#Georgia Bureau of Investigations

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The mysterious Georgia Guidestones have been bulldozed after sustaining significant damage in an apparent bomb attack. Residents reported hearing a thunderous explosion near their location around 4am on Wednesday.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) told reporters that preliminary information suggests someone used an explosive device to damage the pillars.

The Elbert County Sheriff's Office is working with the GBI to investigate the attack on the structure.

The GBI released CCTV footage showing a car driving near the monument just after the explosion.

The guidestones — sometimes called America's Stonehenge for their appearance after being erected in 1980 — consist of six granite slabs, with an inscription carved in eight different languages across the slabs.

The inscriptions contain guidelines — hence guidestones — for pursuing human progress.

Those recommendations include items like "maintain humanity under 500m in perpetual balance with nature" and "unite humanity with a living new language."

Residents who live near the statue said they felt and heard an explosion near the stones' location at around 4am.

Chris Kubas, Executive Vice President of the Elberton Granite Association, said that the stones had suffered defacement in the past, but that Wednesday’s bombing far surpassed any previous damage it had sustained.

The guidestones were opened in 1980 and were commissioned by a "small group of loyal Americans" through a man who used a pseudonym.

The owners of Elberton Granite Finishing Company, which was commissioned to build the slabs, said the man claimed the monument was meant to act as a compass, calendar and clock that could withstand catastrophic events.

The company claims it tried to discourage the man from pursuing the project by offering a comically inflated price for the project, but were surprised to find the individual accepted the quote.

The monument has become the focal point of conservative conspiracy theories over the last years, with allegations that the message on the slabs are instructions for the coming "new world order."

Kandiss Taylor, a far-right conspiracy theorist who ran in the state's Republican gubernatorial primary against incumbent Brian Kemp, made the destruction of the guidestones a central pillar of her campaign.

In a glossy campaign video, she announced her "executive order 10," which would see the monument demolished.

Throughout the video she nods to other conservative talking points and conspiracy theories.

The video starts with a reference to a COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy, with Ms. Taylor saying "over four million people got injected with something that took only nine months to create. Ask yourself why."

It then moves onto demonic human sacrifice.

"Human sacrifice was a form of demonic worship, we're still doing it in present day by killing our unborn," she says, while a graphic about the number of abortions performed worldwide splashes across the screen. "It's the same demons, the same sacrifice, the same sin, it's just a different time."

Then she shifts focus to the "new world order" and the insinuation that the Georgia Guidestones are a message from the demon-worshipping elite who secretly rule the world as to their plans.

"The new world order is here and they told us it was coming," she says.

Shortly after news broke that the stones had been damaged, rather than denouncing the destruction of private property by a protester — which is standard for most Republicans — she suggested that God struck down one of the stones.

Her video was posted to Twitter just two months before the explosion.

HBO’s John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight, lampooned Ms. Taylor and her bizarre stance agaisnt furries and the Georgia Guidestones, noting that her fixation on the monument was the lynchpin of her campaign.

“That was the closing argument of her campaign,” Mr. Oliver said. “Raising the obvious question: Hey, Kandiss Taylor, what the fuck are you talking about?”

Infamous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones also responded to the bombing, saying he enjoyed it on “an animal level,” but utlimately disagreed with the attack.

“We need that evil edifice there as a confession letter led by a consortium of eugenicists,” he said.

Ms. Taylor was crushed in the Georgia Republican primary in May. Mr. Kemp won more than 70% of the vote, with former-Senator David Perdue coming in second with around 22%. Ms. Taylor earned only 3% of the state's vote.

Despite the severity of her loss, she took a page from the MAGA playbook and claimed that "cheaters" rigged the election against her.

“I want y’all to know that I do not concede,” Ms. Taylor said in a video posted to social media. “I do not. And if the people who did this and cheated are watching, I do not concede.”

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell later vowed to investigate the loss.

[midnightfunk]

[petnews2day]

Dog attack claims life of Quitman woman, injures minors

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/PQB1e

Dog attack claims life of Quitman woman, injures minors

QUITMAN – The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating a dog attack that left multiple minors injured and a Quitman woman dead. Release: At the request of the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office, GBI agents are investigating the death of Courtney Williams, age 35. Preliminary information indicates on Thursday, May 9, 2024, at about 4:45 p.m., […]

See full article at https://petn.ws/PQB1e #DogNews #DogAttack, #Gbi, #GbiDogAttackInvestigation, #GeorgiaBureauOfInvestigation, #QuitmanDogAttack

[svalleynow]

Officer Involved Shooting in Rossville Leaves Suspect Dead and Deputy Injured

On October 8th, 2023, at approximately 6:02 PM ET, Walker County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to meet with a complainant about her brother living at her residence at 4 Bragg Circle, Rossville, GA. The complainant said the suspect was threatening her and would not let her return to the home. Further investigation by Walker County Sheriff’s deputies determined that the suspect had a felony…

[conandaily2022]

Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrests 12 men in Bartow County

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit recently conducted Operation Golden Eagle in Georgia, United States. The bureau, the Bartow County Sheriff’s Office‘s Special Operations Unit and several other law enforcement agencies spent months to plan the proactive online undercover investigation.

[arthropooda]

[pilgrim1975]

Murder in Coweta County

Murder in Coweta County

“No one is going to convict me of killing white trash.” – John Wallace, on his victim William Turner. The case of Georgia murderer John Wallace, Sheriff Lamar Potts and victim William (or Wilson) Turner is now largely forgotten outside Coweta County (where the crime was committed) and Meriwether County, where Wallace, a wealthy landowner, ruled a vast estate known as ‘The Kingdom.’ If reports…

[probablyasocialecologist]

According to documents obtained by Grist and Type Investigations through a Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI’s Minneapolis office opened a counterterrorism assessment in February 2012, focusing on actions in South Dakota, that continued for at least a year and may have led to the opening of additional investigations. These documents reveal that the FBI was monitoring activists involved in the Keystone XL campaign about a year earlier than previously known.  Their contents suggest that, long before the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines became national flashpoints, the federal government was already developing a sweeping law enforcement strategy to counter any acts of civil disobedience aimed at preventing fossil fuel extraction. And young, Native activists were among its first targets. “The threat emerging … is evolving into one based on opposition to energy exploration related to any extractions from the earth, rather than merely targeting one project and/or one company,” the FBI noted in its description of the Wanblee blockade. The 15-page file, which is heavily redacted, also describes Native American groups as a potentially dangerous threat and likens them to “environmental extremists” whose actions, according to the FBI, could lead to violence. The FBI acknowledged that Native American groups were engaging in constitutionally protected activity, including attending public hearings, but emphasized that this sort of civic participation might spawn criminal activity.  To back up its claims, the FBI cited a 2011 State Department hearing on the pipeline in Pierre, South Dakota, attended by a small group of Native activists. The FBI said the individuals were dressed in camouflage and had covered their faces with red bandanas, “train robber style.” According to the report, they were also carrying walking sticks and shaking sage, claiming to be “Wounded Knee Security of/for Mother Earth.” “The Bureau is uncertain how the NA group(s) will act initially or subsequently if the project is approved,” the agency wrote.  The FBI also singled out the “Native Youth Movement,” which it described as a mix between a “radical militia and a survivalist group.” In doing so, it appeared to conflate a specific activist group originally founded in Canada in the 1990s with the broader array of young Native activists who opposed the pipeline decades later. Young activists would play an important role in the Keystone XL campaign and later on during protests against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock, but the movement had little in common with militias or survivalists, terms typically used to describe far-right groups or those seeking to disengage from society.  The FBI declined to respond to questions for this story. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the Minneapolis field office said the agency does not typically comment on FOIA releases and “lets the information contained in the files speak for itself.”

[...]

Environmental activists and attorneys who reviewed the new documents told Grist and Type Investigations that law enforcement’s approach to the Keystone XL campaign looked like a template for the increasingly militarized response to subsequent environmental and social justice campaigns — from efforts to block the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock to the ongoing protests against the police training center dubbed “Cop City” in Atlanta, Georgia, which would require razing at least 85 acres of urban forest.  The FBI’s working thesis, outlined in the new documents, that “most environmental extremist groups” have historically moved from peaceful protest to violence has served as the basis for subsequent investigations. “It’s astonishing to me how such a broad concept basically paints every activist and protester as a future terrorist,” said Mike German, a former FBI special agent who is now a fellow at the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A group of Trump-allied attorneys oversaw an effort to copy sensitive election data in at least three battleground states following the 2020 presidential election, according to The Washington Post.

Embattled Trump attorney Sidney Powell helped coordinate with a team of computer experts who succeeded in breaching Georgia election files in rural Coffee County and accessing election data that included voter check-in computers and ballot memory cards, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Local election officials reportedly gave the group access to equipment that was meant to be protected.

Atlanta-area tech company SullivanStrickler billed Powell more than $26,000 for its work, according to the outlets, which also included attempts to access similar election data in Antrim County, Michigan, and Clark County, Nevada.

Powell did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation confirmed to The Journal-Constitution on Tuesday that it has opened a criminal investigation into the Coffee County breach, which took place one day after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

Details about the breach and related efforts came to light last week through a subpoena issued to SullivanStrickler as part of an ongoing federal lawsuit over the security of Georgia's voting systems. Emails, texts, and other records produced on Friday indicate that the extent of the endeavor was more successful than previously reported.

"The breach is way beyond what we thought," David Cross, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the Georgia election lawsuit told The Post. "The scope of it is mind-blowing."

[climatecalling]

The state of Georgia is refusing to release evidence tied to the police shooting and killing of an activist protesting a police and fire department training center known as “Cop City”, prompting concern from police accountability experts who say this sets a “frightening” precedent . District attorney George Christian released a 31-page report earlier this month concluding that the 18 January shooting of Manuel Paez Terán, or “Tortuguita”, was “objectively reasonable”. Paez Terán was one of a small group of “forest defenders” camping in a wooded public park to protest Cop City, planned for a separate part of the forest south-east of Atlanta, Georgia, less than a mile away. Dozens of officers from multiple agencies raided the park; the state claims Paez Terán fired a gun first, prompting six officers to shoot the activist. The activist sustained 57 gunshot wounds and died nearly instantly. The Georgia bureau of investigation (GBI), the agency charged with the investigation, also announced that the evidence would not be released to the Paez Terán family or to the public because the movement itself is the subject of a separate “criminal investigation and prosecution”. That evidence includes “photographs, audio witness interviews, crime scene drawings and reports, forensic lab reports … and body camera (video and audio)”. Jon Feinberg, a Philadelphia civil rights attorney and incoming president of the National Police Accountability Project (NPAP), called the announcement “unique and chilling”.

[ausetkmt]

Ahmaud Arbery's murder: Four years later Ahmaud Arbery's murder: Four years later 05:29

Attorneys are asking a U.S. appeals court to throw out the hate crime convictions of three White men who used pickup trucks to chase Ahmaud Arbery through the streets of a Georgia subdivision before one of them killed the running Black man with a shotgun.

A panel of judges from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta was scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that followed a national outcry over Arbery's death. The men's lawyers argue that evidence of past racist comments they made didn't prove a racist intent to harm.

On Feb. 23, 2020, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves with guns and drove in pursuit of Arbery after spotting the 25-year-old man running in their neighborhood outside the port city of Brunswick. A neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, joined the chase in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery in the street.

More than two months passed without arrests, until Bryan's graphic video of the killing leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police. Charges soon followed.

In legal briefs filed ahead of their appeals court arguments, lawyers for Greg McMichael and Bryan cited prosecutors' use of more than two dozen social media posts and text messages, as well as witness testimony, that showed all three men using racist slurs or otherwise disparaging Black people. The slurs often included the use of the N-word and other derogatory terms for Black people, according to an FBI witness who examined the men's social media pages. The men had also advocated for violence against Black people, the witness said. 

Bryan's attorney, Pete Theodocion, said Bryan's past racist statements inflamed the trial jury while failing to prove that Arbery was pursued because of his race. Instead, Arbery was chased because the three men mistakenly suspected he was a fleeing criminal, according to A.J. Balbo, Greg McMichael's lawyer. 

Greg McMichael initiated the chase when Arbery ran past his home, saying he recognized the young Black man from security camera videos that in prior months showed him entering a neighboring home under construction. None of the videos showed him stealing, and Arbery was unarmed and had no stolen property when he was killed. 

Prosecutors said in written briefs that the trial evidence showed "longstanding hate and prejudice toward Black people" influenced the defendants' assumptions that Arbery was committing crimes.

"All three of these defendants did everything they did based on assumptions —  not on fact, not on evidence, on assumptions. They make decisions in their driveways based on those assumptions that took a young man's life," prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said in court in November 2021.  Three men found guilty of hate crimes in the death of Ahmaud Arbery 02:18

In Travis McMichael's appeal, attorney Amy Lee Copeland didn't dispute the jury's finding that he was motivated by racism. The social media evidence included a 2018 Facebook comment Travis McMichael made on a video of Black man playing a prank on a white person. He used an expletive and a racial slur after he wrote wrote: "I'd kill that .... ."

Instead, Copeland based her appeal on legal technicalities. She said that prosecutors failed to prove the streets of the Satilla Shores subdivision where Arbery was killed were public roads, as stated in the indictment used to charge the men.

Copeland cited records of a 1958 meeting of Glynn County commissioners in which they rejected taking ownership of the streets from the subdivision's developer. At the trial, prosecutors relied on service request records and testimony from a county official to show the streets have been maintained by the county government.

Attorneys for the trio also made technical arguments for overturning their attempted kidnapping convictions. Prosecutors said the charge fit because the men used pickup trucks to cut off Arbery's escape from the neighborhood.

Prosecutors said other federal appellate circuits have ruled that any automobile used in a kidnapping qualifies as an instrument of interstate commerce. And they said the benefit the men sought was "to fulfill their personal desires to carry out vigilante justice."

The trial judge sentenced both McMichaels to life in prison for their hate crime convictions, plus additional time — 10 years for Travis McMichael and seven years for his father — for brandishing guns while committing violent crimes. Bryan received a lighter hate crime sentence of 35 years in prison, in part because he wasn't armed and preserved the cellphone video that became crucial evidence.

All three also got 20 years in prison for attempted kidnapping, but the judge ordered that time to overlap with their hate crime sentences.

If the U.S. appeals court overturns any of their federal convictions, both McMichaels and Bryan would remain in prison. All three are serving life sentences in Georgia state prisons for murder, and have motions for new state trials pending before a judge.

[conandaily2022]

Willacoochee, Georgia police chief Anthony Williams charged with burglary

Willacoochee, Georgia police chief Anthony Williams charged with burglary

Anthony Williams, 49, of Adel, Cook County, Georgia, United States is the police chief in Willacoochee, Atkinson County, Georgia. On October 11, 2022, he allegedly burglarized a home.

[gothhabiba]

Law enforcement officers in Georgia have arrested three top organizers behind a bail fund in Atlanta that has been aiding protesters against Cop City.

Atlanta police arrested the organizers, the CEO, chief financial officer and the secretary for the group behind the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, at their homes on Wednesday morning. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), the three were charged with money laundering and charity fraud.

Activists called the arrests an escalation in the state’s attempt to crush the Stop Cop City movement, with participants being hit with increasingly harsh charges.

“This is a major escalation –– they’re arresting those who defend the arrested,” wrote Atlanta organizer Micah Herskind. “The implications of these arrests is that not only can you not protest, but you cannot defend those who are arrested for protesting. There is no first amendment in Atlanta.”

In a statement, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) spoke as though the organizers and other anti-Cop City activists were already found guilty of their charges from the GBI. He said that he was “proud” to have arrested the “criminals” who he says “facilitated and encouraged domestic terrorism,” referring to terrorism charges against Cop City protesters.

The city of Atlanta is pursuing a $90 million plan backed by both Republicans like Kemp and Democratic Mayor Andre Dickens to build an 85-acre police militarization compound in a forest in the area. If built, Cop City would be the nation’s largest police training compound, and activists say that it would only worsen brutality by local police, as evidenced by the violent response to nonviolent protesters — all while razing a forest to do so.

The Twitter account for the Defend the Atlanta Forest/Stop Cop City movement[] pointed out that the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has aided in lawsuits against the Atlanta Police Department over its arrests of a journalist and protesters in the movement. “This is retaliatory,” the group wrote.

Activists have also pointed out that the GBI’s statement about the arrest, as well as Kemp’s, seem to suggest that the state is preparing to use Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charges against the bail fund, which the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has been predicting for months.

The organizers have said that the state appears to be creating a “flimsy narrative” that the group is a criminal organization. So far, over 40 activists have been charged with domestic terrorism for protesting the compound.

[tieflingkisser]

A second autopsy of an environmental activist who was shot and killed by the Georgia State Patrol on Jan. 18 shows their hands were raised when they were killed, lawyers for their family say. The full autopsy report will be released at a press conference Monday.

The 26-year-old protester, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, was killed in an Atlanta-area forest while police cleared an encampment of activists who oppose the construction of Atlanta's "Cop City" — or Public Training Safety Facility. Terán went by Tortuguita.

"Both Manuel's left and right hands show exit wounds in both palms. The autopsy further reveals that Manuel was most probably in a seated position, cross-legged when killed," lawyers said in a press release.

Last month, Tortuguita's family said they were shot at least a dozen times.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says officers killed Tortuguita in self-defense after they shot a state trooper, but the City of Atlanta released videos in which an officer suggests the trooper may have been injured by friendly fire.

(keep reading)