By James Queally
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge dismissed a murder indictment Friday against a former Los Angeles police officer in the 2015 killing of an unarmed homeless man.
Judge Ronald S. Coen said prosecutors failed to meet the standards for a murder charge and failed to present exculpatory evidence to the 2024 grand jury that indicted ex-LAPD cop Clifford Proctor, who shot and killed Brendon Glenn during an attempted arrest in Venice Beach in 2015.
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“It cannot be said in any shape or form that the defendant had any malice,” which would be a necessary element of any murder charge, Coen said on Friday morning.
Proctor nodded along as Coen spoke and enveloped his attorney, Tom Yu, in a bear hug after the ruling was finalized. Outside the courtroom, Proctor said he planned to “pick up the pieces” of his life after a decade-plus legal saga.
The dismissal was granted over the objection of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. A spokesman for the agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Proctor, 60, was on patrol with his partner, Jonathan Kawahara, when he responded to calls about Glenn and his dog causing a disturbance in Venice Beach in May 2015. Glenn had just been thrown out of a bar and got into an argument with Proctor over the behavior of his dog, authorities have previously said. Proctor threatened to shoot the animal. Glenn responded by hurling several racial slurs at Proctor. Both men are Black.
Glenn walked toward another bar, where he got into an argument with a bouncer who denied him entry. When the officers moved to arrest Glenn, a struggle ensued and Proctor shot the 29-year-old twice in the back, killing him.
Through his attorneys, Proctor has always said he believed Glenn was reaching for his partner’s gun. But video evidence from the scene does not show Glenn reaching for the pistol, and Kawahara told investigators he did not believe Glenn was going for his gun at the time of the shooting.
The case has had a tortured legal history. Ex-District Attorney Jackie Lacey declined to file charges against Proctor in 2018, even after former Police Chief Charlie Beck publicly called on her to charge manslaughter. When he was elected on a police accountability platform in 2020, District Attorney George Gascón hired special prosecutor Lawrence Middleton to re-examine a number of Lacey’s decisions in a number of fatal police shootings, including the Proctor case.
Middleton secured a murder indictment in late 2024, as Gascón’s tenure was ending. But the statute of limitations on manslaughter, the charge most police officials and experts believed was appropriate in this case, had long expired by then.
“A prosecutor’s job is not to seek an indictment, it’s to seek justice,” Yu said Friday. “That’s not what happened here.”
Yu also said he still believed Proctor had just cause to kill Glenn.
“Do I think it’s justified? I think it’s completely justified. We sitting in the courtroom have no business to judge what Proctor and Kawahara were thinking that night,” he said.
Proctor was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents as he attempted to board an international flight last October, apparently unaware there was a warrant out for his arrest. The Times previously reported that current District Attorney Nathan Hochman had let the case languish for nearly his entire first year in office.
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