LOS ANGELES — A grand jury indictment was unsealed Friday charging a former Los Angeles police officer in the May 2015 shooting death of an unarmed homeless man in Venice, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office said.
Clifford Proctor pleaded not guilty to a charge of second-degree murder, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
Brendan Glenn, 29, was killed during a struggle with officers outside a bar where he had fought with a bouncer, and his name became a rallying cry against police shootings in Los Angeles. Both Glenn and Proctor are Black.
The office of current LA District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in a statement that the indictment comes after the previous district attorney, George Gascón, reexamined four use-of-force cases involving law enforcement officers, including Proctor’s case.
Hochman, who ousted Gascón in November’s election, will review the case and decide whether to proceed with the prosecution, the statement said.
Proctor’s lawyer, Anthony “Tony” Garcia, questioned the timing of the charges and noted that prosecutors declined to charge his client in 2018, according to the Times.
In 2018, LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey declined to press charges, saying there was insufficient evidence to prove Proctor acted unlawfully when he used deadly force.
Glenn was on his stomach and trying to push himself up when Proctor shot him in the back, according to police. He wasn’t trying to take a gun from Proctor or his partner when he was shot, and Proctor’s partner told investigators that he didn’t know why the officer opened fire, police have said.
Proctor resigned from the Los Angeles Police Department in 2017. The city paid $4 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit that was brought by Glenn’s relatives.
Proctor, 60, remains in jail. His next court date is Nov. 3.
A blistering heat wave blanketing parts of Southern California is expected to extend through the weekend, pushing temperatures well past 100 degrees in valleys and inland areas while continuing to create dangerous fire conditions across the state.
Temperatures in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys on Saturday were expected to range from the mid-90s to a high of 105 degrees, while the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys were likely to see highs of up to 115 degrees, officials said.
“We could be approaching or exceeding all time record highs in Lancaster and Palmdale,” said Joe Sirard, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
The broiling heat has shattered records up and down the state this week, with Palm Springs reaching 124 degrees on Friday, breaking the all-time record of 123 degrees set in 2021, 1995 and 1993.
In Death Valley, the mercury soared to 127 degrees Friday — and Saturday it was expected to climb to 128 degrees, the weather service warned.
Extreme heat, low humidity and strong winds prompted officials to issue a red flag warning through the weekend along the 5 Freeway corridor and in the Antelope Valley foothills, Sirard said.
A man plays soccer against a wall in Venice Beach during a warm afternoon.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
“Fires are dangerous anywhere,” he said, “but this is really a heightened danger. [Fires] will spread rapidly, explosively, and it’s extremely dangerous for firefighters.”
Hampered by scorching temperatures, firefighters were continuing to battle numerous wildfires across California on Saturday. The largest is the Basin fire in Fresno County, which started June 26. The fire, which has burned 14,027 acres, was 46% contained early Saturday.
Crews were beginning to get the upper hand on the French fire, which began on the Fourth of July and had threatened the town of Mariposa outside Yosemite National Park. The 908-acre fire, which temporarily triggered mandatory evacuations and closed State Route 140 leading into the park, was 25% contained.
In Southern California, a fire in Santa Barbara County had swelled to 4,673 acres on Saturday morning with zero containment, officials said. The Lake fire, burning near Zaca Lake in the Santa Ynez Valley, triggered an evacuation order early Saturday for an area north of Zaca Lake Road, east of Foxen Canyon Road and south of the Sisquoc River.
Temperatures in the 90s and very low humidity overnight fueled the fire’s spread, while a layer of warm air over the fire had trapped smoke close to the ground, Scott Safechuck, a spokesman for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, said in a post on the social media platform X.
Farther south, the Rancho fire, which was reported Friday evening, burned about 13 acres of brush along the 101 Freeway near Thousand Oaks.
Andy VanSciver, a spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department, said in a video posted on X that the Rancho fire had been contained as of around 7 p.m. Friday. After stopping its forward progress, firefighters worked overnight to extinguish hot spots, he said.
Charlie Hammond, left, and Pierre Mordacq relax in Venice Beach during a warm afternoon Tuesday.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
In Riverside County, firefighters had managed to get control of the 70-acre Hills fire near Juniper Springs, with 75% containment as of Saturday afternoon.
Authorities had evacuated an area near where the fire broke out Friday afternoon at Juniper Flats Road and Mapes Road in Homeland. People affected by the evacuations were directed to Tahquitz High School in Hemet and the Riverside County Animal Shelter in San Jacinto.
Meanwhile, residents of Los Angeles County’s valleys and inland areas are urged to stay indoors during the day if possible and avoid hiking, even in areas that might seem cool at sea level.
“Even in the Santa Monica mountains, which are close to the coast, once you get above a certain elevation, 1,500 feet, it’s going to get very, very hot,” Sirard said.
Courson Park Pool lifeguard Ellie Gonzales, right, keeps an eye on swimmers as temperatures rose into the triple digits Wednesday in Palmdale.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Sirard said people should follow common-sense practices, like hydrating through the day and wearing lightweight and light-colored clothing. If you want to get some sun, head to the beaches, Sirard said, where temperatures should range from the low 70s to the low 80s.
“If people want to beat the heat this weekend,” he said, “the coast is the place to go.”
The city of Los Angeles has opened four cooling centers through the weekend where people can find relief from the heat:
Lake View Terrace Recreation Center, 11075 Foothill Blvd., Lake View Terrace Mid-Valley Senior Citizen Center, 8825 Kester Ave., Panorama City Fred Roberts Recreation Center, 4700 S. Honduras St., Los Angeles Jim Gilliam Recreation Center, 400 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles
Los Angeles County’s network of more than 150 cooling centers, which are located at libraries, parks and community centers, can be found here.
In the Bay Area, cool weather along the coast gave way to blistering heat in northern Sonoma and Napa counties, where temperatures were expected to climb to 110 degrees, said Nicole Sarment, a meteorologist for the weather service in San Francisco.
“There’s as much as a 50-degree variation, depending on where you are,” she said.
San Francisco was forecast to see a high of 79 degrees Saturday before dipping to 58 at night, she said. In Oakland, temperatures were expected to range from 59 to 87 degrees, while San Jose was predicted to see a low of 64 and high of 99.
Memorial Day weekend is almost upon us, meaning Southern Californians will soon gather for barbecues and flock to beaches to mark the unofficial start of summer.
In Los Angeles County, however, residents should avoid the water at certain coastal locations because the bacterial levels reached unhealthful levels when last tested, according to an L.A. County Department of Public Health news release.
The agency sent a warning Tuesday cautioning people against swimming, playing and surfing in these following ocean waters:
About 100 yards up and down the coast from the East Temescal Canyon Storm Drain at Will Rogers State Beach.
About 100 yards up and down from the lagoon at Topanga Canyon Beach in Malibu.
About 100 yards up and down the coast from the Pico-Kenter storm drain at Santa Monica State Beach.
The entire swim area at Mothers Beach in Marina del Rey.
About 100 yards up and down the coast from the public restrooms at Malibu Lagoon at Surfrider Beach.
About 100 yards up and down the coast from the Santa Monica Pier.
The entire swim area at Inner Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro.
This week’s caution follows a more serious incident in the county two weeks ago, when the discharge of about 14,400 gallons of untreated sewage into the ocean resulted in the closure of areas of Dockweiler State Beach, Venice Beach and the surrounding area, according to county public health officials.
People were advised to avoid the water and the sand from Ballona Creek to one mile north of Venice Beach and one mile south of Dockweiler. The beaches have since reopened.
Information on beach conditions is available 24 hours a day through the county’s beach closure hotline: (800) 525-5662. A map of affected locations can be found at PublicHealth.LACounty.gov/Beach/.
A bizarre altercation between two women at Venice Beach had onlookers do a double take earlier this week.
Video from the Southern California beach showed two women – one of them nude – using what appeared to be spiked clubs to fight one another on the boardwalk as people curiously watched. The naked woman wildly swung her weapon while the clothed woman pulled out her own bat from behind a trashcan, leading to what looked like a duel.
Phil Bouruqe, who works at a nearby store, captured footage of the brazen fight.
“Like, they were fighting and then people were gathering around watching,” he said of the crowd. “I mean, entertaining, that’s all I can say.”
At some point during the fight, the clothed woman threw her weapon, giving her nude opponent the chance to scoop it up and swing both of them in the air before strutting down the boardwalk.
“It looks like she was kind of winning,” Joe Ayala said of the unclothed woman.
Ayala said he’d seen her before drinking nearby and riding a bicycle along the beach. According to him, it isn’t unusual to see the woman nude.
“You have to remember that 85% of people out here have some kind of issue, some kind of trauma, or something that pushed them to like where their limits get exceeded,” he said.
Although the daytime duel caught the attention of several spectators, no calls were made to the police regarding the public fight and indecent exposure.
“Somebody should have stepped in, should have helped, but a lot of people were probably freaked out by a naked woman fighting,” Ayala said.
Ayala said he wasn’t surprised that the event went unreported.
“I mean, this is Venice. Snitches get stiches,” he joked.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department said the crimes seen in the video are assault with a deadly weapon and indecent exposure. However, no report was filed with the department.
The Chinese language is difficult, and perhaps no one has struggled more with it than the inkers and bearers of America’s Chinese-character tattoos.
Most infamous was probably the tattoo on Britney Spears’ hip, which intended to be the character for “mysterious,” but ended expressing something closer to “strange.”
Another popular choice is the Chinese character for “freedom,” which mistranslates to mian fei, or “free of charge.” I’ve also seen tattoos intended to represent the Chinese character for “power” represented as dian, which means “electricity” rather than “strength.”
I got my first tattoo in 2014 at My Tattoo in Alhambra, a road map of Los Angeles in black and red. My second came from a tattoo parlor in a neon lit alley in Shihlin Night Market in Taipei, a Chinese family stamp that depicts the meaning of my last name, a bear.
A Chinese dragon is one of the featured tattoos on display at Jelly Los Angeles.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Each tattoo attempts to express something different that is important to me, and I often considered using Chinese. But I could never see the Chinese character tattoo as anything more than an embarrassing stereotype. I associated it with exoticizing Asian culture, robbing it of meaning, except as decoration. I joked that getting one might pigeonhole me as one of those guy who owns one too many kimonos.
There’s probably no need to get this tangled up over a tattoo. But I don’t think I’m alone. Asian Americans often grow up with mocking, racist or alienating representations of our culture. And sometimes that has the ironic, contradictory effect of making us feel stereotyped by our own cultures.
Mainstream culture’s version of Asian American identity can feel like a costume you never agreed to wear. To construct an identity that could contain all parts of myself, I felt like I had to shed that skin and create some distance from it.
Now, conical rice paddy hats, the sound of a gong, and kung-fu have all become things I find very hard to enjoy or appreciate. These basically harmless aspects of Chinese cultures, through the lens of past pain, can still hurt.
When I moved to Venice Beach two years ago, I saw Chinese tattoos on skaters, lifters, pickleball players, surfers and tourists, hardly any with Chinese heritage. Some tattoo parlors advertised with giant posters of translated Chinese characters in the window. None of them seemed self-conscious or apologetic about it, which made my hesitation feel unnecessary. I envied their nonchalance.
I decided to ink a Taoist verse in a line down my forearm. I met my tattoo artist, Shane, at Devocean Tattoo, a tiny storefront shop. He asked a lot of questions about the characters before getting started — as a white tattoo artist he’s all too aware of the inaccurate Chinese tattoo stereotype.
Tattoo artist Mikey Ekimoto tattoos the Korean symbol for “taste, savor, flavor” on Frank Shyong’s wrist at Ocean Front Tattoo in Venice.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
The pain of a tattoo always seems to land just short of intolerable, depending on where you get it. When the tattoo gun’s twin needles pierce your skin, it stings enough that the body instinctively seeks to stop the pain, whether by flinching or flooding your brain with endorphins. It’s enough pain to frustrate your attempts to avoid thinking about it.
But the most important thing about the pain of a tattoo is that it will end, as with most pain in life. What you’re left with is a feeling of victory over suffering. Or at least, a sense that you have less to fear from it than before. I used to see tattoos as talismans of pain, but now I believe they also represent healing.
When the words on my arm healed, my anger faded with the pain.
There are no easy rules that neatly separate cultural appropriation from cultural appreciation because there is no single way to respect people’s pain. Trying to determine which Chinese-character tattoos are the most authentic or appropriate is pointless, because the most culturally accurate thing to do is to never get one.
Preserving the body is considered an important aspect of filial piety within the context of Confucianism, and that precept encourages long hair, forbids suicide and is interpreted as prohibiting tattoos.
Chinese American tattoo artist Em Jia has a Chinese character tattoo on the back of their neck.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
I spoke to a Chinese American tattoo artist, Em Jia, who has a tattoo that plays with this concept. Their mother used to eye Jia’s tattoos with distaste, warning them that all the luck was bleeding out of their body. So Jia inked the words fu chi dou mei you, which means “luckless.”
Tattooing the words was their way of refusing shame and practicing self acceptance, a “way of finding freedom,” Jia said.
But they’re still uncomfortable about seeing Chinese-character tattoos on non-Asian people. They feel protective of their connection to Chinese culture and language. I think it’s a natural reaction for anyone growing up with Long Duk Dong from the 1984 movie “Sixteen Candles” and racist Asian jokes on prime-time TV.
“Now I open a bag of shrimp chips and I don’t give a f— about what anyone says,” said Jia, 26.
Later that day, I met Mike Cho, a Korean American from Philadelphia and the owner of Ocean Front Tattoo in Venice Beach for the last 11 years. Cho said the store experiences steady demand for Chinese tattoos, as does pretty much every other tattoo parlor on the boardwalk.
Korean American tattoo artist Mike Cho wears, among others, a tattoo on his neck with Korean figures that translate to his last name.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
His skin has enough ink to print a whole newspaper, with tattoos pretty much everywhere but his face. His last name is inked in Korean on his throat, and the Korean characters for the number 17 tattooed on his neck, because he moved to Los Angeles at the age of 21 with just $1,700 in his pocket.
I told him that I wanted to get a Korean word tattooed after traveling to Seoul last year, and wondered what he thought.
At the time I was struggling to find pleasure in food following a difficult breakup. At Gwangjang Market, after I spotted a golden brown seafood pancake sizzling on a flattop grill, I ordered one and devoured it. It was the first meal I remember enjoying in more than a year, and I wanted to memorialize the feeling with a tattoo of the Korean character for “savor,” mas.
Cho, 45, had no problem with me, a Taiwanese guy, getting a Korean character tattoo. Actually, he found the question a bit confusing. He had never thought twice about getting his own Asian-language tattoo.
“Just thought it was cool,” Cho said. “I was more worried about what my parents would say. I didn’t go home for five years!”
I’ll likely meet other Korean Americans who will be bothered by my tattoo. But I can accept that, because I’m trying to imagine a future in which all of these clashing feelings can find some equilibrium. And before pain heals, it has to find expression.
When a tattoo is finished, the area is red, throbbing and swollen. The wound oozes and scabbing cracks the skin. Soon a soft outline of new skin forms around the cuts, peeling and flaking for a while, until one day, you wake up, and there is no scar, just your skin.
