Duh, suing! (Photo by Matthew Straubmuller)

Oh, if only all whistleblower suits came with tiger blood.

The Associated Press reports that the former Metropolitan Police Department commander who said that it was routine for D.C. cops to provide motorcades for visiting celebrities after a pair of officers escorted Charlie Sheen from Dulles International Airport to his show at DAR Constitution Hall last year intends to file a suit against the city claiming he was demoted for his testimony in an investigation of the Sheen motorcade.

Hilton Burton, who was once the commander of MPD’s special operations division, was demoted to captain last August and transferred to the medical services branch.

Sheen’s escort (of the police kind!) caused quite a flap last year, raising many questions about why police resources were being spent on ferrying America’s favorite total bitching rock star from Mars around town.

At the time, MPD Chief Cathy Lanier said police motorcades were limited to the president, vice president, mayor and visiting foreign dignitaries. But it was also reported that Sheen’s promoter, Live Nation Entertainment, had paid the department $455 to rent a pair of officers to shuttle Sheen to his show. But in an April 19 email, Burton emailed his colleagues saying MPD often gives rides to “any and everybody.”

Lanier yesterday re-issued a statement first released after Burton’s demotion in August, the AP reports, in which she said the demotion was “based on a review of command decisions, including several critical incidents.”

But Burton’s suit will claim it was a retaliation for differing with Lanier, the AP reports, and that celebrity motorcades are, in fact, quite commonplace. Besides Sheen, who bragged on Twitter his police escort was barreling down Interstate 66 at 80 miles per hour, documents obtained by the AP last year also found that Jay-Z, John Wall and Bill Gates had also been shuttled around town by MPD officers in recent years.