It wasn't that Sgt. Colin Webber, vacationing from Leicestershire, England, was necessarily looking for a way to wriggle out of buying his wife a diamond necklace. But as they were window shopping in the diamond district in Midtown yesterday afternoon, a good excuse came right at him.

It was a man with a knife, fleeing from a fight in which he had stabbed a young jewelry merchant three times in the chest, the police said. "Get him!" someone yelled, and Sergeant Webber did, flipping the man onto the pavement in what he later described as a judo move and wrapping him in a bear hug until the New York police arrived.

The man, Abram Sariashvili, 44, was arrested on a charge that he tried to murder the merchant, Arsen Aranbayev, 25, who was in stable condition yesterday at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center.

Sergeant Webber, who works for the Leicestershire Constabulary in central England, was given a special commendation and a pair of New York Police Department cuff links by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. The sergeant and his wife, Claire, entertained questions from reporters at police headquarters - many of whom wished to know their opinion of New York City and the dangerousness thereof.

"The jury's still out," Sergeant Webber said.

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