez Terán's immediate death. But records also show that it had only taken about three minutes for the encounter between the state troopers and Paez Terán to get to that point. The activist had refused to leave the tent several times and the officers fired six pepper balls into the tent, big enough for one or two people. Then gunfire erupted. The time element – three minutes – caught Steven D Remick's attention. Remick, a retired police officer with 28 years' experience, current police trainer and expert on police use of force, reviewed some of the records for the We Came to the Forest podcast, and also spoke to the Guardian. 'The thing is, time's on your side here. No one's in danger, no one is calling for help. Did they have to fire the pepper balls? Were there other options? Why not get behind some cover, create some distance, and continue to talk to the person?' he said. Remick speculated that the last-minute change in orders requiring officers to arrest everybody could have played a role in their behavior. 'If you're telling them to arrest everybody without telling them to exhaust de-escalation and communicate with everybody first – depending on the threat – they're going to rush,' he said. As for the pepper balls, Remick told the Guardian that officers are generally trained to 'know your target and what's beyond it' – meaning that if they could not see exactly where Paez Terán was, and they were firing into a small, enclosed place, 'you can kill or injure somebody, and that's a pretty significant issue'. 'That doesn't negate the officers' right to fire to defend themselves,' he added, 'but at the same time, you may have precipitated [Paez Terán] shooting by ignoring protocols on the use of pepper balls and not pursuing more communication. You don't do these things, and there's a reason why.' The untruth behind the planning document's stated rationale for the operation – removing protesters from land that was private property – also bothered Remick. 'That's a huge liability,' he said. Similarly, preparing more than 100 officers in the operation's planning document to come upon 'domestic terrorists' without establishing the basis for the label is also a liability, he said. 'You can't just go into a forest and say, 'We're arresting everybody for domestic terrorism.' You have to tell officers in the plan – these people, at this time, were involved in this activity.' As for why no one will ever be able to see what happened that day in the forest: 'One of the things that bothers me most is that every group [in the operation] didn't have at least one body cam. That's another planning error … Why didn't they think of that?' The podcast also features the voices of some of the people from the Stop Cop City movement, and what brought them to defend the forest southeast of Atlanta. Reflecting on the activists, Shaer, the journalist, said: 'I'm not sure I've ever believed in anything as much as them. The energy and life it gave them, the resolve they showed … People came to the forest and built a miniature city – it didn't work forever; but it worked for a while. There's something to admire there.'
