Sheriff, LAPD Face Exodus of Officers : Law enforcement: Many leave for jobs in Simi Valley and other cities, drawn by the promise of a better lifestyle and less demanding duties.

Fed up with overwork and being 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, driven by what they view as bad morale in their own departments and lured by the prospect of 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 that their officers are defecting to other departments.

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

That’s about 100 officers resigning annually, fully 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, as is “the fact that we are understaffed and they have to work harder.”

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is losing deputies at a similar rate.

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

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who leave cite similar complaints, said Martha Zavala, the department’s assistant personnel director.

The reasons for choosing Simi Valley seem obvious:

* For the past three years, the FBI has ranked Simi Valley one of the five safest cities in the United States over 100,000 in population.

* Residents show an uncommon devotion to their police force, possibly because the 1990 U.S. Census showed that Simi Valley has the third-highest concentration of law enforcement officers residing in a city of its size in California, second only to Santa Clarita and Rancho Cucamonga.

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

* And they earn--after benefits are figured in--about the same take-home pay as is offered by LAPD and the 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.

Besides, say former Los Angeles officers and deputies now working in Simi Valley, life in their old departments was growing increasingly difficult--particularly after LAPD officers beat Rodney G. King in 1991, and Los Angeles erupted in riots the year after the officers were found not guilty in a Simi Valley court.

From rookie deputies to veteran patrol commanders, their gripes are the same, said Simi Valley police Detective Randy Foushee, who runs background checks on potential employees.

“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 .

Just before the King beating, veteran Van Nuys patrol sergeant John Rygh retired after 25 years 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, 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.”

The LAPD 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 lies, 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 (in Simi Valley) on the part of an officer,’ and that blows them away,” Rygh said.

LAPD’s 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.”

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