Police Impersonation Claim Latest Scandal to Hit Fairmount Heights

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.