A bad day for police.

Thursday afternoon, a Baltimore County police officer on his way to work in the Towson Precinct was killed when he apparently lost control of his pickup truck in the northern part of the county and crashed. He was identied as Detective Jason Simons, 32. Making his case even sadder is that Simons was the stepson of Baltimore County Police Lt. Michael Howe, the commander of the tactical unit who died a year ago after suffering a stroke.

Then Thursday night came word that an off-duty Baltimore police officer was shot outside his Northwest Baltimore home in an apparent robbery attempt. Police said three men armed with guns tried to rob the officer, who shot at them and was wounded in the stomach during the gun battle. The officer was listed in serious condition at Sinai Hospital and police said they have two people of interest who are being questioned. They'll be more on this case later today.

The last time Baltimore police officers were shot was in July when two were wounded while responding to a domestic disturbance call in West Baltimore. In January, a 23-year-old man was convicted and sentenced to life for killing Baltimore Officer Troy Lamont Chesley Jr. during a robbery outside his girlfriend's home in 2008.

In the middle of all this, a Baltimore officer, Mark J. Lunsford, was charged by the feds with embezzling money and stealing jewelry and clothes from houses during drug raids. Authorities said the six-year veteran, who was assigned to a DEA task force, added his informant's name to cases the informant didn't work and then asked for the informant to be paid bonuses. The informant would then split the money with the officer, the feds said in an affadavit filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

The court documents, which you can read at the end of this post, are both detailed and complicated, and involve a wire-tap, numbered bills, expense watches and secret FBI surveillance of a Sykesville parking lot near where the officer lived. Lunsford has been suspended without pay and was released from detention to home monitoring. He is due in court again next month.

One interesting detail from the indictement: it notes that the informant Lunsford was using to learn drug intel on Baltimore streets was dropped by the FBI because he was deemed unreliable and untruthful, yet kept on by the DEA and Baltimore police. And who knew an informant could get a bonus? In one case, the court papers note the bonus totalled $10,000 and might have come from federal grant money to Baltimore.