“Boston anti-gun group leader [is a] disgraced police director,” reads the Boston NOW headline, announcing the opening of the first satellite office for the Washington DC-based Reaching Out to Others Together (ROOT).

“The group says it doesn’t expect its local leader’s past, which included a stint in federal prison, to be a distraction.”

What? An anti-gun group headed by a felon?

“In 1991,” the article continues, “[Billy] Celester left a deputy superintendent post with the Boston Police Department to become head of the Newark police.” A top cop?
“His post ended in disaster, Celester pleading guilty in 1996 to three counts of fraud — including the diversion of police narcotics investigation funds and taking illicit donations from police subordinates …. Celester was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in federal prison.”

A crooked top cop? And it turns out 34 of the 37 charges were dropped in a plea bargain.

“It doesn’t concern us at all,” a ROOT spokesman told the reporter.

Perhaps character doesn’t count, but his past was enough for The Boston Globe to reject his candidacy for the state legislature in 2006.

“Celester pleaded guilty to three charges of wire, mail, and tax fraud. The bulk of the $30,000 that Celester pilfered was spent on flowers, gifts, and vacations for him, various girlfriends, and, occasionally, his wife,” columnist Adrian Walker wrote.

And his “challenges,” as a ROOT official described Celester’s criminal record, were not limited to an isolated lapse, but began at an early age.

“By 17, he was a divorced father and a ninth-grade dropout, serving three months of a six-month sentence in an adult prison,” The New York Times reported.

And it’s not like — once he’d “gone straight,” that he distinguished himself at management and administration — presumably what he’s now tasked to do as the leader of Boston ROOT. Again, per The Times, after “two off-duty officers had shot and killed two teen-age car thieves,” Celester gave them a pass on sobriety tests, despite their returning from a party at 4 AM where they admitted drinking.

Showing as little regard for the Fourth Amendment as he does the Second, Celester’s ordered practice of stopping and searching without probable cause continued in spite of protests by civil libertarians until it was stopped by a judge.

But back to the stealing — and filing a false tax return — Celester dismissed it as “following a departmental tradition,” defended his decision to appropriate money on a trip to Puerto Rico with “a young lady” as being “down there doing business,” and remains unapologetic, “blaming his downfall on overzealous Federal investigators.”
And “this doesn’t concern [ROOT] at all”?

Here’s what should concern us. On their 2006 IRS form 990, ROOT claimed revenues of $226,255. Of that, $191,839 was listed under “Contributions” as government grants.
Got that? The government is paying money taken from We the People to enable a felon, a prohibited person who may not legally own a gun, to promote laws aimed at disarming the law-abiding and make us more vulnerable to criminals. Talk about the root of all evil …