The Richmond police plain-clothes detective who shot and killed Luis Angel Torres Rivera during a reported confrontation on Interstate 80 last month has been identified as Brandon Hodges, according to the California Department of Justice.
Torres Rivera died at about 7:15 a.m. when, Richmond police said, Hodges, traveling on this way to work westbound on I-80 in an unmarked vehicle, stopped to help a gold Nissan sedan that was blocking the far left lane.
Hodges, a 13-year veteran of the department who has won “Officer of the Year” five times, reportedly approached Torres Rivera, who was standing near the vehicle while holding a metal object, when an altercation happened and Torres Rivera was shot.
An RPD press release referenced “unconfirmed reports” that indicated that Torres Rivera “may have been swinging the object at passing vehicles before the detective’s arrival.”
Torres was subsequently identified by the DOJ and a GoFundMe campaign last week.
On Friday night, Richmond Police Officer’s Association President Ben Therriault put out a statement on the union’s Facebook defending Hodges’ actions during the incident.
“Based on the facts known and the totality of the circumstances, the RPOA maintains that Det. Brandon Hodges acted lawfully and was fully justified in defending himself and others during a rapidly evolving and dangerous encounter,” the statement reads. “Officer-involved incidents are intensely scrutinized, as they should be. We remain confident that the ongoing independent review will continue to confirm what the evidence already shows: Detective Hodges’ actions were reasonable, necessary, and consistent with both the law and his training.”
The RPOA also cautioned the public to “allow the investigative process to proceed based on facts and evidence, not speculation” and that the union expects the City of Richmond to “fully support its officers throughout this process.”
Last Tuesday night during the Richmond City Council meeting, a number of officers from the RPOA, including Nicholas Remick — the officer involved in the two fatal shootings of Jose De Jesus Mendez, 51, and Angel Montaño, 27, in 2025 who has yet to be reinstated for those shootings — spoke during the open forum to call for the council to finalize contractual bargaining with the union and to reinstate Remick. Remick and fellow officer Colton Stocking’s reinstatement has not been approved by City Manager Shasa Curl since the August shooting of Montaño which has put the union and city leaders at odds.
Hodges, who now is assigned as a plain-clothes detective to the department’s General Crimes Unit, previously served as a patrol officer and K9 handler until 2024 when his longtime dog ‘Gunnar’ retired.
Aside from his accolades, however, Hodges also has dealt with some controversy.
A 2022 Federal lawsuit found that Hodges failed to intervene during a 2018 arrest of a man by Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office deputies who used excessive force that included using a carotid hold and beat the man with a flashlight while he was already unconscious. The ruling cost the city over half a million dollars in damages. The verdict was later vacated in 2024, according to court records, though the city and the man involved settled for the same amount of money as a stipulation for having the decision vacated.
Prior to that, Hodges was named in a 2021 San Jose Mercury News investigation looking into K9 use of force in Richmond from 2014 to 2019. The report found that Hodges and ‘Gunnar’ injured people in 17 cases, including seven each in 2018 and 2019. In total during that period, Richmond police dogs bit people in 73 incidents.
The information was only made available after that publication sued the city for disclosure of those records.
Therriault praised Hodges in the Mercury article as one of the Richmond’s most productive officers in making arrests and recovering guns.
“He’s what you’d call a good street cop,” Therriault said in the report. “There’s not a lot of us left doing that work.”
