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The original was posted on /r/keep_track by /u/rusticgorilla on 2023-08-16 19:02:37.
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Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department
The FBI has opened criminal investigations into several violent encounters involving Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, the LA Times reported last month. So far, it is only known that federal authorities are looking into two specific cases: one in which a deputy punched a Black mother in her face while she was holding her newborn baby, and another in which a deputy threw a Black woman to the ground by her neck after she started recording an arrest with her cellphone.
The internal county email obtained by The Times said that “federal criminal investigations have been opened concerning the recent incidents” in Palmdale and Lancaster.
“The FBI has already been to headquarters to obtain department documents on both incidents,” the email said, adding that the U.S. Justice Department “will not be publicly commenting on the investigations.”
The email also mentions that the California Attorney General’s office is opening an investigation into the 2020 fatal shooting of Andres Guardado, a case allegedly involving LASD gangs and destroyed surveillance video that could have disproven the officers’ account of events.
- Relatedly, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Office of Inspector General’s investigation of deputy gangs in the LA Sheriff’s Department. The police union argued that interview requests and requirements to show investigators potential gang tattoos would violate state labor law.
News of the FBI probe comes as surveillance footage of another violent arrest by the LASD was made public. Emmett Brock, a 23-year-old transgender man, was followed to a 7-Eleven in Whittier, California, by Deputy Joseph Benza after “casually” flipping the officer off:
Brock said the incident began when he was driving and observed the deputy “just acting in a very domineering, abusive way towards this woman on the street.”
After making the gesture to the deputy, Brock said the same deputy hopped in his car and began following him. Brock said he proceeded to deviate from his route to see if the deputy would keep following him.
Brock said he called 911 and claims he was told “If he doesn’t have lights or sirens on, he’s not pulling you over. If he hasn’t pulled you over, he hasn’t pulled you over. Continue to your destination.”
Brock pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot when the deputy’s car pulled in behind him and turned his lights on before Brock got out of the car, which can also be seen in the surveillance footage.
Benza confronted Brock as he got out of his car, telling him, “I stopped you.” When Brock replied that the officer did not stop him, Benza slammed him to the pavement and repeatedly punched him in the head.
The pair exchanged a few words while the deputy pinned Brock to the ground.
“I told you to stop. You walked away,” the deputy said. “You have a weapon on you?”
Brock told the deputy he did not have a weapon on him, while using expletives, shortly before shouting “I can’t breathe” and “you’re going to kill me.”
Brock was placed under arrest for mayhem, resisting arrest, obstruction, and failure to obey a police officer. According to Benza’s arrest report, he stopped Brock for a vehicle code violation because he saw an air freshener hanging from the car’s rearview mirror.
“I punched S/Brock face and head, using both of my fists, approximately 8 times in rapid succession,” Benza wrote in a report following the incident. The report was shared by Brock’s attorney, along with medical records showing the deputy broke a bone in his hand during the altercation.
Benza also reported that Brock repeatedly tried to bite him, which was also noted in the medical report, with a comment following the exam that “there is no bite marks at this time.” Brock, who can be heard yelling throughout the encounter, told CNN he didn’t bite Benza.
After allegedly facing gender discrimination and harassment while being booked into jail, Brock lost his teaching job due to the charges filed against him.
Kansas Two-Step
A federal judge ruled last month that Kansas Highway Patrol (KHP) must cease the search and seizure of motorist vehicles due only to the fact that surrounding states have legalized marijuana.
The ACLU brought the lawsuit challenging the practice known as the “Kansas-Two Step,” wherein troopers pull over a vehicle, issue a ticket or warning, but then attempt to keep motorists talking in order to develop “reasonable suspicion” that drugs are in the car. This practice is most often employed on federal highway I-70, connecting Colorado to the west with Missouri to the east. Both states have legalized marijuana; Kansas has not. KHP troopers, therefore, consider the very fact that a person is driving on I-70 as suspicious, particularly if the vehicle has a Colorado or Missouri license plate.
Typically, at the beginning of the initial traffic stop, a trooper does not have reasonable suspicion to search the vehicle or the driver. Therefore, his job is to “develop” reasonable suspicion to do so. A trooper without reasonable suspicion is a trooper engaged in a fishing expedition for evidence of drug crimes. Fortunately for troopers, the law provides convenient, easy-to-use, virtually fool-proof tools to do so: (1) after the traffic stop is concluded, the trooper can try to keep the driver talking until he or she says something which a trooper considers suspicious; or (2) the trooper can elicit the driver’s consent to a search…
Even though the law requires that consent be knowing, intelligent and voluntary, troopers don’t generally let such niceties stand in their way. For drivers who are not initially forthcoming with consent, troopers are trained to conclude the traffic stop, somehow signal that the driver is free to go, then immediately re-engage the driver in friendly, casual conversation to keep the driver at the scene and enable the trooper to develop reasonable suspicion or take another stab at getting consent—a maneuver colloquially known as the “Kansas Two-Step.” If the driver persists in refusing to consent, the trooper has a fallback position: search the vehicle anyway and claim that he had reasonable suspicion all along.
In sum, KHP trains its officers to unconstitutionally extend traffic stops in the hopes of finding an excuse to detain the driver and search the vehicle. Suspicion can be claimed based on inconsistent statements, body language, nervousness—or, as is especially applicable in Kansas, travel plans.
At least since 2014, when Colorado legalized the recreational cultivation, sale and possession of marijuana, KHP troopers have routinely considered a driver’s travel plans (out-of-state travel origin and destination) as factors contributing to reasonable suspicion of drug possession or drug trafficking, and they have routinely detained out-of-state drivers for traffic stops and canine sniffs at disproportionately high rates compared to drivers who are Kansas residents…
KHP troopers are far more likely to stop out-of-state drivers than Kansas drivers. From January of 2018 to November of 2020, KHP troopers stopped 70 per cent more out-of-state drivers than would be expected if KHP troopers stopped in-state and out-of-state drivers at the same rate. The 70 per cent discrepancy represents roughly 50,000 traffic stops…Once a motorist has been pulled over for a traffic stop, out-of-state motorists are much more likely than in-state motoris…
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