Now maybe he’ll get a promotion.Actor...

Now maybe he’ll get a promotion.

Actor Don Johnson, who has played Sonny Crockett on “Miami Vice� for more than four years and is still a detective, got his man--but with no cameras rolling.

This time it was for real, when Johnson went back to his suite at the Hotel Bel-Air shortly after 9 p.m. Sunday and found a man allegedly pawing through the purse belonging to Johnson’s once and future wife, actress Melanie Griffith.

The couple surprised the man in mid-rifling before he could lift the costly jewelry in the handbag, police say. Johnson--obviously a method actor--dropped into character, blocked the man’s exit, told him to stop what he was doing, patted him down to make sure he was unarmed and held him until a policeman working as a hotel security guard arrived. Booked for investigation of attempted burglary was David Johnson, 34, no relation to Don.

Guy probably didn’t recognize Johnson if he wasn’t wearing aqua.

It’s lonely at the top--or wherever.

In 1985, newspeople cast about for a convenient name for the perpetrator of a series of grisly murders, for which suspect Richard Ramirez went on trial Monday.

For a time it was the “Valley Intruder,� or “Valley Invader.� When the killings went statewide, the monikers came down to two: “the Night Stalker,� ultimately used by most news agencies, and “the Walk-In Killer,� employed by KNBC News, period.

On Monday, even the mother ship, NBC, reported on the “Today� show on the opening day of trial for the suspected “Night Stalker�--moments after KNBC noted the opening day of trial for the suspected “Walk-In Killer.�

You might think two different guys are on trial for the same crimes.

Unbowed, KNBC is pledging to keep its lonely vigil. Says news director Tom Capra, mindful that it was a KNBC camera that recorded Ramirez’s arrest, “We always kind of considered him to be our story.�

And you thought the presidential campaigns went on forever.

Nearly 13 years after a Torrance City Council candidate was elected, a huge billboard exhorting voters to cast their ballots for him somehow turned up in a vacant lot in Lincoln Heights, more than a dozen miles away.

Constituents complained to Los Angeles Councilwoman Gloria Molina about the “incredible eyesore,� said spokeswoman Alma Martinez. Dan Walker--still in office--declared he had rented the sign briefly, just before the 1976 election, and not seen it since. Still, Walker was “the most visible owner�--in letters several feet high, Molina said.

Plan One--hauling the 15-by-25-foot billboard to the steps of Torrance City Hall--was abandoned. “We were concerned of being accused of the same thing we’re accusing Mr. Walker of,� Martinez said.

Plan Two--bureaucracy--prevailed. The sign, its ELECT DAN WALKER TORRANCE CITY COUNCIL still legible and apparently owned by a billboard advertising firm, was ticketed and given 10 days to get out of town.