It's been years since we've had a good scandal at Baltimore Police Headquarters to distract us from crime. But it is nice -- or more appropriately, disturbing -- to see the police command staff returning to its normal, dysfunctional self. As we see with stories today and yesterday by reporter Justin Fenton, a police department lawyer has been working both to defend the agency and represent her own clients in both civil and criminal courts.

Kim Y. Johnson only makes $94,400 a year handling discrimination cases in the BPD (which, believe me, at least used to be a full-time job). The department knew back in 2004 that she was doing this when WMAR-TV reported it. Though the station didn't air her name, the reporter told Justin he presented city officials with her time-sheets. Sheila Dixon, then City Council President, vowed to follow through with an investigation.

Not only did they not investigate, the city promoted the attorney, gave her more money and more responsibilities. And what did she do in return, according to Justin's articles? She ramped up her private practice. Just last year she represented a man arrested by city officers who said they found 56 grams of marijuana in his car. The case got dropped.

Then she represented the same suspect again on a drug charge, but this time she withdrew. Because representing both the police and a person charged by the police would seem a conflict? One would hope. But no, she needed another $1,500 from the defendant to continue working the case.

Her clients take her to courtrooms in Southern Maryland and Montgomery and Prince George's counties, and she has a private law office in Laurel. I'm assuming court rooms in those areas have night hours so she can concentrate on her day job the Baltimore citizens pay her to do.

But this is only the start of the twists and turns and is why the Baltimore Police Department is such an awkward place. Here is a scorecard -- though I warn the score won't matter in the end.

Another attorney who worked for the city, Howard B. Hoffman, is alleging in federal court that he was wrongfully fired from the city's law office to make room for Johnson, and a judge has agreed to let the case go forward, ruling in January that the circumstances of his departure were unusual enough to raise questions.

But that's not all. Hoffman has represented a police lieutenant colonel, Michael J. Andrew, who is fighting his termination from the city department for leaking a memo criticizing a police-involved shooting back in 2004. Andrew has been exiled to the property division while an appeal of his case (he lost in federal court where a judge ruled he was not protected by the First Amendement) moves forward in Richmond. Arguments were made in January.

Hoffman also represents other fired police commanders from several commissioners ago -- some of whom were brought in by police leaders only to find themselves working in a setting that would drive a kindergarten teacher mad. One top commander alleges he was fired for telling the mayor that the department didn't need to buy more police cars.

And of course Johnson, the attorney with the second job, was the very attorney going after Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III's brother, who was caught up in a racial dispute in homicide in which a black detective says he was forced to look at KKK Internet sites. That complaint had been filed with the deparment's EEOC division, which Johnson runs when she's not doing other things. She did find time to investigate this complaint, however, and sustained the findings against the detective Bealefeld and the others, though we haven't yet learned if anything will actually come of this. (Bealefeld's brother, for the record, isn't accused of participating in the KKK web site incident but of making a false report about it.) 

The commissioner's brother was transferred out of homicide and then left for the Annapolis PD before he was disciplined (that raises a whole set of other questions, not the least of which was any influence used to transfer the brother from Baltimore to Annapolis police so he could avoid charges here and secure himself a job? The Annapolis department is run by a former city police commander).

This puts Commissioner Bealefeld in a tight spot. The very attorney going after his brother was herself being scrutinized for wrongdoing. Now, even with his brother gone, can Bealefeld take action against her without it being viewed as payback for targeting one of his relatives? Not to mention the other lawsuit over her very hiring in the first place, that one filed by an attorney who is also representing the colonel who feels he was unfairly fired.

If this were a baseball scorecard, the umpire would've torn it up long ago and ordered everyone to start over.

This is nothing compared to the past, when in the 1990s a white commissioner fired a top black commander, sparking days of protests (half the command staff marched, in uniform, to protest outside City Hall while the other half went to court to file paperwork declaring the fired commander incompetent).

I remember a former commissioner, Ed Norris, who after dealing with a spat between two commanders, one of whom stole the other's take-home car and called in a false report to the Maryland State Police, saying that inicident showed why cops couldn't get a handle on crime. Of course, Norris would later become embroiled in his own scandal that sent him to prison.

And years later, a mayor -- the O'Malley who is now governor -- had to send the SWAT team to remove another police commissioner who didn't take kindly to being fired. That commissioner, Kevin P. Clark, was, incidently, the one who fired Andrew and the other commander who complained about the police cars.

Does it all make sense now?