Campus Police

Twenty-four fraternity brothers at the University of Maryland in College Park have been accused of beating six new members so badly during initiation that they suffered injuries ranging from a ruptured spleen to a fractured ankle.Campus police said yesterday that they have charged the 24 young men with seven counts each of hazing, a criminal misdemeanor under Maryland law. Each count is punishable by six months in jail and a fine of $500.Criminal charges in such hazing incidents are rare, although College Park has taken taken disciplinary action against students in about a half-dozen cases in the past 10 to 15 years, a university spokesman said.

A university police officer shot and wounded two women who were fighting early yesterday inside the emergency room of University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore campus police reported. The gunfire ended a dispute that apparently began at the Paradox nightclub in the 1300 block of Russell St., police said. About 3:30 a.m., a woman involved in a scuffle there arrived at the emergency room seeking treatment for a stomach injury. The patient, whose name was not released, was in the waiting room when four women barged in and attacked her, resuming their earlier fight, said Col. Cleveland Barnes of the campus police.

The state Human Relations Commission has ruled that a strict beard ban for campus police at the University of Maryland at Baltimore unfairly discriminates against black men, a decision that could affect other police departments in Maryland.The commission appeals board ordered the reinstatement of a black policeman who was discharged when he refused to shave, citing a physician's advice that he had a skin ailment that would result in severe cuts, sores and scarring if he shaved.The skin condition, pseudofolliculitis barbae, or PFB, is unique to black males, a certain percentage of whom develop severe cases that inhibit shaving.

A male sophomore at the Johns Hopkins University was shot fatally on the Homewood campus late last night, according to a university spokesman.Witnesses said the victim was shot about 10: 40 p.m. by a fellow student after an argument that began during a political meeting at Shriver Hall on the North Baltimore campus. The man thought to be the gunman had completed his course work at Hopkins but had not graduated, the Hopkins spokesman said.The victim was taken to nearby Union Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival, city police said.

A 21-year-old Towson University student was raped in her off-campus apartment by an intruder, Baltimore County police said yesterday. The woman was sleeping in the bedroom of her apartment in the Fairways at Towson complex when a man broke in just after 5 a.m. Tuesday, police said. The man assaulted and raped her, police said. She was treated at a nearby hospital and released, said Officer Shawn Vinson, a county police spokesman. Police were not disclosing details of how the man broke into the apartment in the 1300 block of Airlie Way, and they did not release a description of the assailant.

A University of Maryland sophomore from Baltimore was found dead in her College Park dormitory room Thursday afternoon, campus police said.Police found no sign of foul play or external evidence of injury in the death of Kelly Elizabeth Nalwasky of Guilford, a 20-year-old psychology major, said Cpl. Mary Brock, spokeswoman for the University Police.The initial police investigation showed no indication of a communicable disease or that drugs or alcohol might have caused the death of the Western High School graduate.

Digest Baltimore City: Clifton Park Officer shot in hand; gunman escapes A Baltimore police officer was shot in the left hand by a gunman Saturday night after stopping to investigate an apparent drug transaction in an alley near Clifton Park, police said. Northeastern District Officer Robert Hayes was driving a cruiser in the 1700 block of Montpelier St. about 9:30 p.m. when he spotted suspicious activity between two men in the alley, said Officer Troy Harris, a police spokesman. When Hayes stepped from his car and approached the pair, one fled and the other pulled out a handgun, police said.

The police chief at Morgan State University personally intervened this month to reverse and expunge the arrest of a scholarship student accused of theft and resisting arrest in a dispute that began over an unpaid $6.50 tab at a campus dining hall, according to documents obtained by The Sun and court papers filed yesterday. After personally persuading prosecutors at Central Booking to drop charges filed by his own officers, Chief Adrian J. Wiggins pushed for official police statements to be rewritten as if no arrest occurred, according to internal police records and statements obtained by The Sun. Two campus officers have been disciplined for failing to obey the chief's "unarrest" requests, and they filed a lawsuit yesterday in Circuit Court to have their punishments reviewed, Michael Marshall, their attorney, said.

The drug implicated in the death last month of a University of Maryland, College Park junior apparently is rising in popularity in the state, posing a challenge for health and law enforcement authorities. The state medical examiner reported last week that GHB - an illegal substance used for body-building effects and as a sleep aid and recreational drug - contributed to the death Sept. 5 of Alexander Klochkoff, 20, of North Bellmore, N.Y., who was found unconscious on the porch of his fraternity house.

I pull the pin on the small, black weapon I hold in my palm. Fifty feet away, a workman repairing an overhead light fixture totters on his tall ladder, almost falls, and rights himself at the last second. Women working in a nearby office rush into the reverberating hallway.The three charcoal-suited young men surrounding me appear gratified. The high-tech security device I have just activated has proved to be a serious attention-getter, the decibels of sound emitted by the little instrument surely being, as its advertising claims, just a shade short of what it would take to split a human eardrum.