Photo by joekerstef.

It starts off like so many routine crime stories: the Post reports this morning that Nathaniel R. Mines Jr., a councilman in Fairmount Heights, Maryland — just over the District’s eastern border in Prince George’s County — was arrested on the charge of impersonating a police officer. Fair enough. But in Fairmount Heights, it’s just the most recent incident in a long and tiring series of crimes which the townspeople of “the largest and oldest black community in Prince George’s County” have had to come to terms with. The Post’s report contains an almost unreal laundry list of crimes, both alleged and proven, perpetrated by public officials:

In the past year, the town’s chief administrator has been charged with soliciting sex from an undercover police officer. . . . 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 [sic] 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.

Wow.

Turning back to the most recent improprieties, Mines’ defended himself by claiming that he was named Commissioner of the police force in 2004 by former Mayor Lillie Thompson-Martin but then ducks in-person meetings and phone calls from Post reporter William Wan. And the current Fairmount Heights chief of police says that there’s no such Commissioner post. The most frightening thing? Police claim that upon arrest, Mines was in possession of two bulletproof vests, a Glock handgun, ammunition, and four badges — including one federal badge.

Thompson-Martin wouldn’t comment for the Post’s story, and most residents also declined to chime in. One can’t really blame them — after so many criminal incidents among those that are entrusted with the public’s best interests, it’s easy to imagine their speechlessness.