Policeman Turned Prosecutor Makes a Case for Tenacity : D.A.: Jeff Bennett directs an investigative bureau that rejected him seven years ago.

When Jeff Bennett--a veteran street cop and neophyte lawyer--first showed up at the Ventura County district attorney’s office, he applied only as an investigator to get his foot in the door. He didn’t get a second look.

“They said I wasn’t qualified,” he recalled.

Now just seven years later, Bennett, 39, directs the same 75-person investigative bureau he could not penetrate as a seasoned officer.

“It is strange,” he said of his rejection, then rapid climb up the district attorney’s ladder once he finally landed a job as a temporary prosecutor in 1989.

Yet not so odd, considering Bennett’s personality and that of his boss--Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury.

From the start, the hard work and intensity of Bennett--a tightly wound, tight-lipped, ex-motorcycle officer who lifts weights and surfs competitively--have so impressed his bosses that Bradbury named him a prosecutor of the year in 1990.

“Given an acceptable level of intelligence, the thing I prize most is hard work,” Bradbury explained. “And this guy is tireless. He’s one of the hardest workers that I’ve ever seen.”

In a recent court deposition, in fact, Bradbury listed Bennett as one of two aides to whom he would trust his most sensitive cases. The other is Pete Kossoris, the office’s renowned homicide prosecutor.

“If we were investigating a police chief or a sheriff or someone like that,” Bradbury swore, “ . . . that type of case would go to [Kossoris or Bennett]. . . . They’re the best there is.”

That a lawyer so new to the prosecution game could earn such accolades doesn’t really surprise those who know Bennett well.

“Jeff has the qualities Mike looks for: He’s extremely bright, has boundless energy and he is determined to do the right thing. . . . He’s one of the last Boy Scouts,” said federal Administrative Law Judge John Geb, Bennett’s onetime mentor in the district attorney’s office.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Pachowicz, who worked in the same small cubicle with Bennett when they first arrived as untried lawyers, said of his friend’s intensity:

“He has committed himself to do everything he does better than anyone else. He is by far the most prepared individual I have ever met in my life.”

Dressed in white shirts and dark slacks--square-jawed with Popeye arms and a stiff weightlifter’s walk--Bennett still looks like the cop he was for a decade, although he is no longer a sworn officer.

“Technically, I’m not a cop,” he said. “I just look like one and act like one and make reporters mad like one.”

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Bennett’s close-to-the-vest approach serves him well as head of the district attorney’s Bureau of Investigation, where he directs 38 sworn officers, a dozen other investigators and two dozen office workers. In effect, he is the chief of a moderate-size police department.

His bureau’s job is to probe criminal and civil fraud cases, such as false advertising, inaccurately marked packages and welfare abuses. The staff also follows up tips about wrongdoing by government employees and public officials, including the recent conflict-of-interest case against former Moorpark City Councilman Scott Montgomery.

Some cases warrant the filing of charges, but many don’t. And Bradbury would not be pleased if a political corruption inquiry made headlines before he thought it was time.

Bennett is extremely discerning in what he says for public consumption.

“I’ve discovered,” he said, “that for me it’s better not to say an awful lot about anything.”

Despite his inscrutability and police background, Bennett’s ascent to the district attorney’s top investigator raised some eyebrows last year when he was promoted to his $83,000-a-year position.

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Such bureaus are typically directed by a sworn police officer seasoned by years of investigation, not a lawyer.

“There was no resentment because of Jeff, the individual, but there was resentment because he was a noncop,” Bradbury acknowledged. “There are still a couple of grumblers. But the folks are coming around. . . . He is uniquely qualified for that position.”

Investigator Rob Briner, who worked with Bennett when probing the backgrounds of Oxnard card-club promoters in 1993, said his new boss has earned respect.

“There was definitely a transition period, but I think Jeff has demonstrated a definite ability to lead,” Briner said. “He leads by example. . . . He’s usually the first to arrive and the last to leave the office. And he’s really helped us climb into the computer era.”

A self-taught personal computer buff, Bennett now asks investigators to use a computer to organize their files and present their cases, Briner said. Spreadsheets are the norm.

“Before Jeff, that was not prevalent among the rank and file,” he said.

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As one of Bradbury’s five top deputies, Bennett has an office just across the room from the district attorney on the third floor of the county Hall of Justice.

Like those nearby, Bennett’s office is spare and utilitarian, the walls lined with educational degrees and framed declarations of professional accomplishment.

But on the floor, leaning against a wall behind his office door, is a collection of personal mementos, a window to another side of a man who plays it by the book.

Pinned to a bulletin board are pictures of Bennett: as a long-haired, baby-faced undercover drug investigator in 1980; as a motorcycle officer for the UC Santa Barbara department in 1984; as a weightlifter hoisting hundreds of pounds to win a bronze medal in the statewide Police Olympics in 1983.

But most of the photos are of his wife, Dee, an Ojai junior high school teacher whom he met at Cal State University, Sacramento, nearly two decades ago, and of their two daughters--Alison, 9, and Andrea, 4.

There are images too of surfing--one of Bennett in a long board championship in 1990, and a portrait of shaggy-haired Jack O’Neill, a legendary manufacturer of a popular wet suit.

“In this job, you don’t put those kinds of things on your walls,” Bennett said.

But that does not diminish his passion.

A resident of Meiners Oaks, Bennett throws his long board into the back of his Ford pickup at every opportunity.

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“I’ll surf Thanksgiving, I’ll surf Christmas Day, I’ll surf New Year’s Day,” he declared recently over lunch at Duke’s, a surfer hangout in Ventura’s Pierpont area.

But he noted that his favorite restaurant is down the street, and it serves sushi, not steak. “I’m not into eating meat,” he said.

He is into catching fish. And he loves to angle for trout on Matilija Creek, where his family has owned a cabin for 25 years.

“You fish?” he asked one sunny Sunday, after bumping into an acquaintance on a hike with his family along the creek. He and his father had fished the same creek, he said.

When out of his office, Bennett said his attention focuses on his family.

“That’s really important to me,” he said. “I know people who spend a lot of time doing their job and their family falls apart.”

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The son of an elementary school teacher and a tile contractor, Bennett said he grew up in central Ventura, playing sports and following the direction of his father, a strict disciplinarian.

“You’ve got to work hard if you want something,” Earl Bennett would tell his son.

By high school, Jeff Bennett had worked hard enough to be named Ventura County’s athlete of the year, excelling in football, track and wrestling.

Next he starred as a defensive back at Sacramento State, where he pumped up his 6-foot frame to 205 pounds.

Spotted by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department while working weekends as a jailer, Bennett was hired full time in 1979 partly because superiors wanted him to play in the department’s annual Pig Bowl football game against city police.

Then he won medals as a weightlifter while working through a variety of assignments as a university cop in Santa Barbara, where he often dealt with college students.

“You couldn’t just be a big tough guy and get the job done,” Bennett said. Jack MacPherson, the UCSB chief of police, remembers Bennett as “a good cop. He was good with people.”

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Increasingly bored with his job, Bennett went to Ventura College of Law at night, graduating from its Santa Barbara campus in 1988. But after sending out hundreds of resumes, he found almost no interest among law firms in a 30-something cop with a degree from a college not accredited by the American Bar Assn.

Finally, he landed a temporary job in Bradbury’s office, trading in a $60,000 annual income for a $36,000 salary and no guarantees.

Quickly thrown into a misdemeanor trial, he learned a harsh lesson that still motivates him today. He asked the wrong question only to be tongue-lashed by a judge, who declared a mistrial. Back in his cubicle, he confided to a friend: “I’m going back to the Police Department. I suddenly realized, ‘God, this is really hard.’ ”

“But the lesson was, ‘Be prepared, and be more prepared than anyone,’ ” Bennett said. “Now if I have to stay here for 24 hours to figure something out I will, because I have never forgotten that event.”

Within 14 months, Bennett graduated from misdemeanor cases to the major fraud unit, where he investigated and prosecuted more than 70 cases of insurance fraud, bank fraud, trade secret theft and perjury for the next four years.

He also successfully prosecuted the money-laundering case against two Oxnard card-club promoters. And Ventura attorney Richard Loy, who represented one defendant, vividly remembers Bennett’s effort.

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“The closing argument he gave in that case was something else,” Loy said. “If you match his closing argument against mine, I got killed.

“Some people have underestimated him,” Loy added. “He comes across as so tenacious you think that’s to make up for a lack of creativity. But that’s wrong.”

Like many others, the straightforward Bennett sees his own principal attribute as his absolute refusal to quit on anything.

“There are a lot of hard-working people here and most of them are a lot more brilliant that I am,” he said. “But I’m aggressive. I’m creative. And I will dig in a way that will lead me to the right result. If I’m given an assignment, I will take it to the nth degree to make sure, if there’s a crime, I will find it.”