charged last month<\/a> with 16 felony counts of eavesdropping on or recording confidential communications.<\/p>\nFlores alleged that his unnamed supervisors and coworkers \u2014 who work for the LAPD team that evaluates aspiring officers for their character, suitability and qualifications \u2014 regularly made derogatory comments about officers and others who were Black, Asian, gay or Hispanic.<\/p>\n
In his lawsuit, Flores said he made the recordings in 2024 as a \u201clawful investigation as a police officer\u201d into department members allegedly using racist, sexist and homophobic slurs.<\/p>\n
When the charges were announced, District Attorney Nathan Hochman said he believes LAPD employees should be held accountable for sexist, homophobic and racist remarks, but emphasized that California is an all-party consent state.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne cannot simply choose to break the law because one wants to pursue a personal agenda,\u201d Hochman said. \u201cOne can address important issues by going through the proper legal channels. If one chooses a law-breaking path instead, then the consequences will be straightforward and significant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flores could face up to 13 years in prison if convicted on all counts, the DA\u2019s office said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The LAPD has not said whether any of the officers caught making disparaging remarks on the recordings were ever disciplined.<\/p>\n
When Flores was charged last month, his defense attorney, Alan Jackson, expressed shock that the LAPD employees accused of making racist comments were not the target of the DA\u2019s case, while the officer who reported them was.<\/p>\n
\u201cDaniel Flores 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,\u201d Jackson wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Department\u2019s answer was to investigate him. The District Attorney\u2019s answer is to prosecute him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flores\u2019 lawsuit, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, claims his coworkers made comments calling women \u201cbitches who cannot be trusted.\u201d Some coworkers also insulted Asians and Hispanics, while Flores\u2019 supervisor allegedly said former Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela died because \u201che ate too many tacos,\u201d the lawsuit states.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit also alleges Flores\u2019 coworkers made derogatory statements about sexual orientation, using references such as \u201cgay ass bitch,\u201d \u201cthe little gay one\u201d and \u201clittle bitches.\u201d Other coworkers allegedly made derogatory statements about Black people, including a comment that they \u201cenjoy watermelon between basketball,\u201d according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
According to the lawsuit, Flores submitted complaints about his coworkers to LAPD Internal Affairs and the Los Angeles Police Commission in January 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Los Angeles police officer accused of secretly recording coworkers allegedly making racist and homophobic remarks pleaded not…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":993543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,4530,224,5337],"class_list":["post-993542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-la","tag-lapd","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117073340679578946","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=993542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/993543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=993542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=993542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=993542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}