LAPD Officer's 16 Felony Recording Counts Reduced to Misdemeanors

LAPD Officer’s 16 Felony Recording Counts Reduced to Misdemeanors

Los Angeles County prosecutors charged LAPD Officer Daniel Flores on July 31, 2026, with 16 felony counts of illegal eavesdropping under California Penal Code section 632. On August 20, 2026, the District Attorney's Office moved to reduce all 16 counts to misdemeanors, and the court granted Flores one year of judicial diversion.

Information last verified on September 3, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: The felony charges described in the original version of this article no longer stand. On August 20, 2026, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced it had moved to reduce all 16 felony counts to misdemeanors, and the court granted Flores's request for one year of judicial diversion on all 16 misdemeanor counts. If Flores obeys all laws and completes diversion, the court will dismiss the case. Flores has not been convicted of anything.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers California law only, specifically Penal Code section 632's all-party consent requirement for confidential communications. Recording laws vary by state; consult the applicable statute for any other jurisdiction.

What Happened

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced on July 31, 2026, that it had filed 16 felony counts against LAPD Officer Daniel Flores for eavesdropping on or recording confidential communications in violation of California Penal Code section 632. Prosecutors allege that during 2024, Flores secretly recorded colleagues assigned to LAPD's background-investigations unit, the group responsible for vetting candidates for hire, without telling them he was recording.

According to the DA's office and multiple local outlets, Flores turned over roughly 90 recordings to LAPD's Internal Affairs division, asserting that some of the conversations captured coworkers making racist, sexist and homophobic remarks about job candidates and colleagues. In its August 20, 2026 announcement, the District Attorney's Office described the underlying conduct as recording "16 LAPD colleagues 122 times who were responsible for determining which candidates could be hired by LAPD." Flores also filed a civil hostile-workplace lawsuit in June 2026, in which he characterized the recordings as part of what he called a lawful investigation into departmental misconduct.

Prosecutors rejected that framing as a legal defense when the charges were filed. Announcing the charges, DA Nathan Hochman said the county would not excuse secret recording simply because the recorder believed the cause was just: "in our all-party consent state, where California has been one of the nation's leaders in protecting privacy and deterring illegal eavesdropping for over half a century, one cannot simply choose to break the law because one wants to pursue a personal agenda." Hochman added that "the options are not break the law or do nothing," pointing to internal grievance and legal channels as the lawful alternative to secret recording.

The charges were reduced to misdemeanors on August 20, 2026

Three weeks after filing, the District Attorney's Office reversed course on the severity of the charges. In an August 20, 2026 news release headed "To Encourage Whistleblowers to Come Forward, LAPD Officer's Illegal Recording Charges Reduced to Misdemeanors," the office announced that prosecutors had moved that day to reduce all 16 felony counts to 16 misdemeanor counts.

Hochman tied the decision directly to the risk that felony exposure would discourage people from reporting misconduct:

"In making this decision, I've carefully considered the feedback given by the public, community groups, local officials and members of our Office concerning the potential deterrence felony charges pose for whistleblowers coming forward. While those who break the law and illegally eavesdrop on others will still be held accountable, my 'hard middle' approach requires continual examination of the acts, the law and the impact a prosecution has on deterring criminals while incentivizing whistleblowers. Law enforcement officers should and will be held to a higher standard, but I don't want this case to discourage in any way legitimate whistleblowers seeking to report wrongdoing."

That passage is from District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman, quoted in the office's own news release of August 20, 2026.

Hochman added that "this 'hard middle' approach in this case makes it clear that illegal eavesdropping will be prosecuted but takes state prison off the table to ensure the best outcome moving forward." He also said the remarks the recordings captured "are deplorable, require fully exposing and warrant the disciplinary proceedings that each officer is facing," which the release presents as a separate track from the criminal case against Flores.

At the same hearing, Flores's attorneys asked the judge to grant him judicial diversion for one year on all 16 misdemeanors. The District Attorney's Office says prosecutors "submitted to the judge's discretion" on that request rather than opposing it, and the release's subheading states that the court granted the request. Under the terms the office describes, if Flores obeys all laws and successfully completes the diversion period, the court will then dismiss the case. Case 26CJCF04780 was prosecuted by the office's Justice System Integrity Division and investigated by LAPD's Internal Affairs Division.

Flores's defense attorney, Alan Jackson, had earlier pushed back publicly on the felony filing, arguing the case punished his client rather than the coworkers he recorded, and said Flores intended to plead not guilty. Flores has not been convicted of any count, and a grant of diversion is not a conviction or a finding of guilt.

What the Law Actually Says

California Penal Code section 632(a) makes it a crime to intentionally record or eavesdrop on a "confidential communication" using an electronic recording or amplifying device without the consent of every party to that communication. California is one of a minority of states that requires all-party consent (sometimes called two-party consent) rather than the one-party consent standard used federally and in most states. Our California recording laws overview walks through how that all-party rule applies across settings in the state.

The statute defines a "confidential communication" as one made in circumstances where a party reasonably expects that no one is recording or listening in without permission, excluding conversations made in a public gathering or any other setting where the parties should reasonably expect the conversation may be overheard. That threshold question, whether the setting genuinely carried a reasonable expectation of privacy, is often the central factual dispute in section 632 cases, since a workplace conversation can go either way depending on the circumstances. Our page on California workplace recording rules covers how the confidentiality analysis plays out on the job, and our guide to California rules for phone calls covers the same all-party requirement for recorded calls.

Section 632 is what California practitioners call a wobbler: the statute lets the same conduct be charged either as a felony or as a misdemeanor, which is why the District Attorney's Office was able to move the Flores counts from one to the other without changing the underlying allegations. Under the statute, a first violation carries a fine of up to $2,500 per violation, imprisonment in county jail of up to one year, imprisonment in state prison, or both a fine and imprisonment; a defendant with a prior conviction under section 632 or related eavesdropping statutes faces an enhanced fine of up to $10,000 per violation. With the counts now charged as misdemeanors, the DA's office has said state prison is off the table in this case.

Notably, section 632 does not include an exception for a recorder's motive, whether that motive is documenting misconduct, whistleblowing, or something else; the statute's consent requirement applies regardless of why the recording was made. The August 2026 charge reduction was a prosecutorial discretion decision about how to charge conduct under that statute. It did not amend section 632, and it does not create a whistleblower defense that the statute itself lacks.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team. This case is a clean illustration of a distinction that recurs across California eavesdropping prosecutions: section 632 regulates the act of secretly recording a confidential communication, not the content of what gets said or the recorder's reason for capturing it. A recording that documents genuinely offensive workplace conduct does not, under the statute as written, become lawful because of what it reveals. That is a deliberate design choice in California's privacy law, not an oversight, and it means the legal question in this case (whether Flores recorded confidential communications without consent) is analytically separate from the underlying workplace conduct he says the recordings show.

What the August 2026 reduction shows is where that tension actually gets resolved in practice. Because section 632 supplies no motive-based defense, the accommodation for a person who records in order to expose misconduct has to come from somewhere other than the statute's text, and here it came from charging discretion: the same alleged conduct, recharacterized from felony to misdemeanor, with the office saying in its own words that it did not want the case "to discourage in any way legitimate whistleblowers." That is a meaningful outcome for this defendant. It is not a change in the law, and it is not a rule any other prosecutor is bound to follow. A reader who takes away that California now tolerates secret workplace recording when the recorder has good motives would be drawing the wrong lesson from this record.

Whether Flores's specific recordings fell within any statutory exception, and whether the communications were truly confidential under the circumstances, were never resolved on the merits; the diversion grant ends the prosecution's forward motion without answering them. We are not predicting whether Flores will complete diversion or how any related proceeding will come out.

How This Affects You

This case does not change California law; it illustrates how existing law is already applied. Anyone in California who is considering recording a conversation, at work, at home, or elsewhere, should understand that Penal Code section 632's all-party consent requirement applies broadly and does not carve out an exception for good intentions, workplace investigations, or documenting suspected misconduct. The fact that one district attorney reduced charges in one case does not change the statute, and a different prosecutor facing similar facts could charge them as felonies. Employees who believe they are witnessing discriminatory or unlawful conduct at work generally have other avenues available, including internal HR or Equal Employment Opportunity complaints, union grievance procedures, state agencies such as California's Civil Rights Department, or consulting an employment attorney, none of which carry the criminal exposure that secret recording can. This article describes general legal principles only; it is not guidance on how to handle any individual's specific workplace situation.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers California law as of September 3, 2026, and describes a criminal case in which the defendant was charged, had the charges reduced to misdemeanors, and was granted judicial diversion, without being convicted. Facts may change as the case proceeds. Consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction for advice about your specific situation.

Related articles

• California's all-party consent recording law, explained
• How California's recording consent rules apply in the workplace
• California rules for recording phone calls
• A related CIPA case: California's vexatious-litigant crackdown
• Another recent CIPA dispute: the Otter.ai notetaker class action

Last updated: 2026-09-03. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-09-03.

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