The Fight Against Crime: Notes From The Front : Reserve Deputy Wins Annual Sheriff’s Award

For more than 21 years, David Simon worked by day as the owner of a successful public relations agency. By night, he donned a uniform, a gun, and a badge and hit the streets as a reserve deputy sheriff.

For his smooth transition from spin doctor for high-tech industry to deputy sheriff ferreting out “just the facts, ma’am,” Simon has been honored as Los Angeles County’s Reserve Deputy Sheriff of the Year. Selected from the 900 or so reserve deputies, Simon will be feted at an April 24 luncheon at the Music Center.

At age 63, he has worked all the big details: patrol, traffic, homicide and, for the past four years, forgery-fraud, where he investigates computer crime.

Although his reserve work now takes him into the highly specialized and relatively safe world of white-collar crime, Simon thinks like a street cop. Like many officers, he won’t disclose where he lives. “Just say I live in the Valley,” he says, acknowledging that he may have made a criminally-inclined enemy or two over the years.

The danger, or potential for danger, is part of the excitement for some reserves.

“I’ve never shot anyone or been shot at,” Simon says. “I was in a lot of places where there were people holding weapons in their hands and they chose not to fire them. There are a lot of guns and knives on the street. The fact that you have been doing it for years and it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t happen tomorrow. It’s a risk you take.”

All this for the princely sum of $1 a year.

Most reservists have full-time jobs elsewhere, and work as part-time deputies in their free time. They undergo training and are sworn peace officers. Often they offer help in their particular area of expertise. Uniform reserves work the patrol cars and others are assigned to juvenile crime, narcotics, or the detective bureau. There are medical reserves, search and rescue reserves, marine diver reserves, motorcycle reserves--even a mounted posse of reserves.

For Simon, filling up free time has never been a problem: He’s also on the boards of directors of the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, the Odyssey Theater and for five years served on the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission.

But the streets of Los Angeles always beckon, as they have for two decades.

“When I was working patrol, I would finish a long day at the office and go to the station and put on a uniform. It was like a whole new day started,” Simon says. “What I’m doing now is really interesting and challenging--and a fair amount of whodunnit,” he says.

His wife, Ruth, indulges her husband’s avocation. “As a PR type of guy, you have a doubt that what you are doing is meaningful. I checked his insurance and it said he was covered. I figured if he enjoyed it, I might as well let him do it.”

When Simon sold his company and retired, it just gave him more time for the sheriff’s office--sometimes more than 40 hours a week.

The reserves, says sheriff’s operations Sgt. Ben Kirtley, “just hook and book like anybody else.” He said they play “an integral part” in the sheriff’s department.

In nominating Simon, his superiors praised him for the sophistication of his investigations: “One of these included a major fraud case involving a telecommunications company that was ultimately presented to the grand jury for indictment. The investigation took over three years to complete and resulted in conviction of the three main suspects.”

“He handles all his cases as if he was a regular employee,” Lt. Jerry Dunphy says. “He files his own cases, assists the district attorney at the preliminary hearing and trial. He receives complex cases and spends numerous hours on those cases.”

Simon says it’s fun.