Police Captain

TWO VETERAN Philadelphia police officials were disciplined Friday for their roles in an alleged cover-up of a scuffle between a pair of patrol cops and the grandson of a retired police captain. Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said that Inspector Aaron Horne and Capt. John McCloskey were both suspended for 30 days without pay. Horne, the commander of the Northwest Police Division, was transferred to the Forensic Science Bureau. Horne had been in line for a promotion to chief inspector later this year.

VAN BUREN TOWNSHIP, MICH. - Officers tasked with the grim job of notifying a woman about the death of her husband stumbled onto a grisly crime scene Thursday when no one responded at the suburban Detroit home, which had been left unlocked. Inside, the woman and the couple's two young children were found dead in separate bedrooms. Investigators were probing whether the man killed his family then committed suicide by driving the wrong way on an interstate highway in neighboring Indiana, instantly killing a stranger, too, as he slammed into the man's car. Police agencies in Michigan and Indiana spent the day trying to connect the dots.

Meet Harry Mearing. He has handcuffs, a handgun and a uniform. He patrols Northwood, a neighborhood in the Frankford section of the the lower Northeast. But he's no city cop. He's Northwood's very own armed security patrolman, possibly the first in a Philadelphia residential area. Each homeowner that seeks his protection pays Mearing $40 a month to look after a home and keep an eye out for suspicious activity. Mearing is part of a national trend as neighborhoods across the country have hired private guards in the face of budget cuts to local police departments.

IT'S NOT JUST any old job, being a cop. The entrance to Police Headquarters offers a simple reminder of this fact. The words "Honor" and "Integrity" loom large outside, underscoring the values police officers are supposed to embody. But in one embarrassing episode after another, the behavior of some members of the Philadelphia Police Department has made a mockery of those lofty ideals. Since 2009, 47 Philly cops have been arrested. The majority have been rank-and-file cops who were locked up for boneheaded offenses — theft, drug dealing, assault.

A REPORT OF GUNFIRE brought two cops to the back of Rodney Handy's Oak Lane house one brisk night in March.   Handy, a 22-year-old college student, was just getting home from work. The police officers pulled him over, suspicious of his tinted windows and darkened headlights, and ordered him to exit the car. Handy refused, so officers Shane Darden and Tim Taylor went in after him, prompting a struggle that ended only after Darden used a Taser to subdue Handy, sources familiar with the incident said.

  Ray Lewis, the retired Philadelphia police captain who became a hero to the Occupy Wall Street movement, will not face legal consequences for wearing his old uniform at protests, a Police Department spokesman said Monday. "He will not be arrested," said Lt. Raymond Evers, spokesman for Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey. "He's exercising his First Amendment rights, and we're fine with that," Evers said. That position is in stark contrast to a letter Ramsey signed in November demanding that Lewis "immediately cease and desist" from wearing his old uniform in public.

Hard to understand why NBC would keep Awake sitting on its bench for so long, because the show is better than most of the series the network had in its starting lineup for the season. On Awake , the concept is all. Consequently, it takes a little explaining. Following a car crash, police detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs, the malevolent Lucius Malfoy of the Harry Potter universe) spends his days in alternating realities. In one, his wife (Laura Allen)

IN FULL UNIFORM and with his head held high, a retired Philadelphia police captain was arrested in New York yesterday while participating in an Occupy Wall Street demonstration. Ray Lewis - who left the Philadelphia department in 2004 after serving as captain of the 25th Police District, headquartered at Front and Westmoreland streets - reportedly was among more than 170 protesters who were arrested. Several representatives with the NYPD's public-information office said they could not confirm Lewis' arrest because there were so many people taken into custody who had not yet been processed.

Police capt. hurt in hit-and-run Clarissa Street near Hunting Park Avenue in Nicetown A police captain suffered a broken leg early yesterday when his car was rear-ended by a hit-and-run driver, police said. The victim, a captain in the 39th District, which is headquartered at 22nd Street and Hunting Park Avenue in Tioga, was driving in an unmarked car about 3:37 a.m. when it was struck by a tan vehicle, police said. The driver remained at large last night. The captain was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he was treated and released.