A former LAPD officer was able to fly in and out of the country several times and live freely in Southern California for more than a year despite an active warrant for his arrest in the 2015 killing of a homeless man, according to his defense attorney and L.A. County prosecutors leading his pending murder case.
A grand jury indicted Clifford Proctor, 60, in September 2024, after the district attorney’s office reopened an investigation into the shooting death of Brendon Glenn. Proctor shot Glenn, 29, twice in the back during an attempted arrest in 2015 in Venice Beach. Glenn was unarmed.
Proctor, who resigned from the LAPD in 2017, was not arrested until last October, when he was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at Los Angeles International Airport. Law enforcement sources previously told The Times that Proctor was returning to the country from an international flight when CBP arrested him on the murder warrant.
But in a November court filing, Proctor’s defense attorney, Tom Yu, provided exhibits and sworn statements showing his client had been in the U.S. and was planning to depart the country on the day he was arrested. Travel documents included as an exhibit in a court filing show Proctor was scheduled to fly from Los Angeles to Panama City on Oct. 16, 2025.
A sworn declaration from Proctor’s wife submitted to the court by his lawyer shows he has flown internationally to the Caribbean island Trinidad four times since September 2024, when the indictment was handed down. During the time he wasn’t traveling, Proctor was living in L.A. County, according to Yu, who said the district attorney’s office never made an attempt to arrest the ex-cop.
Yu said his client was unaware he was wanted for murder until his arrest at LAX last year. The Times first reported a warrant had been issued for Proctor’s arrest on Oct. 17, 2024 — almost a year to the date before he was taken into custody.
Greg Risling, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, confirmed investigators monitored Proctor’s home in Carson in October 2024. But by the time his arrest was authorized, Risling said, Proctor was nowhere to be found.
Prosecutors soon learned Proctor had flown to Trinidad as part of a trip he’d planned earlier in the year, according to Risling. Proctor was supposed to reenter the U.S. through Miami in late October 2024, Risling said, and investigators went to Florida to arrest him.
“It was later determined that Mr. Proctor had canceled that return flight and it is unknown as to the reason why,” Risling said.
Yu said he had no information about his client’s alleged change in flight plans. Risling said prosecutors did not know Proctor was in the U.S. at any point last year and confirmed the agency did not attempt to arrest him, or even once check his Carson home, in 2025.
“If we were aware of his location, he would’ve been taken into custody,” Risling said.
Questioned about the lack of urgency to arrest a defendant in a murder case, Risling said Proctor was not a threat to the public.
“Mr. Proctor was charged with fatally shooting a man while he was on duty as a Los Angeles police officer, a circumstance that can no longer occur since Mr. Proctor is no longer on the force,” he said.
Law enforcement experts say it is unusual for anyone wanted on a murder charge to have an arrest warrant pending for a year — especially while often traveling overseas.
Proctor’s warrant should have been automatically flagged by a U.S. Department of Homeland Security database whenever he entered or left the country, according to Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor.
“It would be extraordinary for someone with a murder warrant issued to be able to travel freely internationally in and out of the U.S.,” Rahmani said. “Why, if there was an active warrant and he was in L.A., wasn’t he arrested? This is a person accused of a high-profile homicide that garnered attention.”
Even Proctor’s defense attorney seemed baffled by the district attorney’s office’s handling of the case.
“He was here in the U.S. What happened to all of 2025? He was here. Did they just let the year skip? Sorry, we forgot?” said Yu, a former L.A. County sheriff’s deputy, who described the failure to act on a murder warrant as “reckless.”
A CBP spokesman said agents encountered Proctor several times “at airports outside the state of California” after the indictment was handed down. However, the terms of the warrant prevented them from making an arrest.
“The warrant was restricted to ‘in-state pick-up only’ and did not permit extradition to California,” said the spokesman.
A spokesman for the district attorney’s office said the warrant was filed that way by special prosecutor Lawrence Middleton, who was hired by then-Dist. Atty. George Gascón to reexamine Glenn’s death. Both Gascón and Middleton declined to be interviewed for this article.
The incident that led to the murder charge occurred in May 2015, when Proctor and another LAPD officer, Jonathan Kawahara, responded to calls about Glenn and his dog causing a disturbance in Venice Beach.
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.
In this May 5, 2017, surveillance camera image released by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, Police Officer Clifford Proctor is shown firing at Brendon Glenn, who was killed in the shooting.
(Uncredited / Associated Press)
Proctor’s previous defense attorneys claimed the officer thought Glenn was reaching for his partner’s gun. In explaining her decision not to charge Proctor with a crime in 2018, former Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey said it was not unreasonable for Proctor to open fire based on the belief that Glenn was trying to arm himself with Kawahara’s weapon.
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.
Glenn’s death caused a public outcry, and other law enforcement leaders sharply disagreed with Lacey’s findings. Former LAPD Chief Charlie Beck publicly called for Proctor to be charged with a crime and the city’s police commission found the shooting to be unjustified. After he ousted Lacey from office in 2020, Gascón hired a special prosecutor, Middleton, to reexamine several of her decisions in use-of-force cases.
Middleton secured an indictment accusing Proctor of murder on Sept. 20, 2024, according to a transcript of the grand jury proceedings that became public last year. But Middleton asked the grand jury to wait to issue an arrest warrant until Oct. 3, 2024, because authorities needed “an opportunity to locate the defendant,” according to the transcript.
On Oct. 2, 2024, Proctor flew to Trinidad, where he holds dual citizenship, according to his wife’s court declaration. Yu said his client had a “pre-planned vacation” to Trinidad and was not trying to escape justice.
Proctor entered and departed the U.S. on international flights multiple times after the arrest warrant was issued, according to his wife’s declaration, which was submitted in a motion to reduce his bail.
Proctor subsequently took flights to Trinidad and also Barbados, another Caribbean island, and returned stateside without incident three more times between December 2024 and September 2025, according to his wife’s declaration.
Based on the timeline laid out by the district attorney’s office, all attempts to find Proctor ceased after Gascón was defeated by current Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman in the November 2024 election.
The Proctor case could prove a test of Hochman’s commitment to prosecuting police misconduct cases.
Hochman has been critical of the way Gascón handled police prosecutions and fired Middleton almost immediately after taking office.
In his only public statement about the Proctor case, Hochman pointed to Lacey’s decision not to prosecute the ex-officer and said his newly appointed special prosecutor, Michael Gennaco, would be reviewing the case’s viability going forward. Gennaco declined to comment.
A review of grand jury transcripts in the case — which have not been detailed in public before — suggest Middleton collected strong evidence against Proctor.
Both Proctor’s former partner and the bar employee who was in an altercation with Glenn shortly before the fatal encounter testified against Proctor, according to the transcripts.
Kawahara, Proctor’s then-partner, said Glenn never physically struck him or attempted to disarm him. The younger officer seemed confused by Proctor’s decision to use fatal force.
At the time the bullets flew, Kawahara said he hadn’t even considered the need to use his Taser on Glenn, much less deadly force, according to the transcripts.
“I didn’t feel or see Mr. Glenn trying to disarm me,” Kawahara testified.
DiMario Thomas Sr., the bar bouncer, told the grand jury that Glenn was clearly intoxicated and resisting officers. But he also didn’t see Glenn reach for either officer’s gun and told grand jurors he was shocked when Proctor drew a firearm.
LAPD Officer Clifford Proctor walks on crutches in Venice near the scene where he fatally shot Brendon Glenn, an unarmed homeless man, in 2015.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
“In my head, I thought it was a big ass Taser … I didn’t see [Glenn] do anything worth being shot for,” Thomas said, according to the transcript.
After Proctor opened fire, Thomas said the officer followed him back into the bar, seemingly looking for confirmation the bouncer would support his decision to kill Glenn.
“The officer went inside, said something along the lines like ‘Mario, you seen him — you saw him — you saw him reach for my gun,’” Thomas said. “I looked him in his face and said, ‘I didn’t see s—.’”
The district attorney’s office said it has not made a final decision on taking Proctor to trial. He is due back in court next month.
Proctor was released from custody last November on $100,000 bail. At a recent court hearing, Yu asked a judge to allow Proctor to travel to Seattle for work. The district attorney’s office made no objection.