By Stephen Oduntan
Contributing Writer
LOS ANGELES — Felony charges filed against a Los Angeles Police Department officer who secretly recorded his colleagues making racist, sexist and homophobic comments have been reduced to misdemeanor counts at the prosecution’s request, but members of the City Council still weren’t satisfied with District Attorney Nathan Hochman decision.
At the Aug. 25 City Council meeting, Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez argued that reducing the charges does not undo the chilling effect of bringing them in the first place.
“I’m glad he’s reducing the charges, but a charge is a charge,” Hernandez said.
She called for the remaining charges to be dismissed and said the city may now have to repair damage done to employees’ willingness to report misconduct.
“We’re gonna have to do a lot of remediation and repair harm that has happened with this case,” Hernandez said.
She predicted some LAPD employees would remain afraid to report misconduct until clear protections exist against retaliation and damage to their careers.
Her comments came as council members considered a resolution introduced by Councilman Hugo Soto-Martínez in response to the Flores prosecution.
Soto-Martínez said that charging Flores had shifted public attention from the alleged racism, homophobia and misogyny he exposed to the conduct of the whistleblower himself.
The underlying conduct, Soto-Martínez said, represented “a betrayal of our communities” and a failure by the LAPD unit involved. He urged the council to keep its focus on “accountability for the conduct that was exposed.”
Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, however, emphasized another side of the debate.
Rodriguez said city employees — sworn and civilian — need safe procedures for reporting abuses of public trust without fear of retaliation. But she also said Flores had gone beyond what whistleblower protections legally permit.
“We want to make sure that people don’t take matters into their own hands and break the law in order to do that,” Rodriguez said.
“We need to make sure that there are lawful ways for whistleblowers to communicate and identify and reveal what is occurring.”
Rodriguez said she has introduced a motion aimed at creating clearer procedures for city employees to report misconduct without exposing themselves to additional liability.
The competing remarks exposed a question that reducing Flores’ charges has not resolved: whether the prosecution corrected unlawful conduct by a whistleblower or damaged the very culture of internal reporting city officials say they are trying to build.
Hochman said he still believes his office was justified in charging LAPD Officer Daniel Flores with 16 felonies for secretly recording colleagues accused of making racist, sexist and homophobic remarks.
But after weeks of criticism over the prosecution, Hochman has reduced all 16 counts to misdemeanors — not because he believes the case became weaker, he said, but because of the message the felony charges were sending to potential whistleblowers.
“Nothing changed with respect to either the facts or the law,” Hochman said.
What changed was his assessment of what the prosecution was communicating beyond the courtroom.
Flores was placed in a diversion program that will allow him to avoid prison time and could result in the case being dismissed in one year.
As criticism mounted from Mayor Karen Bass, civil rights advocates and members of the City Council, Hochman said he became concerned that legitimate whistleblowers might believe they would not be protected if they came forward.
“And that’s a message that I didn’t want to send,” he said.
Hochman stopped short of conceding that the original charges were excessive. Instead, he described the reduction as a “rebalancing” and said prosecutors continually reassess their cases.
“We constantly reevaluate in this office what we’re doing,” he said.
Another question surrounding the case now has at least a partial answer: What happened to the people Flores recorded?
Hochman said each of the 16 officers he said engaged in the offensive speech is facing disciplinary action by the LAPD.
“Each one of the 16 officers who engaged in this hate speech is now facing disciplinary actions,” Hochman said.
The consequences, he said, could range “from a reprimand to a suspension to a termination.”
That disclosure presents two different forms of accountability: Flores remains under criminal prosecution for allegedly making the recordings, while the officers Hochman said engaged in the offensive speech face an internal LAPD disciplinary process.
Hochman said the distinction is rooted in the difference between offensive speech and criminal conduct. Racist, sexist or homophobic workplace speech may warrant employment discipline, he said, but the alleged remarks at issue did not constitute crimes his office could prosecute.
For Melina Abdullah, a Cal State Los Angeles professor and co-founder and director of Black Lives Matter Grassroots, however, the larger question remains how Hochman exercises prosecutorial discretion.
Before the charges were reduced, Abdullah argued that “prosecutions are always at the discretion of prosecutors.” She contrasted the felony case against Flores with Hochman’s decisions not to prosecute law enforcement officers in fatal use-of-force cases, including Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Ty Shelton in the 2023 shooting death of Niani Finlayson.
When confronted with that criticism, Hochman challenged Abdullah by name.
“Usually Melina Abdullah is the one that’s telling me that the ends can’t justify the means,” Hochman said. “But here, when she likes the ends, she seems to be OK with police officers using illegal means to get there.”
Abdullah laughed off the characterization.
“That’s hilarious, because how would he know what ‘Melina Abdullah’ would ‘usually tell him’?” she said. “We’ve literally only ever had two exchanges.”
Hochman maintained that his position is consistent.
“I’m not gonna let any officer use the ends to justify any illegal means to get there,” he said.
The dispute over discretion extends beyond Flores.
Hochman’s office declined to prosecute Shelton in Finlayson’s death, concluding that it could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the deputy’s use of deadly force was unlawful.
Brad Gage, an attorney representing Finlayson’s family, disagrees with that conclusion but acknowledged the higher evidentiary burden prosecutors face in criminal cases.
“Their conclusion is that they might not be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt,” Gage said. “My conclusion is, I think they would and could.”
But Gage offered an unexpected answer when asked whether the Flores and Finlayson decisions demonstrate inconsistent prosecutorial discretion.
“I think there is a consistent approach,” he said. “And I think the approach is that the District Attorney’s Office has placed an extra high burden when going after police officers for criminal misconduct.”
Gage nevertheless agrees with reducing Flores’ charges, calling felony prosecution for the alleged recording offenses “very unusual.”
“You don’t want cops being afraid that if they report wrongdoing, they’re going to be retaliated against,” he said.
That concern now reaches beyond lawyers and activists.
Hernandez told her council colleagues Aug. 25 that Hochman’s prosecution “severely degraded the trust the city has been building with thousands of city workers, including those within the LAPD.”
Hochman says reducing the charges was intended, in part, to prevent that message from taking hold.
Stephen Oduntan is a freelance writer for Wave Newspapers.
