Correction on William Norton obit

William Norton is alive and well and living in New Jersey.

The subject of an obituary in yesterday's Daily News was another William Norton, who shared a number of characteristics with the one who is alive and well.

Both were Philadelphia police officers, serving at roughly the same time, and both had served in the Army in the Philippines.

Accounts of two incidents, found in the Daily News library files, were wrongly attributed to the deceased William Norton.

The deceased William Norton, who died Friday at age 62, was credited with helping narcotics cops bust a Jamaican drug ring in 1989 by pretending to be a crooked cop, and with sniffing out a meth lab in Germantown in 1984. Both of those incidents actually involved the living William Norton.

All of the other incidents attributed in the obituary to the deceased William Norton, including being assaulted by a pit bull, as well as his biographical information, were accurate.

The living William Norton was a Philly cop from 1965 to 1988, when he resigned and moved to Jersey after receiving death threats from the drug gang he helped bust.

He said that during his police career, he was often confused with the other officer with the same name.

-John F. Morrison