Disciplinary Action

A police union representing Howard County officers has written a sharply critical letter to police Chief Frederick W. Chaney, accusing him of trying to run a controversial officer out of the department.The letter, sent to Chaney on Friday, states that Officer Victor Riemer -- one of three officers embroiled in the controversy surrounding the May 4 hanging death of Carl Jonathan Bowie -- is being targeted for "other than normal" investigations of police misconduct.Riemer "is being singled out because of the recent allegations" surrounding Bowie's death, the letter said.

One former and three current Prince George's County police officers have filed a federal lawsuit claiming that they were targeted for harassment after testifying against a police official who made a racist remark.The suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, names County Executive Parris N. Glendening and other county officials as defendants -- claiming that they knew of the purported abuse of authority and failed to stop it.It is the fourth lawsuit by Prince George's County police officers since 1991 to allege race or sex discrimination in the department.

WASHINGTON -- Clinton administration officials have concluded that the ethics issues raised by FBI Director William S. Sessions' conduct are so serious that he must leave office, but they hope he will "see reality" and step down voluntarily, a senior administration official said yesterday.At the same time, the source said that the White House would not publicly depart from its announced plan of taking no action until Bernard Nussbaum, President Clinton's counsel, has reviewed both a Department of Justice report finding that Mr. Sessions had abused his office and the challenges to that report lodged by Mr. Sessions' two lawyers.

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.

An 11-year-old student at Collington Square Elementary/Middle School was shot in the chest with a BB gun on Monday evening, city school officials said, after he and another student began fighting on the school's playground during an after-school program. The incident happened about 5:30 p.m. Monday, city school officials said. The victim was attending the program and the other student returned to the school. After the students began fighting, the suspect walked up to the student and shot him in the chest with the BB gun. The victim did not need medical treatment, city school officials 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.

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.

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.

NEW YORK - Major League Baseball has levied a reported $50,000 fine on New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens for his volatile behavior in Game 2 of the World Series. Clemens nearly touched off a bench-clearing brawl when he caught a fragment of Mike Piazza's broken bat in the first inning and hurled the jagged piece of wood in the general direction of the Mets' catcher. Though Clemens has said repeatedly there was no intent to hit Piazza with the bat fragment, MLB vice president Frank Robinson obviously felt there was sufficient cause for disciplinary action.

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.