Extensive cover-up effort revealed in L.A. County deputy's beating of trans man

New reports on the beating of a transgender man by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy have revealed an extensive cover-up effort.

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Deputy Joseph Benza III, 36, pleaded guilty last week to a felony count of deprivation of rights in connection with the assault on Emmett Brock during a traffic stop. The incident happened in February 2023, when Benza followed Brock into a parking lot in Whittier, a suburb of Los Angeles, where he punched Brock repeatedly and bashed his head into the pavement.

Benza lied on his report of the incident, saying that he pulled Brock over because an air freshener hanging from Brock’s rearview mirror was illegally obstructing the driver’s view and claiming that Brock had then bitten him and Benza felt threatened. Brock was initially charged in the matter, and he lost his teaching job because of it, but the charges were dropped after video was published that contradicted Benza’s version of events.

In July 2023, after local media began reporting on the incident, Benza sent a group text message to two other deputies, identified as Deputy C and Deputy D, in which they “discussed the need to delete text messages on their personal cellphones in light of the anticipated federal investigation,” according to a charging document from the U.S. Attorney’s office.

“Three days later, Deputy C sent a text message to the same group to relay Sergeant 1’s instruction for defendant BENZA to ‘toss the phone,’ a directive to delete data from defendant BENZA’s personal cellphone,” the document says.

“Before Deputy C’s interview with the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office (‘USAO’) in September 2024, Deputy C and defendant BENZA discussed lying to federal authorities in order to provide an innocuous explanation for their text messages about Sergeant 1’s directive to ‘dump’ the cellphone, including to falsely characterize the message as an instruction to ‘dump’ the cellphone into the cloud to preserve the data,” it continues. “Deputy C later confirmed to defendant BENZA that Deputy C planned to adopt that false explanation when speaking with federal authorities.”

“The really crazy thing is how many other deputies [Benza] now says were involved in the cover-up,” Keri Blakinger, who covered the story for the Los Angeles Times,wrote on Threads this week.

“The full details involve multiple deputies and sergeants — none of who are named in the existing filings,” she added. “It’s unclear whether they will face charges.”

Benza will be back in court soon and could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. He is no longer with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.