At the end of yesterday evening's Baltimore Police Civilian Review Board meeting, the panel's overseer Alvin Gillard, head of the Community Relations Commission, thought it would be good for members to weigh in on the department's policy of withholding names of officers who fire their weapons.

The policy being is reviewed, and possibly will be revised, after an outcry that it could cripple the trust citizens have with police and keep witnesses from coming forward if they think the cops are too scared to put their own names out there. Who better to have an opinion than the citizens picked by the mayor to scrutinize police conduct and advise the commissioner on investigations conducted by internal affairs?

The topic sparked the most spirited debate of the evening, with most of the members voting to urge Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld to overturn the policy. It turns out that the review officials had been talking about actually is a review. Members said community leaders have been asked to poll their constituents at meetings and report back to Bealefeld.

"I don't see why the names of anybody should be withheld," said William Brent, who represents residents in the Southwestern District.

Countered Pearlette Anderson from the Western: "I don't think the names should be out there because then people can come after families and I'm a family."

Brent reminded her that an officer in a recent shooting had previously shot two people, and didn't she want to know that?

Anderson said her daughter is a police officer, and "I don't want to have her name out there if she shoots someone. That puts me in danger and puts my grandkids in danger."

Other board members pointed out that members of the CRB are identified, debate police conduct cases in public and could be targeted as well. And Brent noted that 23 threats against officers and cited by police to justify the new policy had nothing to do with police-involved shootings.

In the end, a letter will be sent from the Civilian Review Board to the police commissioner.

In defending the new policy, city police continually referred to other departments that also don't release names. One was Washington, but it appears from my reading of The Washington Post that too might be changing. After the city policy made its pages, I noticed that in two shootings involving DC officers that The Post seemed to be challenging the department.

In one, the Post wrote that the Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. refused to name the officer who shot someone but cited no policy prohibiting the disclosure. Later, the Post used sources to identify an officer and said the department had in the past routinely publicized the names but now, under a new chief, that practice had stopped.

In Prince George's County, police this week revealed the names of 14 officers involved in a single shooting. And today The Post wrote a story about how one of them had been involved in two previous shootings.