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The Blotter: Best of the Blotter

From nude dudes to fiery-tempered ladies and out-of-control celebs, there was no shortage of bizarre crimes in Atlanta this year

People love to tell me their favorite Blotter stories: It amuses me how much pride people have when their friends make it into the column: “Remember the one about the drunk lady wearing a trash bag and a purse on her head who tried to steal her boyfriend’s pet squirrel? That was my friend!” Or, “Remember the guy nicknamed ‘Meat’ who air-humped an officer’s patrol car on his wife’s birthday? That’s my friend!” And it’s always a “friend.” Sometimes I bet they really mean “That was me in the Blotter!” But they don’t want to admit it. And that’s OK.

It’s important to remember that the people who appear in the Blotter are not necessarily guilty — that’s for a judge and jury to decide. I just hone in on the wackier times when Atlantans are busted by our brave guys and gals in the Atlanta Police Department.

Here are some of my favorite Blotter moments from the past year. Enjoy!

— The Blotter Diva

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Mind-altering mishaps



SLIPPERY WHEN WET: A woman “with a beer can in her hand, nude from the waist down, was performing a sexual act on a City of Atlanta fire hydrant,” an officer noted.

It gets worse. Much worse. The woman was fornicating with the fire hydrant across the street from her 80-year-old mother’s home in Cascade Heights. And Mom was looking out the window, watching the whole thing go down. An officer approached the woman. “Upon seeing me, she threw the beer can down and started to walk away, but was hindered by her pants being around her ankles,” the officer wrote. “I placed her in custody and helped her pull her pants up, and get them fastened around her waist with her belt.” The woman was very drunk. Mom said her daughter has a crack-cocaine problem and always gets high, and then causes problems outside her home. (The mother has custody of the woman’s four kids, ages 8 to 18, who were home at the time.) The woman, 44, was jailed on charges of public indecency, public drunkenness, and littering (the beer can).

NAKED BUS: A naked man was running around Buckhead Village after midnight. Several officers tried to corral the nude dude, but he “would not get out of the roadway and attempted to grab a MARTA bus,” an officer wrote. The man was also cursing, talking to himself, and “would not put his clothing on.” If that wasn’t enough, he also was shaking his moneymaker at the women walking by. Finally, the man confessed that, yep, he’d dropped acid earlier. Quickly, police called for medics to examine him. Our tripping man told a female medic, “Let’s just go home and have an orgy, you know where it is.” Minutes later he yelled, “Turn the fucking music up, let’s have a party!” Despite that creative suggestion, he was taken to jail instead. The psychedelic sex machine, 20, is from Acworth.

FLYING HIGH: A smooth-talker with a marijuana joint tucked into his sock tried to go through security at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. When a police officer asked the man if the joint belonged to him, the man explained that he needs marijuana because he has ADD. “I asked him if he had a prescription for the suspected marijuana — he said he did not,” the officer noted. As the officer started to arrest him, the man played the sympathy card and told the cop he was headed to a funeral in Houston. When that didn’t work, he played the prestige card. According to the police report, the man said he had a “$50 million dollar contract with Delta as CEO of his own company” and flashed a Delta contractor ID badge and an airport personnel badge. No one was impressed. Airport workers confiscated the badges and the man went to jail.

STAR WARS REDUX: “I want to fight you — you, Jabba the Slut!” a drunk man yelled as he staggered into a Metropolitan Avenue store. (He made this alleged threat to two female employees.) The 40-year-old man then tore off his shirt and refused to leave. A male clerk stepped up to defend the ladies and grabbed shirtless drunk guy and threw him to the ground. The suspect “swung a couple of times, but missed due to being heavily intoxicated,” an officer wrote.

DUD BUDDY: Near Grant Park, a grandmother “grabbed me by the hand and led me to her backyard, where she showed me three marijuana plants growing out of plastic buckets,” an officer wrote. She said they belonged to her 18-year-old grandson who lives with her.

About five minutes later, the grandson returned to the home and said he recently bought a car from a guy who offered him the three marijuana plants. The grandson said the guy told him they are male plants and therefore won’t produce marijuana. So the grandson accepted the plants and put them in the backyard.

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One clue deflated the grandson’s story: According to the police report, the officer spotted “a digital scale in plain view in the living room.” The grandson went to jail — over impotent marijuana plants that can’t get anyone high. Cannabis lesson: Male marijuana plants do not produce any usable buds. Many growers get rid of male marijuana plants before they flower because they pollinate female marijuana plants. No, the Blotter Diva did not know this beforehand. She Googled it.

HEART OF GLASS: A rowdy Tennessee woman fell through the front window of an East Atlanta bar — and she didn’t leave after she took her mighty plunge. She was still there drinking when police arrived. When an officer asked her about the oopsie, she denied falling through the glass, and just kept saying she “loves Atlanta and just wants to have fun,” an officer wrote. The woman was charged with disorderly conduct. The bar was charged $1,300 to replace the broken window.

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Consumer culture



SHOPPER’S OVERLOAD: Outside Lenox Square mall, a disheveled man with “some whitish froth around his mouth” staggered through the parking lot and startled a cop sitting in his patrol car. The man was “yelling something and pointing at my police car,” the cop wrote. “I could not understand what he was saying.” A female officer on patrol said she clearly heard the man screaming, “Fuck the police.” According to the police report, the man was “screaming at random people in the parking lot, using the ‘f’ word often.” Together, the two cops detained the man. “He was putting his cigarette out on his wrist, burning his wrist,” the male cop wrote. “He kept screaming two words: ‘Metallica’ and ‘Heavy Metal.’” (OK, Mr. Officer, that’s three words.) Cops arrested the man and put him in the patrol car. He kept screaming “Metallica” and “Heavy Metal” all the way to jail.

SOLE SEARCHING: A mother said her 28-year-old daughter stole all of her right shoes, but none of her left shoes. The mother said she’s been staying at her daughter’s home in the West End, but she suddenly had to go to South Carolina for medical reasons. The mother said that while she was gone, her daughter swiped her right shoes — and loads of other stuff, including: 25 bottles of perfume, her king-size bed, her 1986 Buick Regal, and her two dogs (a poodle and a shar-pei).

TOURIST TRAP: A Florida man was driving his wife and three kids to a family reunion and they decided to stop in Atlanta to see the sights. So what was the family’s first stop? The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial? Nope. The Carter Center? Not even close. Auburn Avenue, the Margaret Mitchell House, or even Piedmont Park? No, no, and no.

First stop: IKEA. After some family time perusing Scandinavian furniture, they headed to a Braves game. Outside Turner Field, the man looked in the car’s trunk and realized all his family’s stuff had been stolen, including suitcases filled with 10 swimsuits, 11 pairs of sandals, 240 music CDs, and two video cameras.

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Twisted love stories



GOODWILL HUNTING: A 31-year-old Buckhead man bought a diamond engagement ring for his girlfriend, but said he didn’t propose right away because he was waiting for the right moment. For about a month, he hid the engagement ring inside a coat pocket. Apparently, it’s an old coat he doesn’t wear very often. One day, his girlfriend went on a cleaning spree and took his old coat to Goodwill. Freaked out, the man raced to the thrift store to look for the coat with the hidden prize. No luck. The coat was long gone. The princess-cut diamond ring is worth about $3,200. (The Blotter diva wonders: Did he still want to marry her?)

HONEY, FISH OR CUT BAIT: As her ex-boyfriend slept in her Peoplestown apartment, a 23-year-old woman called police and explained that about an hour prior, she and her boyfriend got into a fight. See, he lost $140 whilst gambling and felt this entitled him to a freshly prepared — by her — fish sandwich. The woman said while she was cooking the fish sandwich, her ex went through her cell phone, found some things he didn’t like, and confronted her. She told police that after she gave him his sandwich, he alledgedly hit her with a sandal and punched her. Apparently, the cops showed up and detained the ex-boyfriend “while he was asleep.”

TCHOTCHKE WARS: Snow globes were flying during a marital spat in Kirkwood. The wife, 39, said her husband grabbed a snow globe and hurled it at her chest. She retaliated by throwing “a souvenir from another country” at him. The husband grabbed another snow globe and hurled it at a window. The couple wrestled and the wife said she scratched and tried to bite her husband. Then, she said, her husband grabbed a rubber rain boot and threatened to throw it at her. So she called police. Officers visited the couple’s Kirkwood home and determined everyone was OK. No injuries, no arrests.

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CAVEMAN OF THE YEAR: “I expect three things from my woman: fuck me, feed me, and clean my house,” a man recently told police outside his Fisher Road home. (Sounds like a keeper!) Cops had just arrived in response to a call about a possible domestic squabble. The man said he and his girlfriend got into a fight because she refused to cook him dinner. The man said he smacked his girlfriend’s mouth and she slapped his face. Then he took all of the girlfriend’s belongings from their apartment and tossed them on the ground outside. The officer decided the boyfriend had caused enough trouble, so they handcuffed him and took him to jail.

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Art unleashed



ART BRUT: Vandals hit the High Museum of Art, targeting Roy Lichtenstein’s “House III.” A security guard said the Lichtenstein was spray-painted with red paint between the hours of 5 and 8 a.m. The officer noted, “I did observe red paint on the yellow wall portion of the house.” No suspects.

STAGED FRIGHT: An officer responded to a call about “suspicious activity” on Adina Drive in the Lindbergh area. Four men dressed entirely in black “jumped out of a white delivery-type truck in a parking lot ... [they] were carrying two pistols and a long shotgun, approaching a red SUV ... with their weapons drawn and then returning back to the white truck,” the officer wrote. Both the officer and a man who lived nearby witnessed the startling incident. The officer called for backup and took on the suspects. “As I approached, I drew my service weapon for what appeared to be a robbery.”

Turns out, it was all movie magic. The four men in the white truck “had a camera, and said they were filming a movie,” the officer wrote. Still, the officer did his homework in case this “movie” thing was a possible ruse: “The weapons were checked and were fake.” He also ran a background check on the actors and they were not wanted.

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Work-a-day woes



STRIPPER SMACKDOWN: At around 3:30 a.m., two dancers tussled at a strip club on Cheshire Bridge Road. When an officer arrived, a stripper with a shiner explained that while she was on stage, another dancer — who wasn’t even working that night — yelled, “It’s my club, bitch,” from the crowd and attempted to yank her off the catwalk. The rowdy woman was bounced by security, but she wasn’t done marking her territory. The stripper with the black eye said after her shift ended, she went outside to call a ride and the other dancer jumped out of a silver convertible and punched her in the face. The two strippers pulled each other’s hair until a security guard separated them.

Apparently, the vixens used to be friends when they worked together at a different gentlemen’s club on Buford Highway. Now they hate each other (over a shared boyfriend). Both dancers got tickets for brawling. Club management said the off-duty dancer was fired immediately and would not be allowed back to shake her booty under any circumstances.

GRAVE SITUATION: A man called police and said he’d hit a dog with his hearse during a funeral procession near Oakland Cemetery. The dog was totally fine — all its paws/body were in working order and it only had one bruise — but the man really needed a police report because he had to use his hearse again that weekend. The man didn’t have his license plate number on hand because he’d already taken the hearse to a repair shop. So an officer met the man at the shop, but “was unable to see any damages” because the hearse was already fixed. The officer filed a police report, noting that he never actually saw any damage to the hearse.

EXIT WITH FLOURISH: A problem janitor went wacko at a recreation center next to Oakland Cemetery. Apparently, she was in a storage room talking on the phone about blowing up the recreation center. A 43-year-old male employee overheard her threatening conversation as he left the restroom. The man headed back to his office and the janitor followed, cursing him along the way.

The janitor was booted from the rec center but returned moments later and threatened to get people to rob the male employee. Again, the supervisor escorted her out.

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For a third time, the janitor returned and said she didn’t care if she lost her job because she and her people were coming to get him. The janitor took off before police arrived. The cop asked: Why does the janitor hate this guy so much? No one had any real answers. According to the supervisor, the now ex-janitor has trouble with “constructive criticism.”

DOUBLE-DUPING: A furniture-store owner received a call from an interior designer who ordered two fancy couches for a client (a gray leather sofa and a cream leather sofa, worth more than $5,000). The interior designer gave a credit card number and asked for the couches to be delivered to a storage space in Decatur. So the store owner loaded up the couches in his truck and sent his driver toward Decatur. Moments later, he got a call: change of plans. Now the interior designer wanted the delivery truck to meet a mystery truck and exchange the leather sofas behind Decatur’s Courthouse Square.

The store owner had a “feeling something wasn’t right,” the officer wrote. He asked to speak to the mystery truck’s driver, whose voice sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. So he went ahead and agreed to deliver the couches to the mystery truck behind Courthouse Square. Hours later — voila! — the furniture store owner finally remembered: He testified against the mystery truck driver about five years ago for check fraud against his store. Now the mystery truck driver had scammed him again.

DESIGN DIFFERENCES: Two construction workers were bickering on the ninth floor of a building-to-be on Northside Parkway. The co-workers could not agree on what type of flooring to install. The argument became heated and one construction worker pulled out a box cutter and stabbed the co-worker’s stomach. (Apparently, it was a very light stabbing, as far as stabbings go.) There was no blood on the ninth floor and the injured construction worker had “pinched the wound” closed, according to the police report. The construction worker with the box cutter was long gone when police arrived. No word on what type of flooring eventually was installed.

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Shades of delusion



FANTASYLAND FREAK-OUT: A woman called police and said her Ansley Park apartment was being robbed. An officer raced over. The woman greeted him by explaining that “John F. Kennedy was her father and Diane Sawyer was her mother,” the officer noted. The woman said Tom Cruise had been hanging out at her apartment when the so-called robbery took place. The woman wanted the CIA and the Secret Service to help her. Plus, the woman said she has diabetes and she wants medics to make sure she’s “alive” by checking her pulse and sugar level.

The officer looked around her apartment. “I noticed that the 28-year-old woman had the heat on 90 degrees and she was sitting on the floor with sunglasses in a dark apartment,” the officer wrote. Nothing was stolen and there were no signs of forced entry. Medics arrived and checked her out — the woman didn’t even have a scratch on her. They took her to a psych ward.

OFF THE DEEP END: A mother forced her three kids to swim in the pool outside the Carter Center. (It’s a decorative pool with fountains — not a swimming pool.) “She seemed very demented and started to yell and act very strange and combative,” noted a security guard. The security guard decided to call 911. A cop arrived and found the mother, who was “wearing a purple-colored short dress only. No undergarments (half nude),” the cop noted. “In a very deep voice, she began yelling at the children.” The mother boomed, “The devils are here, don’t talk to them.”

The officer spoke with the kids: an 11-year-old girl, and two boys, 9 and 7. They said their mother forced them to swim laps in the pool — fully clothed.

The cop arrested the mother and retrieved dry clothes for the kids from her car. Then the cop tracked down the kids’ dad in Loganville. The father came and got them, vowing to put an end to mommy’s visits until she gets it together. Mom, 29, went to jail.

DOWN IN DUMPS: A man known for “taking his feces out of his colostomy bag and smearing/throwing it on police officers” got in trouble outside his mother’s home on Ira Street. The mother said her 44-year-old son wandered into her house while she was getting ready for church and she told him to leave. The son was hungry, so she told him wait outside and she’d get him some food. Apparently, patience isn’t his thing. The mom said her son pushed her into the kitchen and threatened her. The son “wasn’t wearing his colostomy bag and his feces were spilling out all over the living room and kitchen floor,” an officer wrote. “He went to the fridge, stuck his hands in the ice cream and began eating it.” After snacking, the shit-spilling man got into a fight with his younger brother, a 41-year-old man who still lives at home with mom. No one was hurt during the family brouhaha. An officer spoke with the man, who “seemed clueless about the situation and sat on the stairs eating ice cream.” Poopie-man went to jail on a battery charge.

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Fornication blues



PROTESTING THE MAN: A 34-year-old woman walked up to an officer in Buckhead with a bizarre fake story about how she was sexually assaulted in a park. The officer asked: Which park? The woman replied, “Where the protesters are.” (A crowded Occupy Atlanta protest was taking place in Woodruff Park.) Seconds later, the woman admitted freely that the sex was totally consensual. She said she met a cute protester and agreed to have sex in exchange for a pair of shoes from Walmart. Apparently, the man bought her dinner and took her to a Buckhead hotel. After some lust and thrust, the guy was supposed to drive her back to Woodruff Park, but she said he refused to drive her anywhere. The woman said she needed the police because she didn’t know how to get back to Woodruff Park and “didn’t want to walk the 13 miles” from Buckhead. The woman wasn’t hurt at all, so the officer gave her some water and food, and then drove her back to Woodruff Park.

INTIMATE REVELATIONS: A 31-year-old woman returned home to a disturbing sight: Her boyfriend/baby daddy was having sex with her own mother! In the woman’s bedroom! Naturally, the woman grabbed a green baseball bat and whacked her mother/boyfriend-stealer on the head. (Mother and daughter live together in the same Hammond Park apartment.) The woman’s boyfriend/baby daddy ran out of there faster than Usain Bolt. The mother, 57, had a bloody cut and bruises, but her injuries are not serious. The 31-year-old woman was long gone when police arrived — probably chasing down her boyfriend with that green baseball bat.

LOVERBOY CLASH: One evening in Inman Park, a 29-year-old man crawled under the covers next to his boyfriend “to initiate sexual activity.” Apparently, his lover wasn’t in the mood. “Get the fuck away from me, bitch!” the lover hollered. Finally, the lover pushed him into a wall. The man said he “understood the refusal” and locked himself in his room. Then he heard his lover knocking furniture around, so he called police. The man claimed that his lover was talking about getting a knife. When police arrived, the lover was screaming, but he quickly became apologetic. Neither man was physically hurt. Cops took the lover to jail on a disorderly conduct charge.

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Armed with Stupidity



GUN SNUGGLE: A man was sleeping in his bedroom when he heard a “loud boom.” Waking up, he realized he had shot himself in his left hand. Every night, he sleeps with his Ruger pistol under his pillow. Bleeding, the man asked a neighbor to drive him to Grady Memorial Hospital. The man’s hand injury wasn’t life-threatening. Wounded pride? That’s another story. The 35-year-old man lives alone in the West End. At the hospital, he told cops that he left the gun at home, tucked under his pillow.

FINAL BATTLE PREPS: An officer found an elaborate weapon hidden in an abandoned building on 17th Street at Atlantic Station. The fancy rifle had lots of decorations but it was entirely fake. The faux-rifle was unable to fire a single shot. Police described it as “a wooden rifle stock attached with PVC piping covered in black electrical tape and black ripped shirts taped around it — to make it look like a real rifle.” Atlanta police notified Homeland Security because several similar fake rifles with the same type of wooden handle were spotted near the CSX rail station.

LIBERTY’S PRICE: A suspicious green package freaked people out, drawing cops, a SWAT team, and Homeland Security to the scene on Glen Iris Drive. The package appeared to be “a green foot locker, about 3 cubic feet in size, with the word ‘Free’ written on the side,” a cop noted. A Ponce City Market security guard said the strange locker suddenly showed up between 10 and 10:15 a.m. “Citizens were evacuated from the area,” an officer noted. After careful inspection, a bomb technician figured out that the “Free” green footlocker was not dangerous at all. Someone probably left it behind on purpose while moving.

BIG MOMMA’s house: In Mozley Park, a 37-year-old woman said she was sleeping on the couch when her mother woke her up by hitting her with “a bundle of sticks” around 5 a.m. Police arrived to deal with the mother-daughter spat. The mother said she was pissed at her daughter and wanted her to move out — pronto. So she gathered a bundle of sticks and began striking her daughter. The officer arrested the 53-year-old mother, who apparently is a supersized gal. The officer said he used “two pairs of handcuffs to accommodate her girth.” Big Momma went to jail.

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BLOTTER BITCH AWARD: A 24-year-old woman said one of her “many enemies” vandalized her car near her East Point home on Humphries Street. The damage to her white Suzuki: a crumpled front bumper, broken windshield, and a smashed window. “She did say that she has many enemies from her past and doesn’t know how they found out where she lives or which one of her many enemies dating back to high school may have damaged her vehicle,” the officer noted. The officer asked, “Why do you have so many enemies?” The woman replied, “Look at me, I mean, not to sound conceited, but look at me.” The woman’s enemies (real or imagined) remain at large.

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Hollywood Hijinks



LITTLE MRS. PRISS: “Do you know my name?” asked Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon. (Yep, that’s her full name.) “You are about to find out who I am ... You are going to be on national news,” she continued. Witherspoon was handcuffed in Peachtree Hills, and was berating the police officer who arrested her and her hubby, Hollywood agent Jim Toth. Earlier, when the cop told Witherspoon to stay in her car, the 37-year-old actress kept hopping out, declaring, “I am an American citizen ... allowed to stand on American ground.” At one point, she even falsely claimed she was pregnant.

Apparently, She was pissed because her hubby was being arrested for DUI. So the cop charged her with disorderly conduct (obstruction). Witherspoon and Toth spent hours in the Atlanta slammer, and weeks later, both pled guilty. Witherspoon went on national TV to apologize for her pissy attitude toward the Atlanta officer.

FAN-DISSING IN THE ATL: Rapper Gucci Mane was accused of whacking a fan’s head with a champagne bottle at an Atlanta nightclub. Why? Allegedly, the fan — a U.S. soldier home on leave — dared to asked Gucci Mane for a photo. The soldier said he told a club security guard, “I’m in the military. I wanted to get a picture with Gucci Mane ... I was speaking to the security guard, and Gucci Mane hit me in the head with a bottle.”

Blood was pouring from a severe cut on the soldier’s head. He went to a hospital and got stitches and treatment for his concussion. The 33-year-old rapper, whose real name is Radric Davis, pleaded not guilty to an aggravated assault charge.

STAR-GAZER: At around 4:30 a.m., an officer saw a brown Kia turn very slowly from Peachtree Street onto 10th Street without using a turn signal. The officer stopped the car and spoke with the driver, a 22-year-old Duluth man. The chatty driver said that earlier, he had one beer with actor Denzel Washington at a nightclub in the Mechanicsville neighborhood. Another guy (not Denzel) was passed out in the back seat. Apparently, drinks with Denzel put the driver in a fine mood. He kept up the pleasant chitchat even though he failed a breath test. The officer wrote, “I must note [the man] was very polite and respectful during my entire encounter with him.” Still, “nice” and “name-dropping” aren’t much help when you’re drunk. The man went to jail and was charged with DUI.






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