Police Beat

STORE CLERK FOILS ROBBERY ATTEMPTA clerk working at a Glen Burnie convenience store thwarted an armed robbery attempt Thursday night when he tried to grab the suspect's gun.Police said that at about 7:50 p.m., a man in his early 20s walked into the High's Store in the 600 block of Old Mill Road, displayed a gun and told the employee it was a holdup.The clerk tried to grab the gun, which still was stuffed in the suspect's waistband, police said. The suspect ran out of the store without getting any money, police said.

Prince George's County State's Attorney Angela D. Alsobrooks was right to bring criminal charges this week against two county police officers accused of savagely beating University of Maryland student John McKenna last year, but it appears she hasn't yet gotten to the bottom of this case. There's reason to believe that many others beyond the two indicted officers may have been involved in the incident and its aftermath, and Ms. Alsobrooks, who took office in January, needs to bring all of those responsible to account if she is to convince the public that serious police misconduct will not be tolerated on her watch.

You don't have to get hung up on whether you're left, right or center to scan some of the offerings from left field, and there are several worth noting this week.The July/August Dollars and Sense (What's Left in Economics) has two memorable pieces. "America's New Addiction: How the Gambling Industry Is Seducing the States" by Betsy Reed reports that in 1992 Americans lost $30 billion playing legal games of risk, six times what they spent on movie tickets alone and more than what they spent on books, recorded music, attractions (such as amusement parks)

Prince George's County police have suspended a sergeant who was at the scene of a beating last month of an unarmed University of Maryland student that occurred when crowds took to the streets celebrating a basketball victory. The beating was caught on a video that surfaced publicly Monday. County police spokesman Maj. Andy Ellis declined to identify the officer but confirmed the suspension, which occurred Tuesday night and is part of the widening investigation of the beating and any failures to halt or report it. The sergeant is the second officer suspended.

A witness told police that he observed a Baltimore homicide detective and a Baltimore County sheriff's deputy beating a man outside a barbershop last year, contradicting the detective's account and offering some insight into charges that were filed nearly a full year after the incident. Detective Terry W. Love Jr., through his union attorney, has questioned the timing of second-degree assault charges filed this month against him and Deputy Michael Herring, just days before the statute of limitations was set to expire.

Trio is sought in stabbing, robbery A scissors-wielding woman and two men armed with handguns robbed two people on a Brooklyn Park street Thursday in an attack that left one victim with a stab wound in the back, Anne Arundel County police said. The two people told police they were in the area of Alley 69 and Patrick Henry Drive around 2:30 p.m. when the trio approached them and demanded money. The two men had semi-automatic handguns and the woman had a pair of 8-inch scissors, which she used to stab one of the victims in the lower back, they said.

WHAT THEY'RE SAYING TODAY'S SUN COLUMNISTS Never enough pitching With the emergence of right-hander Jeremy Guthrie, the Orioles expect to have a promising young rotation going into next season. The club should consider reinforcing that strength by signing a front-line starting pitcher. Sports baltimoresun.com/schmuck More than enough Paris The recent fascination with Paris Hilton reminds us of the media circus surrounding Princess Diana. However, Diana was much more worthy of our admiration.

Perhaps the most common refrain voiced yesterday by city residents in response to the crime plan announced by Mayor Sheila Dixon was this: They want to see more police, and they want to see them getting out of their cruisers and walking beats. In many ways, Dixon's plan -- which calls for more community policing tactics, such as officer "adopt-a-block" programs -- is a response to that sentiment, found in many of Baltimore's most troubled neighborhoods.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's lackluster presidential election season erupted in violence yesterday, with five bombs killing at least seven people and Iranian police beating and arresting protesters at a women's rights demonstration in Tehran. Four bombs exploded about 11 a.m. in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, killing at least six people and wounding 70, the provincial governor told state-run Iranian television. Iranian journalists based in Ahvaz put the figure at eight dead and 80 wounded. The fifth blast occurred in Tehran about 9 p.m., killing one person and wounding four, according to state-run television and eyewitness accounts.

LOS ANGELES - He is still recognizable, though he has walked with a limp since he lost control of his car last year, crashed into a house at 100 mph and shattered his pelvis. City detectives recognize him. They offer their hands, tell him, "Stay out of trouble, man." Fathers point him out to their children. He still means something. By virtue of his troubled life and a single decent gesture, he is embedded in the American conscience. Rodney King, whose videotaped beating led to the riots that left 55 dead and $1 billion in property damage in Los Angeles in 1992, is living at once the American dream and the American nightmare.

LOS ANGELES - The televised police beating of a suspected car thief last week will test two years of efforts by police chief William J. Bratton to win over black residents. But it also strikes at Bratton's deeper and more ambitious agenda: fixing America's race problem by fixing its crime problem. "What is it that keeps this country so on edge?" asked Bratton, a former New York City police commissioner who took the Los Angeles job in the fall of 2002. "It's race." Putting his theories on race relations into practice is one of the reasons he came to the Los Angeles Police Department, Bratton said.

BOLTON, N.Y. - The sonar ping ricocheted off the dead man's body and rang in the ear of the New York State Police scuba diver. At 140 feet below the surface of Lake George, Trooper Chuck Ford Sr. was about to make the deepest recovery of a body on record for the 68-year-old State Police Scuba Unit. "I was on the guy in six minutes," Ford, a longtime trooper from central New York, said as he recounted the Sept. 1 recovery. Recovering the bodies of people killed in accidents or by foul play is only one responsibility of a unit called on in high-profile missions.