I have to give the Baltimore Police Department credit for great timing.

Just as they're denying to divulge to the public the names of police officers who shoot people, they decide that a report detailing problems in the department's DNA lab, which have already led to the director being fired and raised questions about at least a dozen criminal cases, should not be made public.

Why?

Police say it's not in the public's interest.

The department's chief legal counsel, Mark H. Grimes, sent a letter to the Baltimore Sun explaining that he believes the document is exempt under the Maryland Public Information Act citing a provision that says certain documents can be withheld if they are "contrary to the public interest."

To which public is Mr. Grimes referring?

Certainly not the public that is me. Or my editors. Or, I hope, my readers.

I would argue that the "public" is a great deal interested in knowing how flaws in the police department's DNA lab could put criminals back on their streets, to drive up crime, to be arrested again, to maybe go free again because the lab can't get its act together.

It was the Baltimore Sun that first broke this story about how DNA samples were contaminated by technicians who had left their own DNA evidence on at least 13 cases. That doesn't render the samples bad, but police had not taken DNA samples of thier own workers to hold on file, complicating the test results because their own workers could not be quickly eliminated as suspects.

Already, the issue has caused headaches in one trial, that of a man convicted of killing a Baltimore police officer. During a routine sentencing hearing, prosecutors had to recall as a witness a lab official and spend an hour both defending the lab and explaining what had gone wrong. Brandon Grimes got life without parole anyway, but his lawyer plans to appeal and one issue will be the DNA lab. A national legal group that works to reverse wrongful convictions is calling for a separate investigation into the city lab.

And so we ask what has been done to correct the problems. And the department decides that its answers are not in the public interest.

I won't try to make a legal case here -- I'm not a lawyer -- but it's worth mentioning that the police attorney, Mr. Grimes, cites a part of the public information act that deals with investigatory records and that denials are reserved for documents that would "interfere with a valid and proper law enforcement proceeding" or, among other things, "endanger the life or physical safety of an individual."

And a state law that took effect Oct. 1, 2007 -- which is designed to regulate DNA labs as if they were hospitals by 2011 -- says, "Forensic laboratory deficiency statements and plans of correction are public documents" and mandates that "A forensic laboratory shall make discrepancy logs, contamination records and test results available to the public within 30 days of a written request."

We have seen a deterioration in information being released by police over the past few weeks and months, and residents have long complained that they aren't getting information they want about crime in their neighborhoods. I can only conclude from this latest dismissal that police have no interest in helping the citizens understand what they do and how they operatate, in good times and bad.

Mayor Sheila Dixon has made community policing a centerpiece of her administration, reversing a strategy in which tens of thousands of people were locked up on charges that judges and prosecutors routinely threw out. Cops beg for help from citizens in solving cases, but you can't go asking for a handout from people and then shut the door in their face when they seek routine information.

We're not asking for homicide case files filled with senstive interviews and information that may or may not be true. We're not asking to reveal confidential informants or out the latest high-tech crime fighting tool. All we want is a report on the general conditions of a lab that helps put away criminals, and a clear understanding of problems that could lead to convictions being overturned. I can't imagine the public not being interested in this.

And I don't buy a response from the police public affair's office that their hands are tied because of a legal opinion. The lawyers can argue that they don't have to release a document. Just because they can doesn't mean they should.

The letter from the attorney Mr. Grimes: