Los Angeles County DA charged LAPD officer with 16 felony counts for recording colleagues' racist, sexist and homophobic remarks

On July 31, 2026, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office charged LAPD officer Daniel Flores with 16 felony counts of eavesdropping on and recording confidential communications, one count for each of 16 colleagues he secretly recorded during 2024 while assigned to the department's Recruitment and Employment Division. Flores made 122 recordings without his colleagues' consent under California's all-party-consent wiretapping law, and faced up to 13 years in state prison if convicted. He had submitted the recordings, which captured colleagues making racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks about candidates and coworkers, to LAPD's Internal Affairs Division and the Los Angeles Police Commission in January 2025 as part of a misconduct complaint.

Flores's attorney, Alan Jackson, said the prosecution amounted to retaliation for whistleblowing: "He did not leak this material. He did not sell it, post it or hand it to a reporter. He walked it into Internal Affairs and gave it to his own department, in an official complaint, because he believed the Department would do something about it." District Attorney Nathan Hochman defended the charges as neutral enforcement of the state's eavesdropping law, saying "one cannot simply choose to break the law because one wants to pursue a personal agenda." All 16 officers Flores recorded were separately subjected to internal LAPD discipline ranging from reprimand to termination over the remarks.

Updates

2026-08-20 — DA's office reduced the felony charges to misdemeanors, citing whistleblower-deterrence concerns [2, 4]

Facing what Hochman described as widespread community, elected-official, and legal criticism that felony prosecution would discourage future whistleblowers from coming forward, the District Attorney's office moved to reduce all 16 counts against Flores from felonies to misdemeanors. The office did not oppose Flores's request for one year of judicial diversion, under which the case would be dismissed if he commits no further offenses. Hochman said his office still believed Flores broke the law but did not want the prosecution to chill legitimate whistleblowers.