L.A. County sheriff's deputy pleads guilty to beating transgender man

Surveillance video of a deputy and another person on the ground in a parking lot.

Dec. 18, 2024 Updated 9:46 PM PT

A Los Angeles County deputy agreed to plead guilty in federal court to a civil rights violation for using excessive force in a 2023 incident.
According to court filings, the deputy admitted he retaliated against a motorist who had given him the middle finger.
The deputy targeted Emmett Brock, then a 23-year-old teacher on his way home from work, who now has a lawsuit pending.

Nearly two years after he was caught on camera beating a transgender man in a 7-Eleven parking lot, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy has agreed to plead guilty in federal court to a civil rights violation for using excessive force, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Joseph Benza III, 36, was charged late Tuesday with one count of deprivation of rights under color of law for assaulting a then-23-year-old teacher, previously identified as Emmett Brock.

In a plea agreement filed the same day, Benza said he would admit to a single felony charge, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison.

“When an officer violates someone’s civil rights, it corrodes trust in law enforcement and undermines the effectiveness of other officers who sacrifice to protect the public,” U.S. Atty. Martin Estrada said in a news release. “This senseless assault and subsequent attempted cover-up are an affront to our system of justice.”

Previously, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s internal use-of-force investigation cleared the deputy of wrongdoing. This week, the department said in a statement that the prior determination was based on the statements and reports provided at the time. Since the initial probe, the department said, the federal case has revealed new evidence of “egregious actions to cover up misconduct,” prompting a new internal administrative investigation.

The department said in a statement that Benza has been relieved of duty, and “potentially additional employees” could also face discipline as the investigation continues.

In a news release, Sheriff Robert Luna called Benza’s actions “deeply troubling,” saying they “undermine the integrity of our Department, the trust of our community, and the safety of those we are sworn to protect.”

In addition to the felony plea, Benza also admitted to repeatedly lying to the FBI and falsifying his incident report. Prosecutors said several other sergeants and deputies — who were not identified in court records — colluded with Benza to protect him.

Tom Yu, the attorney representing Benza, said he supported his client’s decision to take accountability.

“Although the use-of-force, standing alone is completely reasonable and justified, the before and after use-of-force conduct impacted the calculus of the evaluation of the takedown and the eventual arrest,” Yu said in an emailed statement. “We will be asking the court for probation on behalf of Deputy Benza.”

Previously Yu said the force his client used was justified because it initially appeared that Brock was beginning to walk away as Benza approached him.

To Brock, news of the developments came as long-awaited vindication.

“I’m in a state of shock,” he told The Times on Wednesday. “And I want to acknowledge that there are a lot of survivors of police misconduct that don’t see justice, so I feel incredibly lucky that I did.”

His attorney, Thomas Beck, was also pleasantly surprised by the outcome.

“First, the cop is actually being prosecuted, which I didn’t think was going to happen,” he said. “And second, there’s significant evidence that the FBI got that I hadn’t been able to get.”

For the record:

10:05 p.m. Dec. 18, 2024An earlier version of this story said the deputy’s assault on Emmett Brock occurred in 2022. It happened in 2023.

On the morning of Feb. 10, 2023, Brock had left his high school teaching job early and was driving to a therapy appointment when he 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 previously told The Times, he casually threw up his middle finger, thinking the deputy would not see it.

A few seconds later, he said, he spotted a patrol cruiser following close behind him without its lights or sirens on, mirroring his every turn.

For months, Benza’s lawyer said the person Brock passed on the side of the road was not his client but another officer, probably from another agency. He said Benza never saw Brock flip him off — and Benza’s own incident report made no mention of it.

The stop and the violence that followed “was not a retaliation for being flipped off,” Yu told The Times. “It was a pretext stop, and police do that all the time.”

VIDEO | 02:05

Video shows trans man beaten by deputy during stop

Emmett Brock, a trans man, was driving home from his job as a teacher when he was beaten by an L.A. County sheriff’s deputy outside a 7-Eleven store.

Federal court filings made public this week tell a different story. According to prosecutors, just after noon Benza had received a call for a potential domestic disturbance, but he abandoned it when he saw Brock flip him off. Then he followed Brock’s car for 1.8 miles, at some point reaching speeds over 50 mph without ever attempting to initiate a traffic stop, according to the plea agreement.

At one point, prosecutors said, Benza called another deputy and told him he planned to stop someone who’d flipped him off. Benza said on the call he intended to use force against the person and asked the other deputy to start driving to his location.

Meanwhile, Brock — unnerved and fearing he was being followed by someone impersonating a police officer — called 911 and asked what to do.

The dispatcher told him he didn’t need to pull over unless signaled to do so, but Brock eventually parked in a 7-Eleven parking lot on Mills Avenue in Whittier and stepped out of his car. Video of the incident shows that the deputy approached him and said, “I just stopped you,” offering no explanation as to why.

“No, you didn’t,” Brock replied, according to an audio recording captured by the deputy’s body camera. Federal prosecutors said Benza then “violently body slammed” Brock into the ground.

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,” he shouted. “You’re going to f—ing kill me. Help! Help! Help! I’m not resisting!”

After Brock was in handcuffs, the deputy put him into the back seat of his cruiser and eventually took him to a station for booking.

When Benza later put together the incident report, he asked several sergeants whether he should mention the real reason he started following Brock and was told to omit it, according to his plea agreement.

In his report, Benza said it appeared Brock was “about to throw a punch,” so he grabbed his arm and struck first, hitting him repeatedly. During the struggle, the deputy’s report claimed, Brock “attempted to rip my skin from my hand” by repeatedly biting him.

But a paramedic’s report from the scene did not mention any bite marks. And when Benza went to a hospital later, a physician assistant wrote that there were “no bite marks at this time.”

Still, Brock was taken to the Norwalk sheriff’s station and booked on three felonies and one misdemeanor. He suffered a concussion, along with scrapes and bruises.

Brock’s family bailed him out that evening. He lost his job four days later after state authorities notified the school of his pending charges, which were dropped several weeks after The Times first published video of the incident.

According to federal prosecutors, in the days after The Times and other news outlets reported on the case, Benza sent a group text to two other deputies about the media coverage, and the three of them discussed the need to delete text messages on their personal cellphones in light of the anticipated federal investigation.

Three days after the initial group text, one of the other deputies — identified only as Deputy C in court papers — texted the group to relay a sergeant’s instruction for Benza to “toss the phone,” which federal prosecutors said was a directive to delete data from the device.

Before Deputy C was interviewed by federal investigators in September of this year, prosecutors said, he and Benza discussed lying to authorities to explain their messages about the sergeant’s order to “dump” the phone. The two decided to claim the order to dump the device was a directive to transfer the data to the cloud.

When federal investigators interviewed Benza, he claimed he had not seen anyone flip him off, alleged again that Brock had bitten him, and said he had not substantively discussed the contents of his incident report with anyone else while he drafted it.

In his plea agreement, Benza admitted to lying. He discussed the contents of the report, he acknowledged, and that someone else — a sergeant — actually wrote “substantive portions” of it for him.

Following this week’s plea agreement, Benza is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in the coming days.

It’s unclear whether any of the other deputies referenced in court filings have been investigated or disciplined by the Sheriff’s Department.

Since the encounter that upended his life, Brock has formally been found innocent of the charges he faced. This year, he filed a lawsuit in federal court, alleging false imprisonment, civil rights violations and assault and battery. The case is still pending.

Though he never returned to his teaching job, Brock enrolled in graduate school and is expecting to complete his master’s degree in sociology in the spring. He’s working as a youth engagement specialist at a homeless shelter.

“There are no words to describe this feeling,” he told The Times. “I never thought I would see the day that there would be justice for this.”