Ex-Police Officer to Fight for Job Back

A former Simi Valley police officer will fight to regain his job, saying he did nothing wrong and a jury acquitted him of the alleged conduct for which he was fired, his attorney said Wednesday.

David Steven Ming, 27, was fired last week over allegations of perjury, just weeks after a Ventura County jury found him not guilty of the same charge. Last week Ming’s attorney, Charles Goldwasser, filed an appeal of Ming’s termination with City Manager Mike Sedell.

“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Goldwasser said in an interview. “The court found him not guilty, but also it’s pretty obvious from all the evidence that was collected that he did not commit perjury.”

Ming did not lie on the stand, as fellow officers accused him of doing, Goldwasser said, “there was just a failure of recollection.”

Ming worked with the department’s Special Enforcement Section on, among other things, drug cases.

He was indicted and tried on a charge of perjury after fellow officers alleged he lied in court about a search at a Simi Valley home in 1994. Ming’s testimony helped lead to the conviction of a school bus driver for being under the influence of methamphetamine at the time of the search.

A Superior Court jury acquitted Ming of perjury, but the department that had hired him as a rookie in 1991 fired him on Dec. 27.

Ming’s appeal will be heard sometime in the coming month, probably by an administrative law judge appointed by Sedell, said Simi Valley Assistant City Manager Laura Herron.

After such hearings, the administrative law judge usually recommends that the city manager either uphold or overturn a department head’s decision to fire an employee. If the city manager upholds the department head’s decision, the employee can appeal that ruling by filing suit in Ventura County Superior Court, she said.

Herron declined to comment on the Ming case, citing privacy laws that govern city personnel cases.