Yesterday, the Atlanta Police Department released body camera footage from the day that a state trooper was shot and a protester named Manuel Teran (aka Tortuguita) was killed by police. Authorities said back on January 23rd that the troopers who were present at the scene of the shooting were not wearing body cameras. They also said there were other police nearby who were wearing cameras.

Bodycam questions – The Task Force consisted of several agencies.  The officers who were near the incident at the time of shooting were not wearing body worn cameras. Although the shooting is not captured on bodycam, there is bodycam footage of the aftermath.

In other words, we’ve known for weeks that there were some body cameras available to investigators but they were not at the scene of the shooting. The release today confirms that. There appear to be four separate clips. A group of officers are walking through the forest looking for tents to clear. As they are walking they hear four shots followed by a flurry of dozens of shots being fired all at once. Here’s that moment from clip #1: “Is this target practice?” one of the officers asks after the shooting stops.

Same moment from clip #3: About a minute or so later you can hear “officer down” over the radio.

What has activists worked up is a moment that happens shortly after the shots are heard. This is also from clip #1: “You f**ked your own officer up,” the officer said.

And later in clip #1 the same officer asked another officer he came upon “They shoot their own man?” The other officer replied, “We don’t know whether he got shot by a deputy.”

The activists are pointing to this as proof that the trooper was shot by friendly fire, something they’ve been claiming from the start.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigations has put out a statement in response:

The GBI is committed to a full, complete, and accurate investigation. Yesterday, the Atlanta Police Department released bodycam video of their officers who were involved in the joint operation to clear the site of the future City of Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. In those videos, at least one statement exists where an officer speculates that the Trooper was shot by another officer in crossfire. Speculation is not evidence.  Our investigation does not support that statement…

The GBI is continuing to investigate the incident from January 18th and is being as comprehensive in the investigation as possible.  The initial assessment given by the GBI concerning the incident is still valid.  Our investigation will continue to look at every aspect, to include statements made at the scene, and each will be evaluated.

So, contrary to what the activists are saying, the police are not changing their story about what happened. The fact that an officer who wasn’t at the scene was asking others cops if the shooting was friendly fire doesn’t mean it was. As we’ve seen, police collected a gun belonging to Manuel Teran at the scene and they matched the slug removed from the officer’s body to that gun.

Nevertheless, the same outlets who’ve been trying to blame this on police are running with the new theory. Here’s Vice:

In an initial statement about the incident, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation stated that Teran shot and injured a Georgia State Trooper first and that a gun—allegedly belonging to Terán—was recovered from the scene. As of right now, there is no footage or audio to corroborate this.

There’s no video to corroborate what happened because these cops weren’t at the scene. That’s exactly what police said was the case weeks ago. But there is audio which seems to show four shots were fired followed by a pause and then a flurry of shots in response. That could be interpreted as four shots fired by Teran and then many shots fired in response by police. In any case, nothing released today undercuts the police version of events unless you’re prepared to create a pretty involved conspiracy theory about the gun. The activists don’t want to spell out how that could all make sense but they are doing their best to spin it anyway.