March 09, 2009
FAIRMOUNT HEIGHTS, MD – He looked like a cop, dressed like a cop and even had a badge (more than one, actually).
But Prince George’s County police say Nathaniel R. Mines Jr. was an impersonator and arrested him for it.
Mines, a council member in the small town of Fairmount Heights, just over the eastern D.C. border, has thrown his community into turmoil. He says he was appointed commissioner of the town’s five-man police force. The police chief says that position doesn’t exist.
To sort out the mess last week, the town council locked the town building’s doors and convened an emergency meeting out of the public eye. Since then, the police chief, mayor, council members and staff have shut down access to information, hanging up on callers and refusing to answer questions. Meanwhile, the county police investigators who arrested Mines say they have received several calls about other instances of possible police impersonation by Mines.
Such controversy is not new to Mines, who was charged in 1996 with impersonating a D.C. police officer. That case was dropped for lack of evidence.
Nor is controversy new to the town of Fairmount Heights, estimated population 1,500. In the past year, the town’s chief administrator has been charged with soliciting sex from an undercover police officer; the charges were dropped after he went through a remediation course. Its former police chief, who moved to New Carrollton’s police force, has become the subject of a state police and FBI investigation into allegations of embezzled money and falsified reports in his new department.
In 1998, the mayor changed the locks at the town hall and refused to give the keys to the council members. The town voted to recall the mayor. The local bank grew so confused by the power struggle that it simply froze Fairmount Height’s municipal funds.
And the police chief who launched Fairmount Heights’ small department 10 years ago was ousted from that job after only a few months once the council learned he had been convicted of assault and battery and misuse of office in his previous job overseeing police in Seat Pleasant.
But Mines’s case might be the community’s most bizarre scandal.
Upon his arrest, police say they pulled from his car two bulletproof vests, two red and blue police strobe lights, a police siren, a gas mask, a 9mm Glock handgun, nine rounds of ammunition and four badges (one federal, three of local jurisdiction).
The car itself was an enigma: a black Cadillac Escalade with D.C. Fraternal Order of Police license plates — although unlisted with the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles — with an ATF vehicle placard inside, according to charging documents.
The two county officers who arrested Mines ran into him while responding to reports of possible violence at a crowded dance hall in Temple Hills, according to court records. Mines stopped them and told them that he was a nine-year veteran of the Fairmount Heights force and its appointed commissioner, working security for the party. “I have my police radio right here, and I am on channel four,” Mines told officers, according to the report.
A few hours later, the officers checked with Fairmount Heights Police Chief Wendell Brantley, who told them that Mines was not a police officer and should be arrested if he claimed to be. When they took Mines into custody, officers say he was carrying a Fairmount Heights police commissioner badge, a police ID card and a keychain that included a handcuff key.
“This kind of thing doesn’t happen often,” said Maj. Andy Ellis, a county police spokesman. “When it does, it’s often people who wanted to be a police officer at some point and just couldn’t pass the requirements for whatever reason. Sometimes it’s former security guards. Sometimes it’s even criminals. Sometimes they’re so natural even the real police are fooled.”
The danger of such police impersonators, Ellis said, is that people could wind up not believing real officers they encounter and resist their authority, leading police to have to use force.
In the days after his arrest and release, Mines was eager to defend his statements. In a phone interview, he said he was appointed commissioner in 2004 by then-Mayor Lillie Thompson-Martin. “I’m the police commissioner. . . . I was sworn to oversee the police department, and I still hold that position to date,” he said. “I’ve been through this once before — dealing with this is just a bunch of bull.”
Thompson-Martin, like all current and former town officials contacted, would not comment about Mines. She did not hang up immediately, like others did, but insisted, “I don’t have anything to say about anything.”
In a second phone interview, Mines said he now lives in Greenbelt but has been a Fairmount Heights council member for eight years. Records show he works as an inspector for the D.C. Department of Public Works.
After arranging to meet with a reporter in front of the Fairmount Heights municipal building, Mines failed to show up. A man who sounded like Mines later answered his cellphone number but said Mines had left for a few minutes and would return soon and hung up. Calls to the number have not been answered since.
Besides police impersonation, Mines faces charges of carrying a gun in his car without a permit. Police say the blue and red lights mounted on his car are also illegal for civilians.
The council held its emergency meeting Thursday evening at the tan brick municipal building in the heart of this community of aging vinyl-sided homes and chain-fenced yards. Its Web site describes it as “the oldest black community in Prince George’s County” and says the daughter of Booker T. Washington lived there. Before the session, city officials locked the doors and declined to explain the meeting, but Mines and Brantley, the police chief, attended.
Neighbors across the street from the town hall clucked over the new string of troubles, but most did not want to talk about it.
“I’ll be honest with you,” said one, shaking her head. “I don’t know what the heck they’re doing in there anymore.”
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