Police officer who recorded colleagues' racism speaks out: LAPD response 'ruined my life'

This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred Daniel Flores, the LAPD officer who set off a political firestorm when he reported some of his police colleagues for making racist, sexist and homophobic comments behind closed doors, broke his silence on Tuesday. Flores, whose only public comments had for months been filtered through his legal team, agreed to speak with The Times, detailing the toll that the prior year and a half had taken on him. “It’s definitely been a roller coaster of a struggle,” he said. “As you know, I didn’t see this coming or turning out like this.” Last month, L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman charged Flores with 16 felonies, alleging he violated a state eavesdropping law by secretly recording his fellow LAPD officers. The charges could have carried a sentence of 13 years in prison, but last week, after facing criticism from Mayor Karen Bass and others , Hochman downgraded the counts to misdemeanors with a diversion agreement that will probably allow Flores to avoid any time behind bars. L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said an LAPD officer w ho was charged with multiple felonies for secretly recording racist, sexist and homophobic remarks by his colleagues will instead face misdemeanor charges. Internal LAPD documents reviewed by The Times raise new questions about the timing of Flores’ prosecution. The files show that the department originally presented the case to prosecutors on July 1, 2025. Ten days later, the district attorney’s office declined to bring charges. The case sat dormant for about a year, before Flores filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the city in L.A. County Superior Court, alleging he faced retaliation for speaking out about misconduct. Less than three weeks later, the district attorney’s office announced that it would move forward with the prosecution. Flores and his attorney allege the case was further retaliation for his decision to file a lawsuit. On Tuesday, the district attorney’s office said that it didn’t pursue charges against Flores in July 2025 because it lacked the evidence to “definitely establish” that he had made the recordings and sent the case back to the LAPD for further investigation. “That changed when Flores filed his own civil lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles,” the of fice said in a statement. A spokesperson said that even though Flores had admitted to making the recordings, the LAPD didn’t release that information to the district attorney until after Flores filed his lawsuit. Hochman said last week that he wanted to thread the needle between punishing the illegal recording and not dissuading whistleblowers from coming forward. “If you go ahead and illegally eavesdrop in our community, you will face criminal prosecution for doing it, so don’t take out your cellphones and or your smart glasses or anything else,” he said, while encouraging whistleblowers to work with the district attorney’s office to gather evidence in the future. Flores told The Times that he initially filed an anonymous Internal Affairs complaint against members of his LAPD unit in February 2025. Flores worked in a recruitment division, which handles job applications from aspiring officers. According to Flores’ complaint, he heard officers make jokes and racial comments about Black candidates who interviewed for the department, focusing on their “failures and adverse histories, which prevented them from being hired as Los Angeles Police Officers.” A few days after filing the com plaint, he said, he received a call from Internal Affairs investigators who notified him that someone had accused him of making racist remarks. Flores vehemently disputes this, saying that it was clearly an attempt to discredit him. When he reached out to the police union for legal representation, he said, he was told that there was a conflict of interest because one of the union’s attorneys was already representing some of the accused officers. Gợi ý thực hành: 1. Theo dõi thông báo từ cơ quan địa phương tại California. 2. Kiểm tra nguồn chính thức trước khi chia sẻ lại thông tin.