Discipline

After moving swiftly to replace the leadership of the Board of Registered Nursing, California officials are revamping practices that had allowed errant nurses to work for years after complaints were filed against them. For the first time, the board is prioritizing complaints, moving first to investigate nurses who pose the greatest threat to the public. In addition, top officials will this month get subpoena power to gather documents about nurses accused of wrongdoing. Before, some cases sat for months until outside investigators issued such orders.

In the long-running saga of Lindsay Lohan's legal troubles, every single misstep - each dirty drug test, every missed court appearance, even a profane message etched on her fingernail - was publicized, scrutinized and dissected in tabloids the world over. But there were two allegations of misconduct that came and went quietly, out of public view. They weren't transgressions by the former teen star growing up in the limelight. They were by two veteran judges presiding over her case.

Sheriff Sherman Block said today that a number of deputies are facing disciplinary action for their roles in two cross burnings at the Men's Central Jail. Block said an internal department investigation confirmed that the cross burnings occurred in an area of the jail where gang members were housed. He said deputies implicated in the incidents--involving the burning of a wooden cross fashioned from a broom handle in 1987 and another in which a smaller paper cross was torched in late 1987 or early 1988--have received notices of pending disciplinary actions and have been reassigned to non-police administrative duties.

The civilian panel that oversees the Los Angeles Police Department approved changes Tuesday in the way the department disciplines and trains officers involved in use-of-force incidents. The unanimous vote by the five-member Police Commission marked the latest move in an ongoing shift within the LAPD toward a less rigid approach to how it punishes officers. Previously, if the commission concluded that an officer had violated department policies during a shooting or other serious use of force, the officer was automatically subjected to a formal review by department officials to determine what, if any, discipline should be imposed.

A boy's drawing two years ago of him pointing a gun at a kneeling, praying teacher was more than a doodle, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled. It constituted a punishable threat. The court rejected arguments from the boy's lawyers that the drawing was protected under the 1st Amendment, noting that the Constitution "does not protect conduct that threatens another."

Washington Prep High School suffers from a lack of willpower. I counted five "wills" in "District Calms Campus" (March 29). Principal James Nobel said "their parents will be called in for meetings ... students will be sent to other schools." Administrator Bill Elkins said "students will no longer be allowed in hallways unless they have passes. And the enrollment ... will be evened out, starting July 1." Supt. Roy Romer said, "I will muster every resource I can to bring order." All of these promises are after-the-fact recognitions of problems that should have been addressed when a riot at the school erupted last November.

Sheriff Sherman Block denied Thursday that there has been any change in the Sheriff Department's policies on disciplining officers involved in shootings, rejecting testimony by one of his captains that deputies were now occasionally being fired for new "moralistic" and "civil liability" reasons. Block agreed that officer-involved shootings are now more comprehensively investigated, but he denied that deputies are discharged because they have exposed the department to big civil lawsuits.

The Clinton Administration faces a controversial decision over whether to discipline the pilots of the Air Force F-15C jet fighters that shot down a pair of U.S. Blackhawk helicopters over Iraq two months ago, sources familiar with the case said Thursday.

The NHL gave Brendan Shanahan a hammer. And though the new czar of discipline is swinging it more forcefully than anyone expected, the league insists the hammer won't be replaced with a feather. Shanahan, head of the league's new player safety department, has aggressively carried out the NHL's overdue directive to punish players who hit opponents in the head. Predictably, he has faced a backlash, maybe because his decisiveness and clarity are startling after Colin Campbell's meek, muddled rulings.

Microsoft Corp. said it has taken disciplinary action against employees for buying Microsoft software at cost from the company and reselling it for a profit. A Microsoft spokeswoman declined to comment on the number of workers or the action taken. Microsoft employees can buy software at reduced prices for personal use from a company store and procure programs for business use through an internal system. The crackdown comes after a midlevel executive in the company's .