Charles J. Herring has a day job. He's the deputy chief of the Towson University police force, earning $95,558 to protect a campus with 24,000 students, faculty and staff.

Charles J. Herring has a second job. He's in charge of scheduling security at the Bel Air Cinema Stadium 14 in Abingdon. Until last week, one of the guards included Herring's boss at Towson, Police Chief Bernard Gerst, who makes $119,813 a year. Gerst said he quit the theater job after inquiries from The Baltimore Sun.

Charles J. Herring has a third job. He is a part-time lawyer with a home office on Legacy Drive in Harford County. Most of his cases involve divorce and civil tort claims, but he has found time to dabble in two criminal cases. In one that is pending, he represents a burglary suspect arrested and charged by deputies in the Harford County Sheriff's Department.

"I work long hours and I work hard," Herring told me about juggling three jobs.

Officers working for him at Towson University and deputies out arresting people in Harford County take a dim view of one of their own enforcing the law in one county and then trading in his gun and badge to defend people in the county next door, a union representative says.

"In this game, it's real clear, you got to pick a team," said Gary McLhinney, a labor negotiator and consultant for Schlachman, Belsky and Weiner, a Baltimore law firm that represents the police unions at Towson University and in Harford County, as well as others across the state. "It's a perception that he's not completely on the side of the good guys all the time."

Part of this dispute is internal bickering. McLhinney said Towson officers feel that Herring gave his boss preferential slots at the movie theater to the detriment of rank-and-file cops for whom starting salaries are one-third the chief's. Those officers, McLhinney said, "obviously realize the inherent conflict of interest in a subordinate scheduling overtime for a superior."

But this is more than a spat between management and workers.

Harford County State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly, whose office is prosecuting Herring's client in the burglary case, said he was unaware that the suspect's lawyer is also a sworn police officer. He said the dual roles do not necessarily constitute an outright conflict of interest but do raise troubling questions.

"It doesn't look clean," Cassilly said.

In a series of interviews, Herring and Gerst offered an impassioned defense, denying any conflict or favoritism. Both said tough economic times made it difficult to provide for their families. Gerst said he has a child in nursing school and another in graduate school, and that he lost $5,000 while furloughed last year as part of the state's efforts to close a budget deficit.

The chief said he worked at the theater about two nights a month since July and denied that he took slots that otherwise would've gone to the officers under his command. "I'm not cutting anyone's throat," he said. But Gerst said he would no longer work the security job to end any questions that might discredit him or the university.

Herring also denied giving his boss preferential treatment and said the three Towson officers who work at the theater told him they did not feel deprived of extra work. "I treat him no different than anyone else," he said of Gerst.

The deputy chief chafed at the word "criminal defense attorney," preferring instead to be referred to as a civil attorney who has taken on two criminal cases at the behest of clients under what he called "special circumstances." He declined to elaborate but said he took both cases without charging fees.

"I have not and I do not profit from criminal defense work," he said. "I do not hang out a shingle. I don't accept walk-in customers. I do not accept referrals. I'm comfortable that the steps I have taken in regards to these special-circumstance cases maintain the standards of my profession and protect the interests of my clients."

But does the man in the burglary case think his lawyer can work out a special deal with police and prosecutors because his advocate is a member of the tight law enforcement fraternity? Or is there a chance the defendant won't be adequately represented because his advocate might side with his compatriots on a police force?

In court, will Herring be willing to grill a deputy, a fellow holder of a badge and gun, on his integrity and truthfulness? I've watched defense attorneys in Baltimore call police officers liars to their face on the witness stand. How would that play with Herring's officers back in Towson?

Herring told me he can represent the best interests of his client, and I have no reason to think otherwise. But that doesn't remove the appearance of a conflict - working both sides of the badge - that just can't be overcome.

Herring said he sees no conflict with his dual roles representing certain criminal defendants in one county while arresting or overseeing the arrests of suspects in another. He said he would not defend anyone in a Baltimore County case, where he works as deputy police chief at the university, to avoid representing someone who has had an encounter with one of his officers.

"That would be a conflict," he said.

But the security guard stint complicates Herring's defense. He and the guards do not have arrest powers in Harford and must call Harford County sheriff deputies for backup and to make arrests. That means a deputy involved in one of Herring's criminal cases could respond to his call for help, and possibly even arrest someone at Herring's behest. Not to mention how awkward it would be for Herring to deal with a deputy after having faced him in a courtroom.

"It doesn't become a conflict unless either party acts that way," Herring said.

It would be better to not put either side into that awkward position in the first place.

Said Cassilly: "He is working a security business in the community within the jurisdiction of the police department that arrested his client. That's a problem."

Harford County Sheriff L. Jesse Bane called Herring's defense of a criminal suspect an affront and he said he would instruct his deputies to withhold information on investigations from the security guards.

"Here you got a guy who may end up defending somebody and we're giving him specific information that we may not want to release to a defense attorney," Bane said. "We deal with victims of crimes, and there are times we would have a lengthy discussion with them in front of the security guards. Now I have some serious concerns about that."

The issue here is not whether the chief and deputy chief need or should be moonlighting as security guards, or that Herring has only two criminal defendants as clients, or even that he separates his diametrically opposed careers by a jurisdictional border. It's more whether he has too much pull in the system or too little incentive to offer an aggressive defense.

Even if Herring plays the dual roles to perfection, nagging questions will cloud the results. Appearance is everything, and as the state's attorney for Harford County put it, "It doesn't look clean."