Dismayed L.A. Police, Deputies Head for Greener Pastures : Law enforcement: Simi Valley and other Ventura County departments are luring more officers who are searching for a better quality of life.

Fed up with being overworked, understaffed and second-guessed, some Los Angeles-area police officers are defecting to new jobs on the safer streets of Simi Valley.

In the past month, the Simi Valley Police Department has hired three Los Angeles Police Department officers and a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.

More than half of the 16 Simi Valley officers who list LAPD or Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on their resumes were hired in the last two years.

And more would-be defectors call Simi Valley every month, squeezed by bad morale in their own departments and lured by a better quality of life in Ventura County and a better workplace.

“They’re calling us all the time,” said Simi Valley Capt. Jerry Boyce. “It’s good for us, but it’s bad for L.A.”

Both Los Angeles agencies acknowledge their officers are defecting to other departments in the belief that morale and working conditions will be better.

“We have been losing about eight to 10 officers every month pre-retirement,” said LAPD personnel Cmdr. Dan Watson.

That makes an estimated 100 officers resigning per year, 50 to 75 of whom defect to other departments, Watson said.

Better equipment, pay and working conditions are drawing most of them away, Watson said, besides “the fact that we are understaffed and they have to work harder.”

The L.A. Sheriff’s Department is losing deputies at a similar rate.

In fiscal year 1991-92, 24 deputies left for jobs with other police agencies. The number rose to 34 in 1992-93, then more than doubled the following year to 75, said Fred Ramirez, the department’s director of administrative services.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies leave citing similar complaints, said Martha Zavala, that agency’s assistant personnel director.

But she said she hears the complaints secondhand, adding, “Most of the records we receive say they want to work closer to where they live, or they cite the fact they intend to move out to one of those areas.”

The reasons for choosing Simi Valley are obvious:

* Simi Valley has ranked in FBI statistics as one of the five safest cities in the U.S. over 100,000 population for the past three years.

* Residents there show an uncommon devotion to their police force. Small wonder. The 1990 U.S. census showed Simi Valley residents include the third-highest concentration of law enforcement officers in California for a city of its size, second only to Santa Clarita and Rancho Cucamonga.

* Simi Valley officers work a four-day workweek of 10-hour days.

* And they earn--after benefits are figured in--about the same take-home pay as is offered by LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

“We have better working conditions, the support of the public and the opportunity to do police work without having to run from call to call and not being able to help people,” Boyce said. “They also like the reputation we have.”

Besides which, say former Los Angeles officers and deputies now working in Simi Valley, life in their old departments was growing increasingly difficult--particularly after four LAPD officers beat Rodney King in 1991 and Los Angeles erupted in riots the year after they were acquitted in a Simi Valley court.

From rookie deputies to veteran patrol commanders, their gripes are the same, said Simi Valley Detective Randy Foushee, who runs background checks on the would-be defectors.

“The first and foremost thing they have in common is the fact that they feel unappreciated by upper management,” Foushee said. “And the other thing they have in common is they don’t feel they have a future.”

Calls from L.A. applicants have increased in the 2 1/2 years since the riots, Foushee said, adding, “The tide is getting stronger.”

Just before the King beating, veteran Van Nuys patrol Sgt. John Rygh retired after 25 years and 25 minutes with the LAPD.

A year later he got a detective’s job in Simi Valley, where he has lived since 1970.

Even before he left the LAPD, said Rygh, 50, things were unpleasant.

“I saw a decline in morale and some issues that concerned me,” he said. “To be as blunt as I can, I think there was what I perceived as a lack of focus over there.”

Strict discipline procedures required that all citizen complaints of police misconduct be logged into an officer’s record unless they were clearly disproved, he said.

This left some officers’ otherwise clean records permanently stained with unproven lies, he said. And now LAPD officers must hit the streets fearing that any action they take could be criticized, he said.

Every week, former colleagues call to talk, he said.

The atmosphere is even worse since the riots, they tell him.

“I say, ‘There’s no presumption of guilt (here) on the part of an officer,’ and that blows them away,” Rygh said.

“They say, ‘Morale is in the toilet,’ and ‘We’re not very happy,’ ” he said. “They say their bosses are being evaluated on how strict they are as disciplinarians--and they’re coming down on everyone really hard.”

LAPD Cmdr. Watson replied, “No way is the No. 1 reason they leave because they feel there’s a lack of support by the department or the community, but that does come up with some people.”

More often, he said, departing officers say that living outside Los Angeles is cheaper and better for raising families.

Watson said he dislikes that many of those leaving do so after about five years, taking their LAPD training with them.

“It makes perfect sense for Simi Valley to hire them,” he said. “It’s not good for the city of Los Angeles and the LAPD because we have to go out and replace them with new ones.”

In the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, similar pressures are building, said Simi Valley Patrolman Mike Cratch, a former deputy.

“After this LAPD affair and the riots, you’re second-guessed all the time--by the public, by the superiors,” said Cratch, 23, a two-year Simi veteran who quit his Los Angeles County job after 18 months at the Pitchess Honor Rancho. “One minute you’re the good guy and do your job, and the next minute you’re the bad guy because somebody cries race, and that’s real frustrating.”

Cratch said he also left because jail duty--expected of all rookie deputies--was unpleasant work that threatened to stretch on for years.

“I was sick all the time. You’re dealing with nothing but slime. There’s not one thing positive about that job,” he said. “Five years in the jail to go work in South-Central Los Angeles? I don’t think so.”

Simi Valley was a good choice, he said.

“You want to work somewhere where you have some little kids wave at you like you’re the ice cream man,” Cratch said. “In L.A., you don’t drive down the street and have people waving at you. It’s just miserable.”

Zavala, the assistant personnel director for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, said she has heard secondhand that deputies complain about being second-guessed.

But many rookies also leave because of the long stretch they must serve in the jails, she said, adding, “They feel they haven’t had an opportunity to move and get into a patrol setting.”

Simi Valley is not the only home for Los Angeles police refugees, officials said.

Some also are calling the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and the Oxnard Police Department.

More than half the 38 job inquiries received by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department this year have been from southeast of the county line--12 from LAPD officers and nine from Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, said Ventura County personnel Sgt. Stephen De Cesari.

In 1993, 29 of the 51 inquiries came from Los Angeles officers, and the year before, 20 of the 43 inquiries came from Los Angeles, De Cesari said. In 1991, only 16 of the 39 inquiries came from there, he said.

“Whether the King thing happened or not, you’re talking about a smaller area and better living conditions in Ventura County,” said Ventura County personnel Sgt. Michael Noguera. “The crime rate is lower here; we’ve got less than a million population.”

But most Los Angeles applicants do not follow through because the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department cannot quite match their current pay--and because all new Ventura County deputies spend their first three years working in the Ventura County Jail, Noguera said.

Los Angeles officers are also tapping on Oxnard’s doors in slightly greater numbers than before, said Oxnard Assistant Chief Stan Meyers.

Two and a half years ago, the Oxnard Police Department opened its doors to “laterals”--outside officers seeking to switch departments but keep their ranks, Meyers said.

“In the first entry program we had, we got about 40 applications, and probably 25% were from the Los Angeles area,” Meyers said. Since then, the department has hired one Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy and two LAPD officers--one of whom left after failing probation, he said.

Another factor that pushed some LAPD officers to begin shopping around was a change in that department’s pension policy that allows them to leave with partial pensions before retirement age, said Simi Valley’s Capt. Jerry Boyce.

The difference in jobs, Rygh said, is clear.

“In my view, in L.A., we’re going to see crime escalating,” he said. “And out here, because we can walk up to people and chat with them, we still have the luxury of having some trust from the public. And that is a luxury, as is the fact that most people out here tend to like us--and we can like them in return.”