Election 2020 was a disaster, not just because Trump lost the election (unfairly, I might add). In Los Angeles County, where I live, I witnessed the flagrantly pro “criminal justice reform” former District Attorney of San Francisco, George Gascon, carpetbagged down from the Bay Area and become the District Attorney for Los Angeles County.
His opponent, incumbent Jackie Lacey, wasn’t perfect. She called illegal aliens “undocumented”; she fumbled numerous public integrity cases, including against the infamous former LA County Assessor John Noguez; and she went out of her way to appease the left by dismissing a slew of marijuana cases.
All of that liberalizing did her no favors, as Black Lives Matter activists harassed her at candidate forums, town halls, and even her own home.
She lost to Gascon, and LA County lost any semblance of law and order for four years.
Mothers whose sons had been murdered by gang-bangers voted for the George Soros-backed insurgent, but within weeks regretted their vote and joined a recall effort to get the guy out of office. One mother was bulldozed by a felony juvenile offender driving his car down a narrow alley in Venice. A registered Democrat who had voted for Gascon, she went on Fox News and admitted that she had made a mistake.
But the damage was done. Smash-and-grab robberies proliferated across the county. Thieves even targeted the Del Amo Fashion Center in my home of Torrance, CA—that never happened before. Murders increased, homeless camps and all their vagrant crime spread. Juvenile offenders committing all sorts of crimes also skyrocketed, because Gascon had announced at the outset that he would go easy on “the kids,” refusing to try them as adults, and ordering no prosecutions for misdemeanor offenses.
This is criminal justice reform? Not one bit, and remember that Gascon rose to power at the height of the “Defund the Police” movement along with Biden’s open border atrocities.
Everyone woke up, in a good way, about Gascon, but after three failed recalls, LA County voters would have to wait for the next election.
And in came Nathan Hochman. In 2022, he ran for state Attorney General as a liberal Republican. He earned enough votes to get just above 40%, decent for a Republican in a deep blue state.
Then came the real opportunity to win and do good: he entered the race to replace Gascon, switching to Independent and backing away from all national politics in the process, aside from a tepid endorsement of Kamala Harris so that Gascon could not smear his opponent as a “Trump puppet.”
Hochman won, and things have never been better in Los Angeles County (at least compared to the last four to eight years. Remember that even Jackie Lacey was kind of a flop.)
DA Hochman is doing the right things. He has rolled back the pro-criminal polices of his corrupt progressive predecessor. He even hosted a town hall in Torrance, CA, urging the governor and the state legislature to provide more funding so that the county could fully implement the people-backed, real criminal justice reform in Prop 36.
I respect all this. For the first time in years as an LA County resident, I voted for someone who won in a county race, and he has exceeded expectations. He may publish some disagreements with the Trump administration, and he does attend a few liberal events here and there, but I don’t care: He’s getting the job done. He even reinstated the death penalty, something which Lacey as well as Gascon had refused to consider.
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With this immense and hopeful background, I want to drill into a recent controversy swamping Hochman’s office.
The SoCal News Group (which also provides news coverage for my South Bay home) reported: “D.A. facing criticism over charges against LAPD officer who secretly recorded colleagues’ derogatory remarks.”
Here’s a decent summary from the report:
Following the filing of felony charges against a Los Angeles police officer for recording his co-workers’ derogatory remarks, District Attorney Nathan Hochman is facing criticism from Mayor Karen Bass about that decision.
Officer Daniel Flores, 43, faces 16 felony counts of eavesdropping after the recordings were deemed by the District Attorney’s Office to have been obtained illegally. In those recordings, fellow officers in the LAPD’s Training Division were heard using slurs and making derogatory remarks about Mexican, Asian, and Black people, as well as women. The recordings were made in 2024.
If convicted, Flores could face up to 13 years in state prison.
Hochman is charging a police officer for recording his colleagues without their permission. What’s the big deal? Unlike most states, California requires the consent of all parties before any recordings can take place in private. Granted, I think it’s unfair to prevent citizens or employees from recording their colleagues or elected officials in one-on-one conversations. Why would we not want to expose our leaders or other government actors when they do something wrong? Mayor Bass—who should be focusing on her burned-out, hollowed-out shell of city—claims that Flores deserve whistleblower protection.
It’s not a crime to say mean things about people. There’s no justification for such an argument.
The law is the law, and a police officer cannot undermine the integrity and trust of his station, unit, or his partners.
Hochman is facing backlash from pro-police forces, too. After all, part of Hochman’s restorative success included reversing the anti-police agenda of the previous administration. Gascon had pledged to prosecute rogue cops, and he even reopened a case against two Torrance police officers after they justifiably fired on a suspect who had what appeared to be a firearm in his lap. To his credit, Hochman has dropped the charges and moved to dismiss the case against those police officers.
Hochman is not anti-cop. He wants to support law enforcement across the country. LA County Sheriff Robert Luna joined him at the Torrance town hall last year in part as a show of solidarity and cooperation.
All of this and more should show us that Hochman is doing the right thing, and his integrity is only enhanced because of this action. No one is above the law, and for a rogue cop to record other cops to implicate them in anything, that lowers morale in the worst way.
Cops NEED to be able to discuss confidential matters without the risk of release of information. Sure, police officers say nasty things in private (who hasn’t?). Yes, they hold a position in society in which they should be above reproach. But should we allow law enforcement abolitionists to exploit these private moral failings, and allow a rogue officer to get away with betraying the truth of his department and violating state law?
No way. Hochman is showing his true colors and character by taking this case. I think he should work out a proper plea deal, but Officer Flores needs to face hard time for what he did.
That said, we do need to amend the consent-to-record laws in the state of California, as well. Hochman has remarked that the unprofessionalism of the specific police officers is a problem. I hope he takes the opportunity to call on the state legislature to amend those laws.