Lawyers for the LAPD officer charged with multiple felonies for secretly recording his colleagues’ racist, sexist and homophobic comments issued a scathing response to Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, accusing the D.A. of making “a desperate effort to save face” and attempting to discredit their client ahead of his arraignment Monday.
Officer Daniel Flores has said he heard co-workers refer to Black people as “monkeys” who like grape soda and eat watermelon between basketball games, according to a retaliation lawsuit he filed last year. The suit claims Flores also heard colleagues call female officers “bitches” who couldn’t be trusted and alleged a supervisor said Mexican Dodgers legend Fernando Valenzuela died of septic shock because he “ate too many” tacos.
Flores was flanked by a phalanx of attorneys who represent him in both his civil and criminal cases as he arrived in a downtown courtroom to face the charges. He said little during the brief hearing other than telling the judge that he understood his right to a speedy preliminary hearing and that he pleaded not guilty. His next court date was set for Sept. 9.
Flores was charged with 16 counts of felony eavesdropping after he secretly taped fellow officers in the LAPD’s Training Division in 2024. If convicted, he could face up to 13 years in prison.
State law makes it is a crime for someone to record a conversation without the consent of other participants, unless they have been granted a court order to do so. Flores’ attorneys have argued that his actions were allowed under the California Invasion of Privacy Act because he was doing so in the course of his duties as a police officer.
In the days since the charges were announced, the case has sparked fierce criticism of Hochman and LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell. Those blasting the decision to prosecute Flores include L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who said last week the case could have a chilling effect on others who sought to expose misconduct within the LAPD’s ranks.
On Friday, the district attorney’s office made public a 27-page motion asking for a lengthy preliminary hearing in the case. The filing alleged Flores deceptively edited the recordings to hide his own insensitive remarks and suggested he was motivated by a desire to win a large legal settlement in court.
In his response to the motion, the officer’s attorney, Alan Jackson, accused Hochman of releasing the information in an attempt seize control of the narrative and try the case in the court of public opinion.
“The reader is meant to come away with two impressions at once: that Mr. Hochman is supposedly appalled by the homophobic and racist remarks made by certain members of law enforcement, but that Mr. Flores is the one who should be punished for reporting the individuals who made the racist and homophobic remarks,” the filing said.
In response to Jackson’s comments, Hochman said Monday that the filing of detailed motions is normal in the federal system, where he spent years as a prosecutor handling a number of different cases, including police corruption, in the 1990s.
“We write detailed briefs because we want the defense to have what they need to do their job. That isn’t a public relations strategy, it’s about due process,” Hochman said in an email. “We often hear from defense attorneys that we haven’t provided enough information to provide a defense, so it’s a little ironic to hear the opposite complaint here.”
The motion for a “long cause” preliminary hearing filed by Hochman last week was described as unorthodox by two L.A. County prosecutors who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. Both described the document as a press release masked as a court filing.
Normally, if prosecutors are expecting a lengthy preliminary hearing, they simply will ask the judge to ensure the case goes to a “long cause” courtroom, typically on the 9th floor of the downtown courthouse that is often home to cases receiving intense media attention.
“It’s not a thing. No one in our office files that,” one prosecutor said.
It’s not the first time this year that the office submitted an abnormal court filing to release information about a case. In April, prosecutors made public a nine-page “pre-preliminary hearing brief” that revealed horrific details about the sexual abuse and dismemberment of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, whom prosecutors allege was killed by the singer D4vd.
The prosecutors who spoke to The Times anonymously also said they’d never heard of such a filing. The singer’s defense team objected to it being made public, but a judge denied their request to seal the document.
For the record:
2:25 p.m. Aug. 10, 2026An earlier version of this story misidentified the deputy district attorney prosecuting Flores as Lana Barnett. L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Ryan Tracy is assigned to the case.
The prosecutors also said it was “odd” that the Friday motion was filed directly by Hochman, rather than Deputy. Dist. Atty. Ryan Tracy, the prosecutor assigned to the case from the Justice Systems Integrity Division.
Jackson made a similar argument in his filing, noting that no prosecutor other than Hochman signed the “preliminary hearing brief.” Jackson described the document as a thinly veiled attempt to “prejudice Mr. Flores and impact the jury pool” by releasing damaging information about the officer.
The D.A.’s decision to release such information before the arraignment and then issue a press release amounted to a “publicity stunt,” Jackson said in the filing.
Hochman said he filed the motion personally on Friday to affirm his conviction to pursuing the case.
“I signed my name to it because I stand behind it. The position that the ends do not justify the means, that law enforcement officers cannot engage in criminal conduct to carry out their goals, is one that the public needs to know I strongly embrace,” he said. “It is also a position that those thinking of committing crimes need to hear personally from the D.A., to be deterred from engaging in such conduct.”
Jackson also accused Hochman of contradicting himself, questioning the D.A.’s efforts to justify the actions of officers that Flores recorded using terms such as “rapeable” and “monkeys.” The motion, Jackson noted, also relies heavily on the observations of the very officers against whom Flores had leveled claims — and who were under internal investigation by the LAPD.
Hochman’s Friday motion on more than one occasion refers to the officers’ remarks as “locker room talk.” The filing also made public more information about the offensive remarks captured by Flores than previously was known, and the lengthy preliminary hearing will involve each officer who made improper comments being identified in public.
Jackson, a former L.A. County prosecutor who defended Harvey Weinstein, is at the front of a high-powered legal team backing Flores. The team also includes Caleb Mason, a former federal prosecutor in San Diego, and — on the civil side — Greg Smith and Diana Wells, two veteran labor attorneys who have won numerous multimillion-dollar settlements on behalf of LAPD officers who sued the Police Department.
After Monday’s hearing, Jackson told reporters that the prosecution of Flores sends a “scary message … that if you expose racism and sexism and bigotry and misogyny within the walls of the LAPD, then you’re going to be the one that’s frog-marched into court.”
In his motion to the court, Jackson said his client tried to report the misconduct through proper channels, but there was little reason to believe that such complaints would be taken seriously. He cited a recent Times story showing that the department has upheld only a small fraction of the nearly 5,000 biased policing complaints made against LAPD officers in the last decade.
Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
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