Even experts who support the use of body cameras caution that the footage can sometimes be misleading or subject to varying interpretations. “People disagree about policing, and will continue to disagree about exactly what a video shows,” Seth W. Stoughton, a University of South Carolina law professor and former police officer, told The New York Times for a 2016 video investigation.
The January incident outside Atlanta occurred in the South River Forest in DeKalb County, where the city plans to build an 85-acre training center on land it owns. The project has prompted months of intense protests from activists who want to preserve the nearly 400-acre forest, and who oppose what they call the further militarization of policing.
Investigators have said that officers from the forest-clearing task force tried to order Terán out of a tent in the forest, and then the activist shot a state trooper, prompting other officers to return fire. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has said that gunshot residue was found on the activist’s hands, and records indicate that Terán had purchased the firearm used to shoot the trooper.
But members of the activist’s family maintain that Terán, who was nonbinary and was known among the forest activists as Tortuguita, or Little Turtle, was a pacifist. The family commissioned its own autopsy, which found that Terán was shot while sitting cross-legged, with hands raised. The family’s autopsy found no trace of gunshot residue, and neither did an official autopsy conducted by the medical examiner in DeKalb County, which indicated that Terán sustained at least 57 gunshot wounds.
Though investigators say no video images of the shooting were captured on camera, audio was. Footage released by the Atlanta Police Department, whose officers wear body cameras and were in a different part of the forest, includes the sounds of distant gunfire and the voices of officers discussing friendly fire. Activists have seized on the exchange, suggesting that troopers had wounded one of their own.
In a statement after the footage was released, the state bureau acknowledged that “at least one statement exists where an officer speculates that the trooper was shot by another officer in crossfire.” But it added: “Speculation is not evidence. Our investigation does not support that statement.”
The bureau turned the case over last month to a special prosecutor, George Christian, who is the district attorney for the Mountain Judicial Circuit in northeast Georgia. In a statement this week, Mr. Christian said he was working to determine “whether or not the use of lethal force was authorized,” and had not finished reviewing the evidence. He did not say when he would reach a decision.
