WATCH: Utah Cops Beat and Taser Man Falsely Claiming he was “Fighting” them

Cody Greenland was already having a bad day after he was evicted from his home last year when he was confronted by Utah police who beat and tasered him in a parking lot of a Target store, falsely claiming he had been “fighting” them.

American Fork police were responding to a call of a man trying to break into cars in the parking lot but all Greenland was trying to do was place some personal items inside his girlfriend’s car who was inside the Target shopping.

However, the car was locked and he did not have a key and when he tried calling his girlfriend to come out, she did not answer so he decided to wait.

But he was soon confronted by the cops who pulled up, one of them who wasted no time in grabbing his wrist without bothering to ask him questions, once again taking the word of a random citizen without doing due diligence to find out if there is any truth to the allegation.

Body cam footage shows that Greenland got down on his knees and raised his arms, complying with the first cop’s orders when another cop pulled up and stepped out of the car and came charging at him from behind.

American Fork police officer Derek Thomas Cannon struck Greenland from behind as if making a football tackle. He then began punching him in the face.

The other cops then jumped in and began repeatedly tasering him, ordering him to place his hands behind his back while piling on top of him and smashing his face into the asphalt.

The two screenshots below show how Greenland is complying with the cop on the right when he is struck from behind by Cannon. The video is below.

 

 

The incident took place on April 17, 2021 and Greenland was charged with drug possession and interfering with an arrest, which were eventually dropped because it was an unlawful arrest. Earlier this week, he filed a federal lawsuit against the officers.

According to the lawsuit which you can read here, Greenland had been evicted earlier that day and had called his mother to pick him up and drive him to the Target to meet his girlfriend.

He used his mother’s phone to call her but she did not answer so he decided to wait next to her car after his mother had driven off. At one point, he walked into a nearby Dollar Tree store and purchased a Mountain Dew and some snacks which he had in his hands when he was confronted by police.

American Fork police released two body cam videos that are each almost 30 minutes long but there are huge gaps in the video missing audio without an explanation. But the portions we can hear are very damaging to the cops’ version of the incident.

The portion where he is first attacked contains no audio but we can see he is surrounded by three cops, including one who is motioning him to get down on the ground which is when Greenland gets down on his knees with his hands in the air.

That was when Cannon pulls up and attacks him.

“I could feel officer Cannon coming,” Greenland recalled the events from that day in a press conference Monday.

“I could hear his equipment on him jiggling and I could feel something coming. I don’t know if you’ve ever been tackled without pads or anything — I got hit in the spine by his knee. It like knocked the wind out of me instantly. All I could think of was to tell them, ‘Stop!’ ‘Don’t!’ And try and protect my face because he was instantly punching me in the head and face.”

The video shows that after beating and tasering him for more than a minute, the cops finally managed to handcuff him, leaving Greenland’s face bloodied.

That was when Cannon noticed a woman recording from a few feet away and asked her to send him her footage.

“I’m so sorry what you guys have to deal with,” the woman tells the cop, apparently not witnessing how the cops had attacked him.

“It’s just work … this is normal for us,” he says.

Cannon then walks back to Greenland who is handcuffed and lying on his stomach and complaining about being beaten.

“You were fighting with us, bro,” Cannon tells him.

“You fought me!” Greenland corrects him. “I didn’t fight back.”

“You did not comply, that is why you got fought with,” Cannon responds.

In their police report, cops claimed he had “assumed a defensive fighting stance” and “would not obey officers’ commands,” according to KSL. But the videos shows us that is a lie.

Watch the edited video below and the two unedited videos here and here.

Cody Greenland was already having a bad day after he was evicted from his home last year when he was confronted by Utah police who beat and tasered him in a parking lot of a Target store, falsely claiming he had been “fighting” them.

American Fork police were responding to a call of a man trying to break into cars in the parking lot but all Greenland was trying to do was place some personal items inside his girlfriend’s car who was inside the Target shopping.

However, the car was locked and he did not have a key and when he tried calling his girlfriend to come out, she did not answer so he decided to wait.

But he was soon confronted by the cops who pulled up, one of them who wasted no time in grabbing his wrist without bothering to ask him questions, once again taking the word of a random citizen without doing due diligence to find out if there is any truth to the allegation.

Body cam footage shows that Greenland got down on his knees and raised his arms, complying with the first cop’s orders when another cop pulled up and stepped out of the car and came charging at him from behind.

American Fork police officer Derek Thomas Cannon struck Greenland from behind as if making a football tackle. He then began punching him in the face.

The other cops then jumped in and began repeatedly tasering him, ordering him to place his hands behind his back while piling on top of him and smashing his face into the asphalt.

The two screenshots below show how Greenland is complying with the cop on the right when he is struck from behind by Cannon. The video is below.

 

 

The incident took place on April 17, 2021 and Greenland was charged with drug possession and interfering with an arrest, which were eventually dropped because it was an unlawful arrest. Earlier this week, he filed a federal lawsuit against the officers.

According to the lawsuit which you can read here, Greenland had been evicted earlier that day and had called his mother to pick him up and drive him to the Target to meet his girlfriend.

He used his mother’s phone to call her but she did not answer so he decided to wait next to her car after his mother had driven off. At one point, he walked into a nearby Dollar Tree store and purchased a Mountain Dew and some snacks which he had in his hands when he was confronted by police.

American Fork police released two body cam videos that are each almost 30 minutes long but there are huge gaps in the video missing audio without an explanation. But the portions we can hear are very damaging to the cops’ version of the incident.

The portion where he is first attacked contains no audio but we can see he is surrounded by three cops, including one who is motioning him to get down on the ground which is when Greenland gets down on his knees with his hands in the air.

That was when Cannon pulls up and attacks him.

“I could feel officer Cannon coming,” Greenland recalled the events from that day in a press conference Monday.

“I could hear his equipment on him jiggling and I could feel something coming. I don’t know if you’ve ever been tackled without pads or anything — I got hit in the spine by his knee. It like knocked the wind out of me instantly. All I could think of was to tell them, ‘Stop!’ ‘Don’t!’ And try and protect my face because he was instantly punching me in the head and face.”

The video shows that after beating and tasering him for more than a minute, the cops finally managed to handcuff him, leaving Greenland’s face bloodied.

That was when Cannon noticed a woman recording from a few feet away and asked her to send him her footage.

“I’m so sorry what you guys have to deal with,” the woman tells the cop, apparently not witnessing how the cops had attacked him.

“It’s just work … this is normal for us,” he says.

Cannon then walks back to Greenland who is handcuffed and lying on his stomach and complaining about being beaten.

“You were fighting with us, bro,” Cannon tells him.

“You fought me!” Greenland corrects him. “I didn’t fight back.”

“You did not comply, that is why you got fought with,” Cannon responds.

In their police report, cops claimed he had “assumed a defensive fighting stance” and “would not obey officers’ commands,” according to KSL. But the videos shows us that is a lie.

Watch the edited video below and the two unedited videos here and here.

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Carlos Miller
Carlos Millerhttps://pinacnews.com
Editor-in-Chief Carlos Miller spent a decade covering the cop beat for various newspapers in the Southwest before returning to his hometown Miami and launching Photography is Not a Crime aka PINAC News in 2007. He also published a book, The Citizen Journalist's Photography Handbook, which is available on Amazon.

2 COMMENTS

  1. That’s government being Big Government, but the first person to be prosecuted should be the source of the fake complaint about someone breaking into cars, unless the complainant was talking about someone other than the victim. It looks like the complainant said something more than a tip about a break-in, because you don’t usually send four aggressive cops to a report of a property crime.

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