Following criticism for filing felony charges against a Los Angeles police officer accused of illegally recording colleagues’ racist, sexist and homophobic workplace comments, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman on Wednesday, Aug. 19, announced he was lowering the charges to misdemeanors.
Hochman said in a press conference the felony charges were filed in the interest of “deterring criminal conduct while incentivizing legitimate whistleblowers.”
But, he added, “The way we charged the case was not making the message clear.”
Following filing of 16 felony eavesdropping charges against Daniel Flores, who has pleaded not guilty, Hochman faced criticism, including from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, that the charges send the wrong message and would deter future whistleblowers from coming forward with evidence out of fear they could face time behind bars.
“Our office works every single day with individuals who are whistleblowers who have brought wrongdoing forward through legitimate means,” the district attorney said. “We count on witnesses coming forward, showing the bravery to actually expose the criminal conduct, sometimes at a sacrifice to their own potential safety, and we make sure that safety is respected and protected at each point in the process.”
Flores, 43, secretly recorded 16 colleagues working in the LAPD’s Training Division in 2024. In January 2025, he turned over 122 recordings to the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Unit and the Office of the Inspector General.
Those recordings included fellow officers using slurs and making derogatory remarks about Mexican, Asian and Black people as well as women.
Hochman could have filed 122 charges, one for each recording, he said, but decided to file a charge for each victim instead.
Hochman reiterated his stance that those comments were unacceptable in a working environment and that the officers were subject to internal LAPD disciplinary proceedings.
If Flores was convicted of the felony charges, he could have faced up to 13 years in state prison. Once the charges are reduced Hochman said he believes Flores’ attorney will ask a judge for a one-year diversion program and, should Flores complete it without issue, the case would be dismissed.
In the diversion program, Flores would simply need to obey all laws for one year, Hochman said.
Prosecutors alleged Flores made the recordings of his colleagues without their permission. In California, state law requires all participants consent to being recorded in private conversations.
In a brief filed before Flores’ initial arraignment, Hochman said Flores had ulterior motives in submitting the recordings, with some of his colleagues telling investigators that Flores talked about suing the department and “winning the LAPD lottery,” while others accused Flores of initiating some of the conversations and then starting the recordings after he had made his comments.
Flores filed a hostile-workplace lawsuit against the city in June and said that he believed he made the recordings as part of a lawful investigation as a police officer.
Flores said he was subjected to a hostile workplace environment starting in 2021 after a new supervisor took over the LAPD’s recruitment division and allegedly made derogatory statements while encouraging others to do the same.
The lawsuit claims his co-workers made comments such as “enjoy watermelon between basketball,” called women a derogatory word and said they “cannot be trusted.” A supervisor, the suit says, said Dodger pitcher Fernando Valenzuela died because “he ate too many tacos;” he died of septic shock.
Flores’ attorney, Alan Jackson, told reporters following Flores’ arraignment that the case “sends a really, really scary message. And that message is if you expose racism and sexism and bigotry and misogyny and bias within the walls of the LAPD, then you’re going to be … the one exposed to potential state prison because of a prosecution like this.”
Hochman said his office doesn’t “just go ahead and charge a case and stop and just assume that it is set in stone and we will not change our minds.
“We listen to the reaction that a case gets,” he said.
“This is the live and learn,” Hochman continued. “We thought we had made it crystal clear on what we were trying to deter, which was illegal conduct, and what we were incentivizing.
“That line got blurred, so now we have to go back and make it absolutely crystal clear what is happening in this case,” the district attorney said.