July 12, 1995

FEW CHARGES IN POLICE SPREE INQUIRY After a two-month investigation into a drunken spree by New York City police officers through six Washington hotels, police officials said that no more than seven of the 942 officers in the capital at the time faced serious departmental charges. The small number of officers identified stands in sharp contrast to initial reports from Washington, which indicated that dozens upon dozens of drunken New York officers were grabbing women, spraying fire extinguishers, pulling fire alarms and prancing about nude. [ Page A1. ]

A newly identified and sometimes fatal bacterial illness transmitted by the same tick that carries Lyme disease has stricken at least a dozen people in the tick-infested suburbs north of New York City in the last several weeks, medical researchers say. The disease, which can produce more severe flu-like symptoms than Lyme disease, is easily treatable once diagnosed, though it responds to only one type of antibiotic while Lyme responds to several, the researchers said.

After a two-month investigation into a drunken spree by New York City police officers through six Washington hotels, police officials said yesterday that no more than 7 of the 942 officers in the capital at the time faced serious departmental charges. The small number of officers identified stands in sharp contrast to initial reports from Washington, which indicated that dozens upon dozens of drunken New York officers were grabbing women, spraying fire extinguishers, pulling fire alarms and prancing about nude. Washington hoteliers estimated at the time that up to 100 New York officers were involved.

Does the bad news ever stop? Salomon Inc. unexpectedly warned yesterday that it would report a loss of approximately $65 million in the second quarter because of reversals in trading for its own account and at its Phibro commodity business. The loss, at an investment firm already shaken by defections of more than 30 managing directors in the last few months, put a question mark over the survival of the company's top management -- in particular, Deryck C. Maughan, chairman and chief executive of Salomon Brothers Inc., the company's brokerage unit.

With about $1.5 million in Federal money for low-income housing available to the city last July, New York officials set out to use it. Working with a Lower East Side housing group, they would renovate five rundown city-owned tenements on East 13th Street and create apartments for poor people. As simple as it might have seemed, the effort has been anything but.