US ‘I can’t die like this’: Video shows trans man beaten by deputy during stop

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‘I can’t die like this’: Video shows trans man beaten by deputy during stop
Los Angeles Times (archive.ph)
By Keri Blakinger
2023-07-24 03:49:06GMT



Emmett Brock thought he was dying, and his mind raced. This isn’t supposed to happen to me. This doesn’t happen this way. I can’t die like this.

He tasted the blood inside his mouth. He felt the fists land on his head. And he heard the shouts of the sheriff’s deputy on top of him, pressing him into the pavement of the 7-Eleven parking lot.

Three minutes later, the 23-year-old teacher sat in the back of a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department cruiser not even knowing, he said, why the deputy had stopped him.

Brock was sent to the Norwalk station lockup and booked for three felonies. When he told the staff he is a transgender man, he said, they asked to see his genitals before deciding which holding cell to send him to.

That was in February. Brock is now jobless and still facing criminal charges, all stemming from a traffic stop the deputy said was based on an air freshener he’d spotted hanging from Brock’s rearview mirror.

The Sheriff’s Department has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks for two other use-of-force incidents caught on camera, including one in which a deputy punched a woman in the face while trying to take her child. In that case, Sheriff Robert Luna condemned the incident as “completely unacceptable” and relieved the deputy of duty. The FBI is now investigating.

Luna ran on promises of reform and has implemented several changes in the department since taking office in December. He restored the ability of oversight officials to access sheriff’s databases, turned over controversial investigations to outside agencies, ordered his deputies to cooperate with investigations and created an office to “eradicate” deputy gangs.

Citing the possibility of litigation, the department declined to comment specifically on the Feb. 10 incident involving Brock, issuing a statement that said: “We take every use of force seriously, and we do investigate.”

To Brock’s lawyer, Thomas Beck, that underscores how far the Sheriff’s Department has to go when it comes to meaningfully holding deputies accountable.

“They have not changed — in fact, they’ve become more stiffened against criticism,” he said. “The system that they have in place that they tell the public guarantees accountability is a farce.”

Before his run-in with the deputy, Brock already was having a miserable day. He said he’d left his high school teaching job early after a co-worker had harassed him for being transgender. It wasn’t the first time, and he was getting fed up.

A few blocks from the school, Brock spotted a deputy who appeared to be having a heated conversation with a woman on the side of the road. As he drove by, Brock threw up his middle finger. He didn’t even think the deputy would see it, he said.

A few seconds later, he spotted a patrol cruiser following close behind him. It made Brock uneasy. He turned down one side street and then another, trying to figure out whether the cruiser was following him or just going in the same direction. The deputy didn’t turn on his lights or siren, but made every turn Brock did.

Growing unnerved, he called 911.

“Hi, um, I’m being followed by a police car,” he said in a recording shared with The Times. He told the dispatcher that the car was copying his turns, but not pulling him over. He said he wanted to make sure it was a “real police car” and that he wasn’t being stalked.

The two kept talking, and eventually the dispatcher asked: “What is it that you want us to do? If he hasn’t pulled you over, he hasn’t pulled you over.”

Two minutes into the call, Brock cursed and hung up. He kept driving, pulling up outside the 7-Eleven on Mills Avenue in Whittier, planning to buy a Coke before heading to a therapy appointment.

The cruiser pulled in behind him, and the store’s surveillance camera captured what followed. The deputy’s body-worn camera captured the sound.

As Brock stepped out of his car, Deputy Joseph Benza approached and told him: “I just stopped you,” offering no explanation as to why.

Confused, Brock replied, “No, you didn’t.”

“Yeah, I did,” the deputy said. Then he grabbed Brock’s arm and forced him to the ground.

Still unsure what he’d done, Brock said, he began to scream. “What — what are you doing? Oh, my god. What the f— is happening?”

For the next three minutes, Brock struggled and screamed as the deputy held him down and punched him in the head.

“You’re going to kill me,” Brock told him. “You’re going to f–-ing kill me. Help! Help! Help! I’m not resisting!”

His mind raced, turning over thoughts of all the things he’d never get to do in life: Finish grad school. Be a father. Become a professor.

“Help! Help! Help! I’m not resisting!”

At one point, the deputy ordered him to put his arms behind his back — but Brock‘s arms were already pinned under his chest.

“Even when I did get them out the way he wanted, he continued to punch me,” Brock told The Times. “He just kept saying, ‘Stop resisting, stop resisting.’ I didn’t understand why he was shouting that because I wasn’t resisting.”

According to the Sheriff’s Department, two witnesses saw Brock exit his car and struggle with the deputy. One of those witnesses claimed that Brock punched the deputy, which camera footage does not show and the deputy did not allege.

After Brock was in handcuffs, the deputy put him into the back seat of his cruiser. At that point, Brock said, he was trying to make sense of what had happened and why he was on the deputy’s radar in the first place.

It was only later that he learned from paperwork he was given: The deputy said he’d spotted an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, supposedly obstructing the view of the road from Brock’s black Honda Civic.

If Benza saw Brock flip him off, he made no mention of it in his report. According to the deputy’s version of events, the force was justified.

“It appeared he was about to walk away from the car and myself,” Benza wrote as part of an 11-page incident report. “His rejection of my traffic detention and his apparent intent to distance himself from his vehicle further raise safety concerns. I know from my training and experience that those who possess contraband items inside vehicles commonly attempt to disassociate themselves from their vehicles when law enforcement is present.”

Though he admitted grabbing Brock’s arm, he said that Brock pulled away and “cocked his right hand back into a fist, indicative of someone about to throw a punch.”

Deciding Brock was “at the onset of assaulting me,” Benza said he tackled him to the ground, adding that Brock had “continuously tried to bite” him. Benza then punched him “approximately eight times in rapid succession.”

“My punches had their intended effect,” he added.

He made no mention of Brock’s cries for help, or that he repeatedly told the deputy that he couldn’t breathe and wasn’t resisting. Instead, Benza’s report noted that Brock “attempted to rip my skin from my hand,” which he said “could result in permanent disfigurement.”

A paramedic’s report from the scene did not mention any bite marks. And when Benza went to the hospital later, the emergency room report noted that he’d told them the bite hadn’t broken the skin and there was no bleeding. A physician’s assistant wrote that there were “no bite marks at this time.”

Medical records do show that Benza fractured his right hand in a “punching injury.”

In interviews with The Times, Brock denied biting the deputy, and his lawyer said it would have been nearly impossible.

“There is no moment that Emmett is not shouting or screaming,” Beck said. “And you can’t talk when your teeth are clamped onto someone’s hand.”

Benza did not respond to a request for comment.

To Ed Obayashi, a former Northern California sheriff’s deputy who is a national use-of-force expert, the incident raises red flags.

“I just don’t see why this escalated as quickly as it did,” he told The Times after reviewing the 7-Eleven footage. “It just goes from zero to 100 immediately, and there’s no explanation.”

And after the violence began, Obayashi said, the apparent lack of attempt to de-escalate the situation — especially once Brock started to show signs of serious distress — was another point of concern.

“There’s always a problem when you have an individual telling an officer he can’t breathe,” Obayashi said, adding that he didn’t see or hear any indication that Brock threatened the deputy.

“This is a minor traffic offense at the most,” he said, “and we’re talking about air freshener.”

Given Brock’s assertion that he flipped off the deputy, Obayashi suggested that the minor traffic infraction might have been a pretext to pull Brock over.

“This could very well be contempt of cop,” he added, referencing a term some in law enforcement use to describe situations in which officers respond with violence when they perceive someone’s behavior as disrespectful.

In California, he added, it can be grounds for deputies and police officers to lose their state peace officer certification. In Los Angeles, such behavior could also violate the department policy banning retaliatory force.

Deputies took Brock to Coast Plaza Hospital, where he was treated for scrapes, bruises and a concussion. Once he was medically cleared, deputies took him to the station for booking. There, staff took his mug shot and fingerprints. They took his shoes and directed him to take off any jewelry. He struggled to pull his rings off over his swollen knuckles.

By that point, he said, the pain was beginning to set in. “My head was just exploding. I felt like I got hit by a truck.”

It wasn’t long before authorities asked Brock for a statement, during which he explained that he is transgender.

“So you’re a girl?” he said one jailer asked.

Brock said he wasn’t.

Then the man asked whether he had a penis — and Brock said he did. He explained what surgeries existed, and said that he’d been on hormones for years.

After one jailer asked for proof, Brock said, he spent a few awkward minutes in a bathroom showing her his genitalia and explaining the effects of testosterone.

He was placed in a women’s holding cell. It was a Friday afternoon and, with the courts closed, he worried he’d be stuck behind bars all weekend.

It was after dark when one of the jailers told him his family and his girlfriend had pulled together enough money for bail.

He was facing three felonies — mayhem, resisting arrest and obstruction — plus misdemeanor failure to obey a police officer.

Four days later, he lost his job after state authorities notified the school of his pending charges.

“I lost so much of myself that day in the parking lot,” he said. “But I love what I do, and it is kind of how I define myself — and for that to be taken away? It felt like I had just lost everything.”

When the incident went through the department’s normal force review process, officials cleared Benza of wrongdoing. One sergeant wrote that Brock was assaultive “with threat of serious bodily injury.” Another sergeant, listed as the watch commander, concurred, saying the incident was within policy and the force used was “objectively reasonable.”

The sergeant also checked “no” on the paperwork next to the question: “Could officer safety, tactical communication, or de-escalation techniques have been improved?”

The station captain agreed with the two sergeants below him. Only once the matter went up to the division commander did the report note room for improvement.

“This situation was very dynamic and evolving, which required a split-second decision to be made by Deputy Benza, since it appeared suspect Brock was trying to avoid being contacted. Officer safety is paramount,” Cmdr. Allen Castellano wrote.

But since Benza’s vehicle had Brock’s blocked in, Castellano said, he could have taken the time to call for backup while keeping tabs on the situation before confronting Brock. Overall, he wrote, “based on Deputy Benza’s articulation that suspect Brock was biting his right hand,” the punches “appeared to be justified.”

In March, Brock’s lawyer asked department officials to criminally investigate Benza. In April — after sending a second letter — he received a reply assuring him the department would investigate “in a timely manner.”

That month, Brock had his first court appearance. Though he’d been booked on three felonies and a misdemeanor, prosecutors ultimately decided to move forward with two misdemeanor charges: resisting arrest and battery on an officer. A judge reduced his bail from $100,000 to nothing.

The case is still moving forward.

In a May email to the department, Brock’s attorney accused the deputy of false imprisonment and kidnapping.

“There is now proof Benza manufactured the biting claim upon learning that the 7-Eleven video caught him violently assaulting and punching Mr. Brock,” Beck wrote.

“I would love to see the department turn a new leaf with this evidence,” he wrote. “My chief criticism of LASD over the decades has been the willful blind eyes that apply to citizen complaints, no matter what the proof. Let this case not be one of them.”
 
Yeah I bet theres more to this story than the LA times or the troon is saying. No cop wearing a body cam, beats somebody in broad daylight in public with potentially multiple other cameras recording it without a reason. To say nothing of the fact it sure looks like the troon was getting ready to punch the cop, the cop noticed and tackled her. The story about being followed but not pulled over doesn't make sense either, nor does calling 911. That sounds like the cop had a reason to be following cause the troon was acting suspiciously and the troon deliberately tried to set things up to play victim and get attention and a payday
 
I'm not a fan of police but the article makes it seem like he just tackled the pooner out of nowhere. Funny that the article doesn't mention her going, "get the fuck off of me," and trying to break away from the officer. Also this tranny is apparently teaching children? Fuck me.
The reason you become a tranny is to molest kids, so becoming a teacher, priest or someone else with access to kids is the logical next step.
 
A few blocks from the school, Brock spotted a deputy who appeared to be having a heated conversation with a woman on the side of the road. As he drove by, Brock threw up his middle finger. He didn’t even think the deputy would see it, he said.
Spoiled white woman forgets men have to actually suffer reprecautions for their actions thinks she can get away with something no man would ever dream of.
As Brock stepped out of his car, Deputy Joseph Benza approached and told him: “I just stopped you,” offering no explanation as to why.

Confused, Brock replied, “No, you didn’t.”


“Yeah, I did,” the deputy said. Then he grabbed Brock’s arm and forced him to the ground.
Pooners simutaneously wanting to be men but also wanting to get all the social privilidges of women and it hillariously backfiring will never cease being funny.

In what world does a man reply to a cop "No you didn't" in any conversation and gets a free out? Only guys I've ever seen doing that in arrest videos are ones that are high or drunk.
He made no mention of Brock’s cries for help, or that he repeatedly told the deputy that he couldn’t breathe and wasn’t resisting.
Ah, she also tried to pull a saint floyd.
It wasn’t long before authorities asked Brock for a statement, during which he explained that he is transgender.

“So you’re a girl?” he said one jailer asked.

Brock said he wasn’t.

Then the man asked whether he had a penis — and Brock said he did. He explained what surgeries existed, and said that he’d been on hormones for years.

After one jailer asked for proof, Brock said, he spent a few awkward minutes in a bathroom showing her his genitalia and explaining the effects of testosterone.

He was placed in a women’s holding cell. It was a Friday afternoon and, with the courts closed, he worried he’d be stuck behind bars all weekend.
"I'm not a girl, but put me in the women's cell pls"
 
Emmett Brock thought he was dying, and his mind raced. This isn’t supposed to happen to me. This doesn’t happen this way. I can’t die like this.
Emily Brock

Makes my day when they do this:

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The thing that immediately throws up red flags is how the article mentions the 7-11 camera captures video will the officer's body can captures audio. Uh, no, mixing those allows so much distrust for selective editing; and speaking of which, where are the videos, both of them. It's hard to believe a school would dump a crazy unless there's something big... And I want to see the tapes, unedited, to include when they were talking to a dispatcher.

As for the cop's defense; when the human body jerks away, your body, to include your arms, move certain ways to help you keep balance. Deputy Dickbag didn't do lights or sirens then immediately went hands on. Dirty, but probably gonna be excused because the way homeslice moves their arm when jerking away.

Not that it's a gotcha, because cops get away with lying a lot; please explain when, where, and how you saw the air freshner. Also, tranny probably believes ACAB, so obviously they need to taunt the bull. Both parties deserve to be beaten with metal bats.
 
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Pooner vs. what appears to be an asshole cop; likely two congenital liars lying their way through life.

It's hard to believe a school would dump a crazy unless there's something big...
That was my thought. Though, this...

Before his run-in with the deputy, Brock already was having a miserable day. He said he’d left his high school teaching job early after a co-worker had harassed him for being transgender. It wasn’t the first time, and he was getting fed up.
It sounds like "he" had a meltdown and walked out of "his" job in the middle of the day..."It wasn’t the first time." 🤔

Sorry, manlet. Pooners don't get to be divas.

The Sheriff’s Department has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks for two other use-of-force incidents caught on camera, including one in which a deputy punched a woman in the face while trying to take her child. In that case, Sheriff Robert Luna condemned the incident as “completely unacceptable” and relieved the deputy of duty. The FBI is now investigating.
Meh. I'm surprised every cop in LA hasn't gone full Judge Dredd by this point.

And I think there's a logical fallacy lurking in the above. Viz:

The Black community has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks for numerous other chimp outs caught on camera,
 
I strongly dislike police and have almost never had an encounter with them that ended in my favor, but come on. This reads like something the tranny might have written herself, it's so credulous of her claims and thick with details to make you pity her. Still, though, you can tease out what a piece of shit she is from some parts.
Growing unnerved, he called 911.

“Hi, um, I’m being followed by a police car,” he said in a recording shared with The Times. He told the dispatcher that the car was copying his turns, but not pulling him over. He said he wanted to make sure it was a “real police car” and that he wasn’t being stalked.

The two kept talking, and eventually the dispatcher asked: “What is it that you want us to do? If he hasn’t pulled you over, he hasn’t pulled you over.”

Two minutes into the call, Brock cursed and hung up
Here the tranny tries to scare the cop away by calling 911 on him. When she doesn't instantly get the result she wants, she loses her temper and veers into a parking lot, then leaves the car to grab a soda despite the situation she knew she was in and also having an appointment.
Before his run-in with the deputy, Brock already was having a miserable day. He said he’d left his high school teaching job early after a co-worker had harassed him for being transgender. It wasn’t the first time, and he was getting fed up.
One, I don't believe that there is a single teacher in the California school system who would "harass" a tranny coworker. Two, teachers can't just take a self-care afternoon if they get "fed up", they're not allowed to run out of spoons. It's not the kind of job where an unprepared sub or someone from the office can just walk into the room and pick off where she left off. If she's made a habit of doing this then the school was already waiting for a for-cause offense to happen, which was an inevitability because this woman is obviously volatile. I'd bet that they were already in touch with the teachers' union about disciplining her.
For the next three minutes, Brock struggled and screamed as the deputy held him down and punched him in the head.

“You’re going to kill me,” Brock told him. “You’re going to f–-ing kill me. Help! Help! Help! I’m not resisting!
This is a common tactic you see whenever people are trying to get bystanders to jump on the cop, or at least distract him so that the perp can run away. Saint Floyd did this shortly before his overdose, but so do white trash who get busted for shoplifting from Walmart. This is why cops reach for the taser so quickly.
 
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