Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 4

4 POS T-GAZETTEi 1ietM Aug. 20, 1985 CityArea PAT to drop 840 bus trips, thousands affected only), 60L Haler Heights, COM Mc-Keesport-East Pittsburgh (Sundays only). University buses 1U Oakland-Allegheny Valley, 18U Oakland-Ohio Valley. Trolley route 52 AUentown on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. The cutbacks are so sweeping that even route EBA East Busway All Stops, the heaviest hauling bus route in PAT's system, will have minor reductions.

Michael Scanlon, PAT's manager of marketing and media relations, Routes to be eliminated are: Rush-hour flyers EB East Brookline, OVG Ohio Valley-Gateway, RP Rosslyn Farms-Pennsbury Village and Eastvue. Suburban shuttles 39A Mt. Lebanon-Carnegie, 44A Shadycrest, 49B Linden Grove, 55B Homeville (Sundays only), 55C Whitaker, 55DE Homestead Park-Brierly Lane (Sundays only), 55H Homestead-Du- quesne (Sundays only), 55J McKeesport-Duquesne (Sundays only), 55N Lincoln Place (Sundays only), 60C Grandview (Sundays Denial Lawyer repudiates charge that Greer sold drugs recently By Carl Remensky Post-Gazette Staff Writer A lawyer for Shelby Greer, accused in May of selling cocaine to major-league baseball players, yesterday denied an allegation that Greer sold cocaine in Pittsburgh two weeks ago. John Zagari said he talked with Greer and "has no reason to believe" Greer was involved in any drug dealing since his apartment was raided by the FBI last January. Richard Perronl 52, made the accusation Friday when Pittsburgh police and agents from the state attorney general's office arrested him and his son, Richard Perroni 32, at their home at 2210 Hayson Ave.

While searching the home, investigators found more than three ounces of cocaine, and the elder Perroni said he purchased the drug from Greer two weeks ago, according to Pittsburgh narcotics detective James Ramsey. "He said Greer told him to hold onto it for a little while until the heat is off because of the federal case," Ramsey said. In May a federal grand jury indicted Greer, 29, on 10 drug trafficking charges in connection with cocaine sales between December 1979 and January 1985. Six other men also were charged. Ramsey said he "immediately By Ken Fisher Post-Gazette Start Writer Thousands of rush-hour commuters will be forced into new travel habits next week when the Port Authority eliminates 840 bus trips in an effort to save $5 million and balance a $147 million transit, budget The cutbacks, which start Sunday, will affect riders on 128 of 225 routes, ranging from minor schedule adjustments to wiping out complete routes.

An average 300,000 riders board buses and trolleys on Cocaine sales to Buc hurler admitted (Continued from Page 1) ney, William B. Lytton of Philadelphia, said no other baseball players' names were on the witness list supplied by the government. Scurry, who had publicly admitted his dependency on cocaine, told authorities that during the 1982 baseball season he purchased cocaine from Sniff man four times, on the day preceding every off-day and on every off-day. Ross said Scurry's cocaine use increased in 1983 when he bought cocaine from Shif man every day the Pirates were in Pittsburgh during the McCune accepted a plea agree-' ment that calls for Shif man to be sentenced as though he had pleaded guilty to one count, instead of 20 counts, of possession with the intent to distribute The remaining 91 drug counts against Shiftman will be dismissed at the time of sentencing. He faces a maximum penalty of IS years in prison, a $25,000 fine and a minimum of three years' special parole, which is a stiffer form of probation.

McCune is waiting for the completion of a pre-sentence report before setting a sentencing date. The mustached Shiftman, who was dressed for court in a dark three-piece suit, showed no emotion as he admitted selling the drugs. McCune ordered him to remain in thestodiana County JaiUmtiLsen-tencing. Lytton said each purchase made byjicnrry involved several grams of xcocame with a value of about $200. After" admitting his cocaine dependency in 1984, Scurry was admitted for treatment at the Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Beaver.

On June 26, Scurry was suspended from play for failing to follow the drug aftercare program. The suspension was imposed after he failed to appear for the June 23 game with the Phillies in Philadelphia. It was lifted in July after Scurry returned to his aftercare program. Koch initiated a government-monitored drug purchase by making Flaherty backs plan to buy Bucs eairi thP cutbacks will save PAT $5 million in expenses in its 1985-86 budget. No drivers will be fur-' loughed, Scanlon said.

PAT is projecting that it will lose 1.2 million riders because of the reductions, dropping total ridership to 87.2 million by this time next year, Scanlon said. But PAT is expecting an Increase of about $105,000 in farebox revenues because of higher average fares and increases in reimbursements from the state for senior citizen fares. ords. After that raid, Greer began to cooperate with the FBI and has "confessed to everything we suspected he had been doing' FBI agent William R. Craig said during Greer's bond hearing.

According to court records, Greer is trying to negotiate a plea bargain with prosecutors. Zagari would not discuss the progress of those negotiations. After the raid, Greer moved to Philadelphia, found employment with a telecommunications firm and attended of Narcotics Anonymous. He lost the position after he was indicted, Zagari said, but has started another career as a salesman for a Philadelphia company. "The guy already could be facing life in prison.

He'd have to be an idiot to come to Pittsburgh and even get a parking ticket," Zagari said. Greer is free on bond on the federal charges. Asked if the bond might be revoked and Greer jailed because of the Perroni accusation, Senior U.S. District Judge Barroi: ir McCune said the U.S. attorney's office would have to investigate the allegation.

Federal prosecutors then would decide whether to ask McCune to revoke bond. Neither federal prosecutors nor an FBI spokesman could be reached for comment yesterday. nronosal. On Aug. 8, Caliguiri and a representative of about 15 Pittsburgh corporations offered to buy the Bucs for $20 million.

An additional $25 million would be raised to pay operating costs and deficits over the first several years. The plan called for the city and county to put up $25 million and the corporations $20 million. When Caliguiri announced the offer; he said he hoped the county would share the costs, but he did not meet with the county commissioners until yesterday to discuss the plan. Hafer criticized him for that last week and again yesterday. Caliguiri said Foerster was in some of the meetings in which the proposal was developed and that county officials had been kept informed.

Carl Barger, a local lawyer who helped line up the private investors for the public-private group, said negotiations between the representatives of the coalition and Pirate owners will resume later this week. V.W.H. Campbell Jr. Post-Gazette then in the slaying of a South Side print shop employee. Because of her suspicion, Apitsch said, she let Steele pass her and then pursued him.

He turned into Allegheny Cemetery and while chasing him, Apitsch said, she saw Steele holding a silver object she believed was a gun. After he ran over several grave markers and crashed into some headstones, Steele jumped out of his car and ran up a hill, she testified. All the while, Apitsch said, he made motions indicating that he was deaf and dumb, which he is not. She said two other officers joined in her pursuit and that it took all three of them to wrestle Steele to the ground and handcuff him. No weapon was found in the cemetery.

Romain said Steele will testify on his own behalf and will say he believed the car he was driving belonged to his brother. In addition, she said her client will testify that the officers beat him and threatened to kill him. (Continued from Page 1) interested in the team if they knew the city would renegotiate the team's lease at Three Rivers Stadium. For the first time yesterday Foer-ster revealed that if new negotiations required costly concessions from the city, he would support the' county's purchase of part of the stadium to compensate for the losses. He said his proposal is a more appropriate use of tax dollars than team ownership.

Also, Foerster said, before public ownership is considered, a proposal forwarded by Hafer should be pursued. Hater backs a plan under which stock in the team would be offered to the public. Stockholders would receive game tickets instead of dividends. Caliguiri said yesterday a stock offering could possibly be made after the baseball franchise were purchased by the public-private weekdays. Only South Hills trolley riders will be spared any service reductions.

Trolley ridership has nearly doubled since last month's opening of the Downtown subway. The average 8 percent cutbacks systemwide are the most dramatic imposed at one time in PAT's 21-year history. As a result, additional operators are being put on duty at the PAT information center and 1.5 million additional timetables have been printed to answer any questions and inform the public about the changes. 0 wf Rod Scarry Kevin Koch three telephone calls to Shiftman last Nov. 8.

The FBI had persuaded him to assist them in finding out if Shiftman still was selling cocaine. Koch told FBI agents he was afraid Shiftman would cause him physical harm if he learned Koch was cooperating with federal investigators, according to FBI testimony at Shiftman's bond reconsideration hearing in June. During that testimony, Special Agent Wells Morrison did not identify Koch by name. After seven years as the Pirate Parrot, Koch resigned his job as the club's mascot on June 6, citing personal reasons. Ed Wade, director of publicity for the Pirates, said that on the advice of General Manager Joe L.

Brown, the club is not making any comment about the case. Asked whether Koch's resignation was related to the drug probe, Wade said, "We are still maintaining that the reasons he resigned were purely personal reasons." by Merrell-Dow Pharmaceutical is available only with a doctor's prescription. Another substance that's been under study by scientists in Chicago, called polymerized ragweed pollen extract, still hasn't been approved for commercial use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Levine said. Further down the road is a treatment being developed at Johns Hopkins University that offsets the hay-fever-promoting effects of body substances called peptide leukotri-enes.

Although the sneezing and runny noses of hay fever generally are blamed on natural body substances called histamines, leukotrienes are considered 1,000 times more potent than histamines. Scientists are looking for a drug that will block the effects of leukotrienes as antihistamines block histamines. Hay fever plagues about 5 percent of Americans every year. But, despite the name, hay has nothing to do with it. It's an allergic reaction to pollen, Levine said, especially ragweed pollen.

From June to October, hay fever caused by tree and weed pollens moistens and itches millions of susceptible eyes and noses. It's a major cause of sleeplessness. Preventive immunology shots are the answer for many annual sufferers who plan In advance. Injections of a cortisone-like drug, starting in middle to late winter, can be effective for some patients, Levine said. kept for jobless "and families $81.40 a month.

The same coverage normally would cost individuals $57.10 and families $130.69. The program includes 31 days of hospital care for each 180-day period of coverage, along with 70 hospital visits by doctors, X-rays, and laboratory examinations. The extension is the third since the program was approved by the state Insurance Department in April 1983. '''X i Tom Hritz Tuning in for touchdown The National Football League Is fooling around with the idea of using helmet-contained radios so offensive teams can hear signals called over the din of an unfriendly crowd. Is the crowd that big a factor in the outcome of a football game? I don't think so.

But even if it is, is the introduction of an electronic offense a good thing for the game? Or is it just going to complicate things? I'm betting on the latter. I don't think defensive teams are going to take this sitting down. If this radio-in-the-helmet bit proves to give offensive teams much of an advantage, defensive teams will have to find a way to counteract it. As the proposal now stands, the quarterback would call his signals over a miniature mike installed on his helmet's face mask that would transmit to miniature speakers installed in the helmets of the backs, receivers and offensive linemen. With the din of the crowd pretty much neutralized, the offense should be able to operate unimpeded.

But you don't have to be Napoleon much less Chuck Noll to come up with an answer for this tactic. Simple. The defensive players simply install electronic equipment in their helmets simple miniature radio jamming devices. When the quarter-, back begins his cadence, one of the linebackers activates: bis jammer and the offensive team hears nothing over the crowd except Wayne Newton singing "Danke Schoen." Confused and befuddled by Wayne Newton's tinging, the receivers run the wrong routes, and the quarterback is sacked for a 20-yard loss. This is going to put the offense right back where it started on the defensive.

To neutralize the jamming devices in the helmets of the defensive team, the offensive team installs an anti-jamming device in the center's athletic supporter. Why the center's athletic supporter? Because that's the only place where the quarterback can switch it on. He begins his cadence, and the linebacker activates his radio jammer. Then the quarterback switchs on the anti-jamming device hidden in the center's athletic supporter. Both the din of the crowd and the defense's jamming signals are neutral-; ized, and the offense is right back on the offensive.

So the defense finds itself back on the defensive, which is no place for a defense to be. In order to regain the offensive, the defensive team takes some pretty radical step. It installs counter-anti-jamming devices in the shoulder pads of the defensive tackles. Once activated, the counter antijamming device causes a short circuit in the anti-jamming device concealed in the center's athletic supporter. Unable to take the pain of the electrical jolt in his athletic supporter, the center jumps offside while the quarterback is calling signals, causing a five-yard penalty against the offense for illegal procedure.

But more important, the center must leave the game and be taken to the burn unit of the nearest hospital for emergency treatment. Since no" back-up center will agree to risk wearing an anti-jamming device where it must be worn, the defensive team is once again able to jam the offensive's radio transmissions with more of Wayne Newton's "Danke Schoen." Since the wide receivers and backs choose to play without helmets rather than risk listening to more of Wayne Newton's singing, the offense is thoroughly shut down. At this point, the offense would have to do something really drastic. Computers, probably. I can see the faceguard of the quarterback's helmet being fitted with a talk-to computer, while the faceguards of the remaining offensive linemen and backs are equipped with midget video display screens on which they can read plays called by the quarterback.

But it wouldn't take the defense long to develop a system to neutralize the offense's talk-to computer signal calling system. It would merely be a matter of inserting a 12-year-old hacker outfitted with his own helmet computer system into one of the safety postions. He would crack the offense's computer code and password system even while the quarterback was calling signals, causing the system to crash. When the offense's computer system crashed, the entire offensive unit would walk off the field to go to the john, do some shopping or take a two-hour lunch break. The defense would then win the game by default But fed up with this nerd-like brand of football, the networks would cancel all further coverage of pro football games and turn instead to televising soccer, where if you'll remember what happened in Europe a few months ago the crowd can really be a factor in the outcome of a game.

East Seal official named Paulette Lee, media coordinator for Presbyterian-University Hospi- -tal, has been named director of public education for the Pennsylvania Easter Seal Society. thought Perroni was telling the truth because he was in such a state of shock because of the arrests that I didn't think he could make it up at the time, and he said he would testify to it in court." Ramsey said he has not talked with Perroni since. The Perronis were charged with conspiracy, possession of drugs and possession of drug paraphenalia. Ramsey said the Perronis were "substantial" cocaine dealers and had been under police surveillance for three years. He said they negotiated drug deals in bars on Banksville Road and in Green Tree, places Greer also frequented.

He said investigators never saw Greer with either of the Perronis. Zagari said Perroni likely contrived the story "because he thought he'd be able to use it to get out of hot water. Who knows? Maybe someone sold them the stuff and told them he was Shelby "I have no reason to believe Shelby Greer has been involved in any drug dealing since his apartment was broken into by the FBI last January," Zagari said yesterday after discussing the accusation with Greer. FBI agents broke into Greer's Mount Washington apartment Jan. 11 and seized two ounces of cocaine, drug paraphernalia and sales rec partnership he proposes.

He said the stock ottering wouia require 100 much time to be practical now. Hafer said, however, that Caliguiri's proposal also would take a long time to work out. Earlier this month, Flaherty had said Pittsburgh should save the Pi-' rates but that tax dollars should be used only as a last resort. The two-term former mayor said yesterday, however, that Caliguiri-had convinced him the proposal under which the city and county each would pay about $12.5 million in tax dollars for the team is the only viable plan for keeping the team. City Council President Robert Rade Stone, who attended the meeting with council finance committee chairman Ben Woods, said that if there is no alternative besides the mayor's plan to save the team, "I may have to do vote for it." Woods said he is not sure whether he or council would approve the.

gave to police following his March arrest. Assistant District Attorney Daniel Fitzsimmons argued that Steele should be tried under his own name. But O'Brien said, "In a case where somebody has received this much publicity, there is always that air of suspicion on behalf of the defendant that somebody might recognize the name." Even after jury selection, Steele's suspicions remained. Steele was convinced that some of jurors had recognized him, so O'Brien agreed to question the 12 jurors and two alternates individually to make sure none of them recognized him. They were told his name is Richard Thomas.

When the trial started, Pittsburgh Police Officer Patricia Apitsch testified that she was dr iving on Penn Avenue in Bloomfield when she looked into, her rear-view mirror. She said she thought the man driving the car behind her was Salvatore Santiago, who was wanted Days of sneezes, sniffles facing hay fever victims mi i i H's T- 4 -vfr vizu 7 "A i ST-Vi i '-II 0 1V- Roland Steele, center, is escorted to the courtroom by two of the five guards assigned to him yesterday. Accused killer on trial in stolen car case 2 By Henry W. Pierce fort-Gazette Staff Writer' Hay fever victims are in another season of sneezes and sniffles with no major medical breakthroughs to help them through the The main hope for the ragweed pollen sufferer who hasn't taken a series of immunology shots lies in taking antihistamines or traveling to the Rocky Mountains or the West Coast, an Oakland allergist said. The most promising new weapon against hay fever this season, Dr.

Macey Levine said, is an antihistamine that reportedly causes little or no drowsiness. Called terfenadine brand name Seldane the new drug received federal approval last May and has been in use here for two to three months. "Most of the patients I've prescribed it for say it gives about the same amount of relief as other antihistamines," he said. "Its chief advantage is that it doesn't carry some of the side effects of other antihistamines." The main side effect, sleepiness, can be such a big problem for some patients that antihistamine labels carry warnings not to drive or operate heavy machinery while taking the drugs. Antihistamines are such potent sleep-inducers that they're sold under other names as sleeping pills.

"The main shortcoming most people see in terfenadine is the cost it costs 50 or 60 cents a pill," Levine said. The drug, manufactured Health program Blue Cross and Blue Shield have extended their low-cost coverage of the unemployed for the remainder of this year. Blue Cross of Western Pennsylvania announced yesterday that the program will affect about 8,000 jobless Western Pennsylvanians. Called the Emergency Health Care Program for the Unemployed, the coveragcosts individuals $36.40 By Susan Mannella Post-Gazette Staff Writer Roland Steele, the Washington County man accused in the karate-- style slayings of three elderly women, went on trial on other charges yesterday, but none of the jurors knows his real name. Common Pleas Court Judge John O'Brien ruled that Steele could stand trial under an alias because of the adverse publicity he has received under his real name.

Steele, 38, of Canonsburg, is on trial for driving a stolen car and resisting arrest on March 3. Although Steele was jailed after "that arrest, he was released on June 18 after the FBI sought his help in tracking down a convicted pimp with whom he once shared a cell. Five days after his release, Steele was arrested in the killings of three elderly East Washington women. Yesterday, Steele's attorney, My-ra Romain, asked O'Brien to permit Steele to stand trial under the name Richard Thomas, an alias he first.