Three people involved in the Defend Atlanta Forest movement are facing charges of felony intimidation of an officer of the state and misdemeanor stalking for placing flyers on mailboxes in a neighborhood in Bartow County, Georgia, about 40 miles from Atlanta. The detainees were held for days in solitary confinement, a lawyer working on the case and a relative of one of the activists said.
The flyer, according to the lawyer, named a police officer who lives in the area where the activists were arrested and identified him as connected to the killing in January of forest defender Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán during a multi-agency raid on the Atlanta Forest protest encampment.
A forensics report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation about guns fired during Tortuguita’s killing named six state patrol officers: Bryland Myers, Jerry Parrish, Jonathan Salcedo, Mark Jonathan Lamb, Ronaldo Kegel, and Royce Zah. According to public records, one of the officers named lives in the area where the activists posted flyers. The report was obtained by the Atlanta Community Press Collective, an abolitionist nonprofit media group, through an open records request.
Julia Dupuis, Charley, and Wednesday were arrested at a gas station outside the town of Cartersville on Friday. According to their lawyer, Lyra Foster, they drove once through the neighborhood and placed flyers on numerous mailboxes without exiting their vehicle or approaching any residents. Foster said Wednesday was a passenger in the car and not posting flyers.
If found guilty, they could each face up to 20 years in prison.
“They were not handing out flyers, they were actually extremely careful in trying to avoid doing anything illegal,” Foster said. “They posted the flyers on mailboxes, they did not even get out of the van to put flyers on the doors, and did not open the mailboxes because they thought that was potentially illegal.”
All three arrestees are being held at Bartow County Jail; all were denied bond by a magistrate judge on Monday. None of the defendants has a criminal history, nor is there any allegation of violence in the current charges. “Denying them bond was extreme,” Foster said.
According to Foster as well as Dupuis’s brother, Nicholas Kees Dupuis, the activists were held in solitary confinement until Tuesday; no reasons were given by the jail, according to the attorney.
Last month, an official autopsy report revealed that Tortuguita, 26, was shot at least 57 times when police stormed the protest encampment. Repressive policing has escalated in recent months against the movement to stop a $90 million police training center — “Cop City” — from being built atop Atlanta’s forest. Forty-two movement participants currently face state domestic terrorism charges for allegedly engaging in minor property damage – the evidence for which is as flimsy as police citing mud on protesters’ shoes.
These latest arrests are part of a pattern of extreme overreach and efforts to silence outrage over Tortuguita’s killing.
“Ever since state police killed Tortuguita, their top priority has been to keep the situation quiet. Now that the public is calling attention to it, police are doubling down,” said Marlon Kautz, an Atlanta-based organizer with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which provides bail funds and legal support to protesters. “It’s exactly the same strategy they’ve used before against Stop Cop City protesters: wave around extreme charges, throw activists in jail without bail, and hope the problem goes away.”
Nicholas Dupuis said that his family learned of his 24-year-old sister’s arrest upon receiving a call from animal control in Cartersville, explaining that they had her dog, as she had been arrested. While Julia Dupuis, a freelance writer and anti-racist activist, is primarily based in Massachusetts, she had spent a number of months in Atlanta as a part of the Stop Cop City movement.
Last month, the Atlanta Community Press Collective released the names of the six officers identified by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in connection with Tortuguita’s killing and published a link to the GBI report. GBI spokesperson Nelly Miles said the agency had not released the officers’ names and cited an exemption under state public records law used to redact documents. The names were not redacted in the version of the report obtained by the Atlanta Community Press Collective, which said it got the document from the Dekalb County Medical Examiner’s Office.