After several fights and at least one recent killing at nightclubs, Prince George's County police are considering banning their officers from working overtime at the bars. This move, reported in today's Washington Post, comes just months after a similar ban took effect in Baltimore when Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III worried that officers were containing the violence instead of stopping it or making appropriate arrests.

Instead of bars hiring and paying for their own off-duty cops, the city set up a pool in which the bars, particularly the ones around downtown Market Place, were to contribute to a fund to help pay for extra on-duty officers. But few clubs have paid in, and the bill has thus far been picked up by taxpayers.

Clubs such as Iguana Cantina, which had hired up to 15 off-duty city officers, turned to outside jurisdictions that still allow their officers to moonlight at nightspots. That has set up a conflict with the city police union; Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3 president Robert Cherry, a city police homicide detective, said he has asked his counterpart in Prince George's to discourage county officers from working in the city.

It's not known whether PG cops are working here, but Cherry told me he's heard it from several places and it concerns him. "The officers who work here are the best for here," he told me this morning. "We don't need outside officers coming in causing problems and then leaving without people knowing who they are."

Maj. Andy Ellis, a spokesman for the Prince George's County Police Department, told me that it's against their general orders to work overtime outside their jurisdiction. Also, the department mandates that overtime PG officers always wear their uniform. So if they're here in the city and dressed in plainclothes, they're violating two of their own rules.

"It would be extremely unlikely they are in Baltimore," Ellis said. He did note that 18 years ago, Baltimore City officers routinely worked overtime in Prince George's "because the pay was better."

Cherry is urging Bealefeld to overturn his order, saying that having the bars pay for the extra protection saves the city money and gives his officers a much-needed boost in salary. If officers from outside agencies are working overtime in the city, that deprives his members of work and could cause unnecessary tension between the two agencies. Cherry said he also is trying to determine whether its legal for police not assigned to Baltimore to work overtime in the city.

In Prince George's County, police officials gave some of the same reasons as Bealefeld for contemplating a ban -- violence that occurred despite having officers at the clubs and the potential for a conflict of interest for officer who might have decide whether to enforce the law at the behest of the city or the bar owner.