Lt. Ben Scanlon

Lt. Ben Scanlon turns up at the 12th Precinct from Internal Affairs whenever there's a complaint to investigate, a form out of order, or a rule bent past its limit. He's fussy, humorless, and utterly devoted to procedure, treating every visit as a chance to catch Barney's squad falling short of regulation.

George Murdock plays him with such dry, unbending sincerity that Scanlon never reads as a mere plot device — he's a genuine believer in the rulebook, which makes him funnier than a cartoon bureaucrat would be. His clashes with Barney's weary reasonableness are some of the show's best small comic frictions.