4-Day Search for Missing Officer Was Routine Procedure, Police Say : Manhunt: The disappearance of any private citizen with a similar record of dependability would warrant such an effort, officials insist.

Authorities who conducted a massive four-day search in Ventura County for a Los Angeles police officer, who mysteriously vanished only to turn up unharmed, said Monday that the manhunt was launched under routine missing person procedures, not because he was a police officer.

They said the search for Sgt. Christopher Vasquez by more than 250 people was launched because his disappearance last week was such a departure from his work habits and reputation for dependability as a 20-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran, and because evidence at his home indicated that something was amiss.

“The decision to search was not affected by who was involved,” said Los Angeles Police Capt. Dan Watson, Vasquez’s supervisor at the North Hollywood station. “If we are dealing with anybody who is consistent and reliable and has no pattern of this behavior . . . we would act the same way.”

Ventura County Sheriff’s Lt. Arve Wells, who headed the search for Vasquez, agreed with Watson and said the intensity of the search was no different than it would have been for a private citizen reported missing under similar circumstances.

The search for Vasquez, 41, began shortly after he failed to show up Dec. 10 for his 3:30 p.m. shift as assistant watch commander. When Vasquez did not call in, supervisors sent officers to his townhouse in Moorpark. They found his two cars, a wallet and police identification, but no sign of the officer.

Vasquez, who had recently separated from his wife, was reported missing to Ventura sheriff’s deputies. A search team began combing the hills behind the officer’s townhouse because deputies theorized that Vasquez, an avid runner, might have been hurt or lost in the undeveloped area while jogging.

Los Angeles police officers launched an immediate search. A force of 260 people, most of whom were off-duty Los Angeles police officers or members of the sheriff’s search team, unsuccessfully combed 45 square miles for the next three days until the search was suspended Thursday night.

Wells said the cost of the search had not been tabulated but that the searchers, including many unpaid volunteers, spent 2,600 hours looking for Vasquez.

Vasquez showed up at his estranged wife’s Simi Valley home Saturday night. He told officers that he had hitchhiked north to Salinas because he needed time to think about personal problems, then hitchhiked back.

Watson said Monday that Vasquez will undergo physical and psychological examinations and then a personnel investigation before authorities decide whether to return him to duty. Vasquez could not be reached for comment.

“I regret that the tremendous effort was unnecessary, but, frankly, I am glad he turned up safely,” Watson said. He praised the Ventura search team and said, “I apologize for the expenditure of a great amount of time.”

In Los Angeles, police receive about 60 missing person reports a week. Few result in organized searches, largely because experience shows that 70% of the reports involve people who dropped from sight voluntarily, said Detective John Sack of the Los Angeles Police Department’s missing persons unit. Only about 5% of missing persons are the victims of foul play, Sack said.

But searches are organized when investigators believe that the disappearance is a serious departure from the known habits of the missing person, Sack said. He said the search for Vasquez was not conducted because he was a police officer, but because he was a dependable employee with no record of missing work without notification.

Sack said Vasquez’s disappearance was similar to a recent case in which a West Los Angeles doctor did not show up for work and police immediately began a search involving 400 officers and volunteers in Topanga Canyon. As Vasquez did, the doctor later showed up unharmed.

In the Vasquez case, police said the fact that the missing person was a police officer only added to the belief that he could be hurt or in some kind of trouble.

“We are a quasi-military organization and a failure to report to work without notifying someone is considered a very serious matter,” said Lt. Fred Nixon, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman. “That signaled that there was a very good chance something could be wrong.”