Prosecutors will not file criminal charges against 2 people at center of Los Angeles racism scandal

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Prosecutors will not file criminal charges against 2 people at center of Los Angeles racism scandal

2024-10-16 09:25 Last Updated At：09:30

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles city attorney’s office said Tuesday that it does not plan to file criminal charges against two people who were investigated in connection with the unlawful recording of a racist conversation that rocked City Hall and prompted the city council president to resign after the audio was leaked in 2022.

The local prosecutors declined to file misdemeanors against the two people, a married couple, just months after the district attorney’s office announced that it would not pursue any felony charges against them.

The Associated Press is not naming the two people because they were not charged. Both previously worked at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and lived at a home that investigators traced to social media posts highlighting the controversial recording.

Prosecutors could not meet the burden of proof for a case, even though the district attorney's office, in a charge-evaluation worksheet, said “the evidence indicates that a crime was committed by one or both of these individuals.”

Under California law, all parties must consent to the recording of a private conversation or phone call, otherwise the person who made the recording could face criminal and civil penalties. The state’s wiretapping statutes are among the strongest in the nation and allow the “injured party” — the person being recorded without their permission — to sue.

“After careful review, it was determined that there was insufficient evidence to meet the constitutional standard of proof,” city attorney spokesperson Ivor Pine wrote in an email to the AP on Tuesday. “Because of this, our office will not be filing criminal charges.”

The scandal was triggered by a leaked recording of crude, racist comments during a private meeting in 2021 in which four Latino Democrats plotted to expand their political power at the expense of Black voters during a realignment of council district boundaries. The recording was leaked the following year.

Council President Nury Martinez and powerful labor leader Ron Hererra resigned in disgrace. Councilman Gil Cedillo’s term ended weeks later, but Councilman Kevin de León resisted calls for his ouster — including from the White House — and he ran for reelection. He faces a runoff in November.

The meeting occurred at the headquarters of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, known locally as the “LA Fed.” The couple both worked at the LA Fed at the time.

The couple's identities have been made public in court filings and media accounts. Bob Schwartz, an attorney for the husband, said his client is "relieved that no charges will be brought against him.”

While his client has been “adamant” from the beginning that he was not responsible for the recording, Schwartz said whoever did it “performed a great public service” for the city and acted in the tradition of whistleblowing.

An attorney for the man's wife did not immediately respond to the AP's request for comment late Tuesday.

No other potential suspects or persons of interest in the recording have been named by investigators or prosecutors.

Pine, in the city attorney's office, and a spokesperson for the district attorney did not immediately return requests for comment late Tuesday to say whether anyone else had come under investigation in connection with the case.

Investigators said the recording was anonymously posted on Reddit in 2022 and that a Twitter account amplified the post. Both accounts were associated with an email account that was traced to an IP address — a numeric designation that identifies its location on the internet — and linked to the couple’s home.

Detectives recommended charging the couple with felony eavesdropping and illegal audio recording or wiretapping charges in relation to the recording of that 2021 conversation as well as another of a 2022 phone call between Herrera and a federation spokesperson, according to a charge-evaluation worksheet released by the district attorney’s office.

The district attorney declined to file felony charges earlier this year and referred the case to the city attorney’s office for possible misdemeanors.

Cedillo and de León have separate pending lawsuits against the couple.

The district attorney’s charge-evaluation worksheet notes that both people had “similar motives to carry out the offense,” but it does not detail the alleged motives. Prosecutors wrote that the evidence indicates either person, or both, made the recording.

“However, it is unclear how the unlawful recordings took place, the device used to do so, or who uploaded the recordings online and created the anonymous accounts on Reddit, Twitter, and Gmail,” the worksheet states.

Harris works to energize Black male voters and denounces Trump support of 'stop and frisk'

2024-10-16 09:28 Last Updated At：09:30

DETROIT (AP) — Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris warned Tuesday that Republican Donald Trump would try to “institutionalize” harsh policing tactics that disproportionately affect Black men nationwide as she promised to push for legislation to address discriminatory law enforcement practices.

During an hourlong radio town hall moderated by Charlamagne tha God, host of “The Breakfast Club” show, Harris added that she would work to decriminalize marijuana, which accounts for arrests that also disproportionately impact Black men, and she acknowledged that racial disparities and bias exist in everyday life for Black people — in home ownership, health care, economic prosperity and even voting.

While Harris worked to energize Black men, Trump focused on women as he faced an all-female audience during a Fox News town hall in battleground Georgia. The former president sidestepped questions about the erosion of abortion rights under his watch, leaning instead into the nation’s culture wars by vowing to ban male-born athletes from competing in women’s sports.

Trump also stood by his recent description of his political opponents as “the enemy within” — rhetoric that evokes authoritarian regimes.

Just 21 days before the final votes are cast in the 2024 presidential season, Harris and Trump are scrambling to energize key constituencies in what looks to be a razor-tight election. Harris, who would be the nation's first woman president, hopes to expand her party's advantage among female voters, while Trump is showing modest signs of progress among Black men, who have overwhelmingly backed Democrats in the past.

A small shift among any group could swing the election.

Harris told Charlamagne that despite the persistence of racial bias, no one has a pass to sit out the election.

“We should never sit back and say, ‘OK, I’m not going to vote because everything hasn’t been solved,’" she said. “This is a margin-of-error race. It’s tight. I’m going to win. I’m going to win, but it’s tight.”

The vice president took questions that listeners called in, but also from a series of people who joined in-studio, including Pastor Solomon Kinloch Jr., pastor of Detroit's Triumph Church.

When asked about reparations, or potential government payments to the descendants of enslaved people, Harris said the notion “has to be studied, there’s no question about that.” It's a position she's taken before, but which Trump's campaign immediately pounced on, saying the vice president was “open” to payments that could cost billions.

Trump has called for a return to “proven crime fighting methods, including stop and frisk and broken windows policing.” The tactic, deployed by the New York City Police Department, involved stopping, questioning and sometimes frisking people deemed “reasonably suspicious." It disproportionately affected Black and Hispanic men, and in 2013 the policy was found to have violated the U.S. Constitution.

Harris said part of her challenge is that Trump’s campaign is “trying to scare people away because otherwise they know they have nothing to run on. Ask Donald Trump what is his plan for Black America. Ask him.”

Trump did not respond to Harris' criticism Tuesday, focusing instead on cultural issues that resonate with different groups of voters.

He pledged to ban “men in women’s sports,” a reference to transgender women allowed to compete against women in some cases. The issue has emerged as a central focus of Trump's closing message, although there are relatively few examples across the country.

When the host pressed Trump on how he would enforce a ban, Trump said: “You just ban it. President bans. You just don’t let it happen.”

Earlier, Harris stopped by a Black-owned art gallery, joined by actors Don Cheadle, Delroy Lindo and Detroit native Cornelius Smith Jr., for a conversation with Black men focused on entrepreneurship.

After taping the interview, Harris addressed a nearby watch party, telling hundreds of cheering supporters that Detroit is a town of people "who have grit, who have determined passion, and who have optimism and ambition and apply to that a lot of hard work.”

She said that "makes Detroit a first-class city in the United States of America now and always has.”

Her comments came after Trump insulted Detroit while campaigning here last week and suggested again during remarks Tuesday in Chicago that the city is "just horrible.”

Harris this week also announced a series of new proposals dubbed the “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men," meant to offer Black men more economic advantages — including providing forgivable business loans of up to $20,000 for entrepreneurs and creating more apprenticeships. The plans would also support the study of sickle cell and other diseases more common in Black men.

The focus on Black men sharpened last week when former President Barack Obama campaigned for Harris in Pittsburgh and said he wanted to speak “some truths” to Black male voters, suggesting some " just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”

The vice president’s campaign says it doesn’t believe Black men will flip in large numbers to supporting Trump, especially after strongly backing Democrat Joe Biden, with Harris as his running mate, in 2020. They are more concerned about a measurable percentage of Black males opting not to vote at all.

Meanwhile, Harris’ support among women has been generally been solid since she took over the top of the Democratic ticket, but Trump is aiming to narrow the margins on Election Day. That could be tough since the former president has seen his support among women, especially in the suburbs of many key swing states, soften since his term in the White House.

A September AP-NORC poll found more than half of registered voters who are women have a somewhat or very favorable view of Harris, while only about one-third have a favorable view of Trump. To reverse the trend, Trump has sought to cast himself as being able to personally shield women from various threats.

“You will be protected, and I will be your protector," Trump said at a September rally. He's also suggested that, should he win, women will no longer have a reason to think about abortion, after three Supreme Court judges that he appointed helped in 2022 to overturn the landmark ruling.

Harris said Tuesday that it was comical for Trump considered himself a president for women, particularly as maternal mortality is rising and roughly 1 in 3 women live in states with increasingly restrictive abortion bans.

“And they want to strut around and say this is in the best interest of women and children? And they have been silent on Black maternal mortality?” she asked.

Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Jill Colvin in Chicago contributed to this report.

Prosecutors will not file criminal charges against 2 people at center of Los Angeles racism scandal

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Prosecutors will not file criminal charges against 2 people at center of Los Angeles racism scandal

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