By Evan Bush and Denise Chow -
NBC News
The slaying last month of a non-binary activist known as Little Turtle, who was gunned down during a protest in the South River Forest of Atlanta, Georgia, marked the first time in the United States that a police officer has killed an environmentalist.
Police entered the forest on January 18 after months of tension with the activists, who had stayed to camp in the area in protest.
'Tortuguita' was shot and seven other people were arrested.
It was the second round of arrests following a raid in less than a month.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation indicated that "Turtle" first shot a state trooper, before the other officers shot him dead.
The agency added that no body camera footage of the officers involved in the shooting was available.
The 'Tortuguita' couple holds a portrait of the victim. RJ Rico / AP
Lawyers for the family of 'Tortuguita', whose full name is Manuel Esteban Páez Terán, have questioned the official version of the shooting and say that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has not responded to their calls.
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“We have contacted them through all the channels we have available.
We have received no response, no offer to share information with the family," said Jeff Filipovits, an Atlanta civil rights lawyer.
"They want to know what happened to their son."
Camping in a place has been one of the most popular forms of protest for environmental activists for decades, but the demonstration in Atlanta was different from others.
While the police usually mediate protests, in the case of Atlanta they acted as antagonists to the activists because their own interest was at stake: the development of a police complex that the protesters opposed.
“There is a long history of hostile confrontations between direct-action environmental activists and law enforcement,” said Keith Woodhouse, an assistant professor at Northwestern University who wrote a book on radical environmental activism.
"The big difference is that one of these activists was shot and killed, and I think that's unprecedented in the United States."
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And in the age of modern protest, environmental groups are increasingly becoming part of a much broader network of social activists, where previously they were separate from other movements.
Atlanta, Georgia police SWAT special tactics team in Gresham Park on Jan. 18, 2023.AP
“The issue of policing in the United States, the militarization of police forces, the Black Lives Matter movement, all of those issues are related to protecting this forest for these activists,” Woodhouse explained.
Conflict over 'Police City' has been brewing for the past two years
The police training center, proposed by the Atlanta Police Foundation and the City of Atlanta, would be located on 85 acres that are part of the 3,500-acre South River Forest, just southeast of the Atlanta city limits.
The training center includes a "simulated urban landscape," burning buildings, a kennel for police animals, a "vehicle operations course" and a shooting range half a mile from the nearest neighborhoods, according to the foundation.
Environmental groups lobbied against construction of the training center, saying it would destroy tree canopy, damage habitat for amphibians and migratory birds, and increase the likelihood of stormwater flooding in surrounding areas.
Some opponents see the training center as an example of police militarization and have denounced investments in state surveillance apparatus.
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The environmental movement is no stranger to radical tactics, civil disobedience, and confrontation with authorities that sometimes result in arrests or violence.
During the 1980s, as radical environmentalists erected barricades, chained themselves to cranes and climbed to the treetops, "protesters were sometimes dragged and thrown into pickup trucks, sometimes pepper-sprayed," Woodhouse said.
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But the escalation of violence in
Atlanta reveals how the movement's shifting focus could lead to more direct conflict with the police.
"Racial and environmental justice are united"
Mike Roselle, co-founder of the environmental advocacy group Earth First, said that even in some of the most combative days of forestry activism, in the 1980s, the police were often there to deter others.
"When you're dealing with loggers, you want the police to be at the protest site because the loggers could kill you," said Roselle, who says he's been arrested some 50 times in his career as an activist.
"There was a bit of police violence towards us, but it wasn't the main problem."
In Atlanta, as environmental protesters take on the police department's plan for a new training center head-on, they are making social justice concerns like police brutality a central part of their movement.
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Ebony Twilley Martin, co-executive director of Greenpeace USA, called the situation in Georgia "disturbing" and said the police raids in the woods were "an attack on something that is essential to American democracy."
“Environmental justice and racial justice are inextricably linked,” Martin said.
"There's no way you can promote environmental justice without seeing the role racism plays in it."
Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said there were no more protesters left in the woods.
That same day, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and DeKalb County Executive Officer Michael Thurmond announced that a permit had been issued to begin clearing land for the training center.