Deputy Chief

The Baltimore County firefighters union assailed yesterday the promotion of two top-level firefighters with ties to County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger, fraying the union's strained relationship with the executive.The union -- which in recent years has picketed Ruppersberger over his salary offers and fought his efforts to restructure the department -- said qualified candidates were unfairly shut out of consideration for the $80,000 deputy chief jobs because the administration made its choices months before the official selection process began.

Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens made one of the most important appointments of her four months in office yesterday when she named a 26-year police veteran the county's new chief.P. Thomas Shanahan, 45, who has been acting police chief since Owens took office, has worked for the county since he was a teen-ager and has demonstrated strong leadership skills, Owens said.Shanahan, who started working at the department as a cadet at age 19, earned a master's degree in applied behavioral sciences from the Johns Hopkins University in 1996 and has been deputy chief, patrol captain and sergeant in the homicide unit.

The Baltimore County firefighters union assailed yesterday the promotion of two top-level firefighters with ties to County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger, fraying the union's strained relationship with the executive.The union -- which in recent years has picketed Ruppersberger over his salary offers and fought his efforts to restructure the department -- said qualified candidates were unfairly shut out of consideration for the $80,000 deputy chief jobs because the administration made its choices months before the official selection process began.

Richard Gheen Leonard, 86, an economist who was a deputy chief of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, died of cancer Friday in Philadelphia.Pub Date: 9/15/98

MOSCOW -- Boris N. Yeltsin left the hospital in the weak winter light yesterday morning, and a motorcade bore him through steady snow to the Kremlin, where the diminished president lined up his closest aides and fired them. Having reminded the world he was still in charge, Yeltsin returned to the hospital.During his three hours at the office, Yeltsin not only dismissed his chief of staff -- whom he reportedly regarded with fatherly affection -- but replaced him with an army general who is also the secretary of the Security Council.

Fine, you have an office in the West Wing of the White House, where the president works.But where in the West Wing? On the same floor as the Oval Office? The same corridor? An office with a window?It is one of the oldest competitive sports in Washington: the gentlemanly scramble at the beginning of each presidential administration for White House office space. Precisely where you work is thought to reflect, albeit imperfectly, your importance. So Erskine Bowles, the new chief of staff, inherits an office that not coincidentally sits on the same corridor as the president's and is nearly as large.

Howard County Police Chief James N. Robey, a lifelong Democrat with no experience in electoral politics, plans to retire after 31 years on the force to run for county executive.His entrance into the race would give Democrats a candidate with local roots, executive experience and an upbeat personality -- much like County Executive Charles I. Ecker, now a GOP candidate for governor.Robey's formal campaign announcement is scheduled for Jan. 13 at the Roger Carter Recreation Center in Ellicott City, Democratic sources say. The center is where the police station stood when Robey, a 56-year-old Howard native, began his career on a beat in 1966.

MOSCOW -- It's known in the former Communist world as "the sausage principle" of self-preservation: Each time a leadership comes under scrutiny for corruption, it slices off the rotten ends and claims there's still something worth saving in the middle.As the Kremlin leadership maneuvered around yet another bribery accusation yesterday, President Boris N. Yeltsin fired a deputy chief of staff while leaving in place his most senior and valued aides -- despite their having been touched by the same privatization scandal.

Andrew Charles Tartaglino, retired deputy chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, died Friday at his home in Charlesbrooke after a 10-year battle with prostate cancer. He was 71.In three decades of sleuthing, he helped catch hit men and drug traffickers, as well as corrupt police officers and agents.He led a two-year investigation into corruption in the New York City Police Department in the late 1960s that resulted in the arrests of more than 40 officers. The celebrated case was the basis for the book and movie, "Prince of the City."

A county police officer has sued the department, a senior officer and North Arundel Hospital for $5 million, claiming his civil rights were violated when he was taken from his Carroll County home in handcuffs last year to undergo a psychiatric evaluation for stress.Officer Edward Francis Smith filed the lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, charging he was held against his will in the psychiatric ward of North Arundel Hospital for 66 hours because his estranged wife and his girlfriend told his superior officer he was suicidal.

Arundel police seek attacker of woman in Downs Park 2 Anne Arundel County police are looking for a teenager who they said grabbed a 40-year-old woman around the neck as she walked in Downs Park in Pasadena over the Labor Day weekend. The woman suffered minor injuries, according to police, who said she was on a wooded trail in the park area Saturday about 3:45 p.m. when she came across a teenage boy "acting in a strange manner," appearing to intentionally fall off his bike several times.

A Baltimore fire commander, who was dismissed after being deemed "negligent" and "incompetent" in his role at a live-burn training exercise in which a 29-year-old recruit died last year, will be reinstated and likely promoted after authorities determined that his termination was not proper. The city's civil service commissioner has upheld a hearing examiner's decision to reinstate Lt. Barry P. Broyles, the instructor in charge of an ill-prepared rescue team that responded to the fatal exercise Feb. 9, 2007, in which Racheal M. Wilson was killed.

William S. Lindsey Sr., a former Anne Arundel County police chief who was also an accomplished bluegrass musician, died of heart failure Friday at Marley Neck Health and Rehabilitation Center in Glen Burnie. He was 75. Mr. Lindsey was born in Baltimore and raised in Arbutus. After graduating from Catonsville High School in 1950, he served in the Air Force during the Korean War. Mr. Lindsey's police career inadvertently began when, as an out-of-work Glenn L. Martin Co. jet engine mechanic with a brand-new house and mortgage, he was pulled over for speeding and given a ticket by a Maryland state trooper.

As James Teare Sr. prepares to take the helm of the Anne Arundel County Police Department on Jan. 1, chief on his mind is filling the depleted ranks of sworn officers. There are about 35 vacancies, not including those to be filled by the 18 cadets due to graduate from the police academy in late spring. The department is approved for 681 officers. The number of openings does not count officers away for other reasons, such as vacation or sick leave. "I would like to get to that 681," Teare said in a recent interview, adding that recruiting to replace retiring officers will be a challenge as well as a priority.

Three hours into his new job as acting chief of the Howard County Police Department, a congenial but also intense William J. McMahon talked about his favorite task as a career police officer. "A patrol officer - you do all the aspects of the job," he said. Which is why McMahon spent part of his Memorial Day weekend - while a major and deputy chief were in charge of operations - helping patrol the HFStival at Merriweather Post Pavilion. "I need to be there. It's very easy to review incidents a day or a week later," but to be out in the heat and experience something as a patrol officer does is different, the 43-year old said.

The premiere of Ladder 49 at the Senator Theatre the other day reminded me of my friend and colleague John F. Steadman, the much-beloved News-American and later Sun sports reporter and columnist, who died three years ago. Ladder 49 is a movie that John, who grew up a few blocks from the Senator in Govans, probably would have liked as the proud son of a firefighter. Several years ago, John, who was named for his father, was a speaker at the annual Fallen Heroes Memorial service at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium.

The City Council announced last night that it will hold a public hearing next month on whether to confirm Kevin P. Clark as Baltimore's new police commissioner. The council is expected to question Clark, and the public will have an opportunity to comment at the hearing scheduled at 5 p.m. Feb. 26 in the council chambers. The hearing will be televised locally on Comcast Channel 12. Mayor Martin O'Malley appointed the 22-year New York police veteran to the post last week to replace former Commissioner Edward T. Norris, who resigned last month after almost three years to become Maryland State Police superintendent.

Michael Sarbanes, former deputy chief of staff for Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, has been named executive director of the Citizens Planning and Housing Association. Sarbanes will start in March as head of the 62-year-old nonprofit group, which aims to find regional solutions to such problems as transportation, housing and drug addiction. "Michael has a stellar academic and public-policy background on a wide range of issues, from public safety to housing," said Al Barry, president of the board of the organization.

Syria has a seat on the U.N. Security Council, so that the terrorists are represented, too. The 36-year-old, new-mom governor picked her gay, 33-year-old, deputy chief of staff for election ticket mate. In Massachusettes, they are the conservatives. Argentina's new government means to get by on credit, of which it has none. There ought to be two football championships, one for Florida, the other for the rest.

Acting Baltimore County Fire Chief John J. Hohman, a former union president who had filled the department's top spot since June, was named chief this week by the County Council. Hohman, 47, becomes the fifth chief to serve during the six years of County Executive C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger's administration. In an interview yesterday, he said his main goal is to "maintain the high reputation of our department." "I don't look at it as some sort of revolving door," Hohman said of the rapid succession of leaders.