Supply Officer

Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) announced Monday that he has asked Secretary of the Navy John Lehman for a detailed briefing on Lehman's decision to relieve three ranking Navy officers at Miramar Naval Air Station over the base's purchase of $630 airplane ashtrays from Grumman Corp. Wilson said he wants to ensure that the officers implicated in the case were not deprived of "basic fairness."

The Pentagon, in an unusually swift reaction to the disclosure that the Navy paid $1,800 for two ashtrays for an airplane, relieved a rear admiral and two other officers of their duties at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego Thursday. The move, rarely taken against senior officers and equally rare in procurement matters, was announced by Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger only moments after the three officers had been told about the decision.

Here, 170 miles off Cape Hatteras, N. C., the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Eisenhower is on a routine deployment, and Navy Reserve pilots on a refresher cruise are slamming aging F-4 fighters and A-6 bombers onto its floating 4 1/2-acre flight deck. But, down below in room 2-119-1, Cmdr. Beryl Moore is ignoring the shudders that the planes send reverberating through the ship.

The attorney for a veteran Oceanside police officer accused of drug-related crimes said Friday the officer supplied small amounts of cocaine in hopes of gleaning information from a prospective informant. He said the officer should be subject only to administrative punishment by the department.

This isn't Burger King. We don't do it your way here. --Judge Manuel L. Real's favorite saying. The courtroom confrontation took place more than 30 years ago, but the most controversial federal judge in Los Angeles remembers it today as an early lesson in judicial style. Chief U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real, then a young prosecutor, had decided that his only chance of winning a conviction before an unsympathetic judge was to demand a jury trial. But U.S. District Judge Pierson M.

The New York Police Department unveiled a new high-tech command center Thursday that would provide officers crucial data about crimes and suspects -- including convicts' nicknames and tattoos -- even before police arrived at a crime scene. The $11-million Real Time Crime Center is the first of its kind and "will transform the way we solve crime," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said.

The drop of emergency medical supplies for a woman at the South Pole was an emotional moment for others at the science station as well. "The aircraft was low enough that I actually saw a person at the side cargo door, arms and legs spread out, braced . . . another human being, a stranger, in our world," writes Joel Michalski, a NOAA Corps officer stationed at the pole.

Police officers on six UC campuses carry Taser guns, but UCLA appears to be alone in expressly allowing officers to stun not only violent suspects but those who are passively resisting their orders. In interviews Tuesday, top officials at university police departments across the state stressed that officers should be given discretion when using Tasers but said they thought the weapons should be used primarily against suspects who posed a physical risk.

Southern California's office market tightened again in the first quarter as expanding companies pushed vacancy rates down and rents up, according to data released Thursday. Los Angeles County's vacancy rate fell to 11.5% from 14.1% a year ago, continuing a slide that started in early 2004, real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield reported. Average asking rents ticked up 9 cents to $2.14 per square foot per month. Orange County and the Inland Empire experienced similar shifts.

As a senior at the Naval Academy, he flirted with the idea of taking drugs, having an affair or doing something that would get him thrown out of school. He never followed through with the idea, or even gave it much consideration, but Eddie Meyers would have loved an honest way to free himself from a lengthy military commitment so that he could play professional football.