I stumbled upon this scene during a recent visit to the Baltimore Police Department's Northern District station on Cold Spring Lane. Just seemed appropriate given the city's crime predicament and the mayor's conviction.

It's been a busy week in Baltimore, with several police-involved shootings, twice of men with seriously felony backgrounds and both armed with guns, and today my colleague Justin Fenton has a story about a failure to build a credible case against an officer accused of wrongdoing.

The officer had been caught in an integrity sting and charged with stealing money from an undercover cop posing as a drug dealer. But as we've seen before, prosecutors said they were forced to drop the case because of a shoddy investigation.

Justin's story details problems with the case and provide documents you can look at to see where, in part, it went awry.

Meanwhile, the city is struggling to end the year with fewer homicides than last year 20-year low of 234. We're two off last year's pace, so at this point it looks like we'll break even numbers-wise. Still, police say other violent crime, including shootings, are down, and the police commissioner has been on a crusade this week complaining about bad guys with guns being out on the streets.

Check out our homicide map to track cases.