Disciplinary Action

WASHINGTON -- A retired Army general has been charged with having sex with the wives of four subordinate officers, lying about it and obstructing justice by telling one of the women he would testify against her in a child custody suit if she revealed their affair, Army officials said yesterday.Maj. Gen. David R. E. Hale, 53, who retired amid the allegations in February as the Army's deputy inspector general, now faces the military's equivalent of a grand jury. He could become the first senior military officer in more than 40 years to be called back from retirement for a court-martial.

Western Maryland College officials will wait until after final exams to determine whether to take disciplinary action against two students arrested in a campus melee Saturday."

The NBA warns its players that if they leave the bench to join an on-court fight, they will be suspended and fined. NHL players incur automatic suspensions for leaving the bench for an on-ice altercation. The NFL tells its players to "stay away" if a fight breaks out among other players or face the imposition of fines.Major League Baseball, on the other hand, has no rules stipulating automatic disciplinary action for players who run onto the field from their dugouts or their bullpens to join a fight in progress.

The legislature's ethics committee will begin investigating the business affairs of Sen. Larry Young today, with the veteran lawmaker's reputation and potentially his State House power on the line.The 12-member panel is expected to outline the areas it wants to investigate, drawing from an article last week in The Sun that reported possible ethical violations by Young.The committee inquiry could clear Young of violating state ethics laws or, if it finds improprieties, lead to disciplinary action by the 47-member Senate, including expulsion.

WASHINGTON -- Several midlevel officers at an Aberdeen Proving Ground school, where reports of sexual misconduct last fall spurred an Armywide investigation, are expected to face disciplinary action, Army officials said yesterday.The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command has recommended to top Army officials that the officers face administrative action, a move that would likely end their careers, said the officials, who would neither release the names nor the ranks of the officers."There are less than a handful of people involved," said one Army official, who requested anonymity.

FMC Corp. workers voted yesterday to end an 11-day walkout and accept a three-year contract, without resolving differences concerning overtime that force some to work 75 hours a week.The Chicago-based chemical company and the United Steelworkers of America Local 12517 agreed to form a joint committee to solve their overtime differences by Sept. 1."People were out on the street," said Bob Falk, the local's president. "We could have gotten bogged down for weeks on this."Falk added that some workers used the strike to grab a precious commodity: a few days off with their families.

An Annapolis city fire captain, cleared this week of charges that he blocked lifesaving medical attention to a black man during a mid-July rescue call, was reprimanded for using racist language a month earlier.Capt. Gene Kirchner, who is white and has been with the department for 30 years, was counseled by supervisors in June for calling a co-worker "darkie" and for other "inappropriate" and "bigoted" comments about blacks, according to internal investigative documents obtained by The Sun. The captain denied to his bosses that he was racially insensitive.

Will Howard County become the first Baltimore metropolitan county to institute a participation fee for athletes?Director of Athletics Don Disney thinks there's a possibility of that happening during school budget deliberations this week.He says that transportation is the second largest item in the sports budget -- about $320,000 per year. And the school system is thinking of making some drastic cuts to its transportation budget -- cuts that could trigger sports user fees to pay bus costs.

YOUR MAY 29 editorial, ''Policing the legal profession,'' shows a lack of understanding of the process followed by the Attorney Grievance Commission.When a grievance against a lawyer is received, it is rejected if it clearly falls outside the Maryland Rules of Professional Conduct. If it states a possible violation, it is treated as an inquiry that requires a response from the attorney and additional information. It may then be rejected, if baseless, or docketed as a complaint, if it clearly sets forth an apparent violation.

LONDON -- Peter Norris, who ran investment banking at Barings PLC when it collapsed last year after $1.3 billion in trading losses, was banned yesterday by British authorities from working in a senior executive position in the securities industry for three years.As chief executive of the investment arm, Norris was the executive ultimately responsible for overseeing Nicholas Leeson, the trader who ran up the huge losses in unauthorized dealings from Singapore.Leeson is serving a 6 1/2 -year prison term there.

Howard County's police chief said Tuesday that an internal investigation into a brutality accusation in the arrest of a man who led officers on a highway chase last year has been completed and resulted in disciplinary action and retraining. Chief William McMahon said the internal affairs investigation into the Nov. 20 arrest of Jessup resident Stephen Zombro is closed. The chief declined to discuss details of the findings or the disciplinary actions taken, citing department policy on confidentiality of personnel matters.

It would be great if we could say that Major League Baseball put a big punctuation mark on the sport's long-running steroid scandal, but I'll settle for the right decision at the right time for the right reasons. The agreement announced yesterday by baseball management and the players union - amending the sport's drug policy yet again and closing the disciplinary book on the Mitchell Report - probably won't stop the next generation of cheaters from using the next generation of illegal substances.

Three correctional officers assigned to the Roxbury Correctional Institution at Hagerstown in Western Maryland could face termination amid allegations of using excessive force against inmates, the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services said yesterday. The names of and specific allegations against the officers were withheld because of the continuing investigation. The disciplinary action stemmed from an incident last week, said spokesman Rick Binetti. He declined to describe what happened.

Two more caseworkers have lost their jobs and another supervisor has been disciplined as a result of the death of 2-year-old Bryanna Harris, the Baltimore child who died of methadone poisoning despite her troubled mother's repeated contacts with more than a dozen city social services employees. State Department of Human Resources Secretary Brenda Donald, who oversees child welfare services, said she made the personnel decisions after receiving a final report from the agency's inspector general.

The top performers on two recent Baltimore Fire Department promotion exams likely cheated amid lapses in testing security, including a dozing monitor, according to the findings of a city investigation released yesterday. The report, by the city's inspector general, recommends that the implicated firefighters be disciplined and that the June 2 test be given again. Though the firefighters did not admit to cheating, the investigation found that at least five had a 2001 exam that they studied from, which is against test protocol.

Employees of the Maryland Aviation Administration and Maryland Transportation Authority used state-owned computers in "hundreds of instances" last year to visit sexually oriented Web sites during working hours, legislative auditors found in a report released yesterday. The auditors were able to identify more than 20 employees of the two agencies who visited the sites, some of which included nude pictures and pornography. The audit report said they included members of the transportation authority's police force, according to the Office of Legislative Audits.

A police officer who provided information to The Sun about security deficiencies at the port of Baltimore lost a case yesterday in which he asked a court to throw out the most serious disciplinary charges he faces as a result of his disclosures. Baltimore Circuit Judge Stuart R. Berger ruled that the Maryland Transportation Authority Police can proceed with its plans to bring Officer George Tarburton Jr. before a trial board. Tarburton faces charges that could result in disciplinary action, including firing.

For the second time in less than a year, a 911 operator in Anne Arundel County will be disciplined for dozing off while working a late shift, police said yesterday. A supervisor at the emergency call center in Millersville had to rouse a female dispatcher from a nap about 4:30 a.m. March 20, said the center's commander, Capt. Tim Bowman. At the time, all of the telephone lines in the call center were quiet. Police declined to identify the operator, saying it was a personnel matter. "Fortunately, there was no public safety issue in this circumstance," Bowman said.

Five employees of the State Highway Administration were fired yesterday for their roles in a procurement scandal in which the agency bought supplies for up to 28 times their retail cost. Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan said SHA Administrator Neil J. Pedersen acted one day after receiving information from the attorney general's office about the transactions with companies that charged exorbitant prices for common household goods. "That information was sufficient to warrant a decision to terminate five of the employees," Flanagan said.

WASHINGTON - Soldiers from an Army Reserve unit in Iraq who refused to take part in a convoy last month, citing security concerns and maintenance problems with their vehicles, are facing disciplinary action and some could be charged criminally, Pentagon and military officials said yesterday. As many as two dozen soldiers from the 343rd Quartermaster Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Rock Hill, S.C., were subjects of the investigation that began Oct. 13 when soldiers refused to take part in a cross-country fuel convoy.