I guess you can view the latest ouster (or resignation) of a city attorney who apparently couldn't get a Baltimore police officer fired for assaulting a man in one of two ways: more tumult within the police disciplinary process or top brass wanting to crack down and frustrated they can't.

Maybe it's a little of both.

Disciplinary hearings are supposed to be fair and impartial. It's a chance for a cop to fight internal charges lodged against him at a hearing in front of fellow cops (including a top commander and an officer of equal rank as the accused). It's run like a trial and the board votes on the charges and recommends discipline. The police commissioner can up the discipline but cannot go below what the board decides.

In this latest case, Officer Michael D. Brassell was accused of assaulting a Morgan State University employee outside a pizza shop on Light Street in Federal Hill back in 2005. The victim complained two white plainclothes cops who didn't identify themselves interrupted his private conversation about race and a fist-fight broke out outside.

Both officers pleaded guilty to second-degree assault in court (after a tortuous legal process in which charges were filed, dropped on a technicality and refiled again) by taking Alford pleas, in which they didn't admit guilt but conceded the state had enough evidence to convict them. They each received suspended jail sentences.

One officer, James Odom, resigned from the force. Brassell decided to fight internal charges that would have led to his firing -- assault, lying to investigators and using racial slurs. But at the trial board on Thursday, he was found guilty only of assault and the board recommended a 60-day suspension without pay. The prosecutor, a 19-year lawyer with the City Law department, was promptly fired.

This comes shortly after the city attorney who oversaw trial boards was fired for backdating administrative charging docuements and the attorney who investigaged racial discrimination complaints resigned after it was learned she moonlighted as a defense attorney representing some of the same people city cops were arresting.

(Brassell, interestingly enough, has forged a new career as a sketch artist with the deparmtent and has work in the Walter's Art Museum. He reconstructed a mummy and got himself an interview with Archaeology Magazine).

Now we have a new dispute. Police union officials and Brassell's attorney are backing the prosecutor, Sandra Holmes, who they said got a raw deal by being forced to take a weak case that her superiors had botched by failing to do basic advance work. The bottom line for the citizens is whether the cop should be back on the street or got justice, and for the cops whether they can get a fair shake in their own department.

The cast of characters is beyond interesting. Brassell's lawyer, Malone, used to prosecute city cops as the department's chief legal advisor (he was later the city's labor commissioner) and he went up against the very police unions that he's agreeing with now. He was accused by a former police commissioner of misusing a city-owned computer (stolen from his house in a burglary and recovered with pornography on a hard-drive) and accused by black police officers of conducting racist disciplinary hearings. His supporters fired back that the former police commissioner was unfairly targeting him for revenge.

And the chairman of Brassell's trial board, Deputy Major Dan Lioli, had just gotten off being suspended himself after being cleared of being in text-message contact with an East Baltimore community leader wanted on a warrant charging him with assaulting his wife. The man attacked his wife on a city street and killed her; he was shot by a police officer and survived. Though Lioli was cleared, there still are unanswered questions as to how hard police tried to arrest the man before the attack and why the case was handled at the district level instead of turned over to the domestic violence unit.

On Thursday, Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III told new recruits as their graduation ceremony to be above-board and he reminded them, "It's what you do that counts."

Indeed.