Ex-LAPD officer at center of controversial Venice shooting sentenced for misdemeanor domestic violence in O.C.

Ex-LAPD Officer Clifford Proctor, left, was involved in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man in Venice in 2015.

Aug. 16, 2018 6:15 PM PT

A former Los Angeles police officer at the center of the controversial shooting of an unarmed homeless man on the Venice boardwalk was sentenced Thursday to probation and community service for an unrelated misdemeanor domestic violence charge.

Clifford Proctor, who in 2017 left the LAPD after the fatal shooting of Brendon Glenn, pleaded guilty Aug. 8 to a misdemeanor count of disobeying a domestic violence restraining order in Orange County. Seven other domestic violence charges, including two domestic battery charges, were dropped as part of a plea deal, his public defender Rose Angulo said.

Proctor was also ordered to pay restitution to two victims who were present in the Westminster courtroom Thursday, complete 52 weeks of a treatment program for batterers, and honor a restraining order for three years, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office. He cannot own a weapon for 10 years.

Proctor was charged initially with misdemeanor battery in connection with a September 2016 incident in Huntington Beach.

Officials have revealed few details of the domestic violence allegations. Huntington Beach police and the Orange County district attorney’s office have denied repeated requests for more information. The complaint does not fully identify the people accusing him.

“Mr. Proctor is innocent of the charges filed against him alleging domestic battery,” Angulo said. “He has maintained his innocence since Sept. 10, 2016, and today he received justice when the [Dist. Atty.] dismissed all charges against him, except for one count.”

Angulo said Proctor admitted only to sending a text message to his fiancee after a protective order had been issued.

Proctor shot Glenn on May 5, 2015, as he and a partner tried to take the 29-year-old into custody after reports of a man yelling at patrons and fighting with a bouncer outside of a bar.

Proctor told investigators he believed the man’s hand was on his partner’s holster, but a video from the bar where the altercation took place contradicted his statement, a report by then-LAPD Chief Charlie Beck concluded.

Glenn’s shooting drew immediate attention, which increased in 2016 after the Police Commission, which oversees the Los Angeles Police Department, and Beck recommended that the district attorney’s office file criminal charges against Proctor. It was the first time Beck had recommended criminal charges against an officer in an on-duty shooting.

Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey disagreed with Beck and the commission.

“A duty to file criminal charges exists only when our office determines that the admissible evidence is of such a compelling force that it would warrant a conviction after considering the most plausible, reasonable and foreseeable defenses,” Lacey’s office wrote in a memo in March. “That is not the case here.”

The district attorney’s office hasn’t charged a law enforcement officer in an on-duty shooting in over 15 years.