Vance Proctor, 60; LAPD Captain Developed Several Innovative Programs

Capt. Vance Proctor, a Los Angeles Police Department veteran who developed a number of innovative programs, including one to improve detectives’ interrogation methods and another that enlists citizen volunteers for criminal surveillance in the San Fernando Valley, has died. He was 60.

Proctor, commanding officer of the West Los Angeles Community Police Station, died April 27 at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Woodland Hills. He had undergone an emergency appendectomy April 10, said his wife, Nina. The cause of death will be determined after an autopsy.

“Capt. Proctor was an institution with LAPD,” Police Chief William J. Bratton said in a statement. “He had the talent and experience to work any assignment in the city, and he did.”

Proctor, who recently celebrated his 39th year with the LAPD, was promoted to captain in 1986 and served in a variety of positions, including patrol, detectives, vice, traffic and transit operations.

He was a veteran detective supervisor in 1986 when he developed a new instructional program for detectives. It featured one-on-one verbal confrontations between detectives and UCLA acting students playing the role of criminals.

Before the role-playing began, Proctor would spend two days drilling the detectives on how to coax, bait and sweet-talk information out of suspects and how to read the body language of someone who is not telling the truth.

He also helped the student actors refine their ability to lie, stall and spread erroneous information during the sessions.

Proctor believed that even veteran detectives needed that kind of training: Contrary to their television image, many police detectives haven’t polished the skill of persuading suspects, witnesses and victims to talk to them.

“Unconsciously, a lot of detectives give people the message ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ ” Proctor told The Times in 1986. “Most of the detective’s job, 90% of it, is talking to people. You’d assume that is where most of the emphasis in our training would be given, but in surveying departments across the country, it’s not.”

Proctor was captain of the Devonshire Division in 1992 when he launched the Volunteer Surveillance Team, a citizens’ volunteer program created in response to rising crime in the San Fernando Valley and dwindling police resources.

Radio-carrying volunteers, who currently number about 50, are placed in safe locations and call nearby police units to make arrests when they observe criminal activity.

“It’s the purest form of community policing,” Proctor told The Times in 1992.

Over the years, the Volunteer Surveillance Team has helped in thousands of arrests -- from graffiti taggers and street racers to rape and robbery suspects.

“I think [Proctor] was extremely innovative to use the community at a time when the officers needed this added resource,” Wendell Durrant, president of the Volunteer Surveillance Team, told The Times on Tuesday.

Durrant, one of the original volunteers, said that in 13 years, “we’ve averaged about 300 arrests a year working with the officers. That shows the success of the program. Without the captain organizing it and actually coming up with the idea, it would never have happened.”

Born in Dodge City, Kan., in 1944, Proctor earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Cal State Northridge and a master’s degree in public administration at USC.

On April 29, the Los Angeles City Council adjourned in Proctor’s honor.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Todd; a daughter, Lisa Osborn; his mother, Helen; and two grandchildren.

A graveside service will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday at Valhalla Memorial Park, 10621 Victory Blvd., North Hollywood. A memorial service will be held at 7 p.m. Saturday at Grace Community Church, 13248 Roscoe Blvd., Sun Valley.