The Blotter: Best of the Blotter 2014

Perhaps the “A” in Atlanta should stand for “animals.” Living in this sizzling Southern mecca, some are prone to reverting back to their primal instincts — walking around naked, biting foes, launching poop. We humans can turn into beasts when faced with extreme doses of passion and paranoia. So in recognition of the city’s drunken brutes, greedy wretches, and unhinged mobs, we present our annual ode to some of the most bizarre crimes that took place over the past year. Welcome to the Best of the Blotter: Atlanta’s wild kingdom.

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ATL characters and costumes

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE: A bare-bottomed woman was booted from Underground Atlanta for lack of “proper garments” on her lower half. A cop spotted the cheeky 23-year-old lass as she strutted down the street, wearing only a shirt and shredded overalls tied around her waist. “From a distance, her buttock was clearly exposed,” the cop noted. “As I approached her, she turned around and her genitals and pubic area were also clearly exposed.” During the arrest, things got wacky. According to the police report, the woman “insisted that she was fully dressed” even after the cop pointed out her nude hindquarters. “Let me turn this off,” the woman said. The cop heard a zapping noise and realized the woman had a Taser. “Drop it!” the cop ordered. The woman ditched her Taser.

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At the Underground precinct, the cop asked the woman for her name. First, she uttered expletives. Then she claimed to be “Alice in Wonderland” and stated that she frequently uses several aliases: Carmichael, Cilleh, and Juanua. The woman repeatedly called the male cops “ma’am” and female cops “sir.” Then she assumed a strange position on the precinct floor. “She was having conversations with herself while lying down on her back on the floor of the holding area with her legs up in the air,” the cop wrote. She went to jail on public indecency charges.

DUDE, IT’S NOT A CAPE: Weeks before Halloween, a mostly naked 19-year-old man wrapped in a sheet tumbled out the window of his second-floor apartment. The man “had no shirt and his pants were pulled down around his ankles,” the cop noted. Ragged window blinds were strewn around the area where he fell. The officer tried to figure out if the 19-year-old had been pushed or if he fell. His friends said they’d been drinking for hours and the 19-year-old was acting “funny.” But the friends were hazy, too. “Neither could give accurate descriptions of what happened nor specifically describe what acting ‘funny’ meant,” the cop noted. Everyone smelled of marijuana. Finally, the 19-year-old said no one pushed him or tossed him out the window — he just fell. Remarkably, the 19-year-old had no serious injuries from his two-story tumble. Yes. It’s a sheet. And you cannot fly.

HORROR HAMS: A barefaced man in brown overalls and a guy wearing a Scream mask strolled into a restaurant in Downtown. The masked man pointed a gun at a 34-year-old female cashier and demanded the woman hand over her keys and cellphone. Terrified, the cashier slowly inched her way into a back room to retrieve her car keys and phone from her purse. Shaking, the cashier returned to the front counter, but the masked man and his overall-wearing accomplice were gone. Nothing was missing from the restaurant, and no one was hurt. Naturally, cops wanted to verify the cashier’s bizarre story. Sure enough, after reviewing the restaurant’s surveillance tape the cop “could clearly see the two individuals, the ‘Scream’ mask, and the gun.” Apparently, it was a prank.

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Surveillance shivers

SNOWDEN WANNABE: A woman clutching a motorcycle helmet and a video camera walked headlong into traffic on I-20. “She seemed very focused and oblivious to the interstate traffic,” wrote the officer, who stopped to help her. “Don’t touch me!” the woman yelled. “She told me I could drug-test her and she’s looking for her memory card [from the video camera]. She said what was on the memory card was more important than her life,” the officer noted. “She started talking about people hacking into her grandmother or mother’s computer and people following her around.”

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Police found her broken-down motorcycle on I-20 and moved it to a safer location. The woman, 41, was charged with walking on a highway.

At the police precinct, cops found large amounts of electrical equipment stuffed into pouches that were strapped around the woman’s waist. Two more bags of electrical equipment were strapped to her motorcycle. During the search, the woman “started speaking into one of the little hand-held voice recorders, telling it what was happening to her now,” the officer noted. When she lifted up her arms, cops saw small cuts on her stomach and chest. The names of three people had been carved into her left leg. Apparently, one name belonged to an ex-boyfriend. The woman kept saying her “family is under surveillance” and she must return to I-20 to search for her missing memory card. Police decided the best place for her was a psych ward.

WATCH OUT: “I’m waiting for the mayor and Channel 2 News. Where is my mother and why is everybody watching me? What the fuck?” screamed a high-strung man in Old Fourth Ward. He was hunkered down and refusing to leave a busy office building. A cop raced inside and found the man in the front lobby. The cop ordered the man to leave. “Fuck, man, for what?” the man said, yanking his hand from the cop’s grasp.

The building’s security chief told the cop that they “have video surveillance of the whole incident from when he ran into the security booth, and then ran by security into the building and started running up on employees.” The cop arrested the wide-eyed man.

The man told the cops that he had taken methamphetamines. “I feel real fucked sir, and I can’t breathe,” the man said. “Oh shit a methamphetamine, I can’t feel my face.” The man, 30, hails from Sandy Springs.

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Work quirks

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SHIPS AHOY: In Buckhead, a 25-year-old Marietta man was outraged when he was fired from his job at a high-rise office tower. In his fury, the man allegedly stole a pirate flag from his co-worker’s desk. The co-worker says he knows the Marietta man stole his flag because he saw it on the Marietta man’s desk as he packed up his belongings. The co-worker said he called the Marietta man about his beloved missing pirate flag, but the Marietta man reportedly said the pirate flag doesn’t belong to the co-worker and hung up. The co-worker called police and said the pirate flag is indeed his personal property — and he wants it back. The pirate flag is worth about $25.

JOB SNOB: “You think you are too good because you work in a chicken factory!” yelled one friend to another in Downtown Atlanta. A 43-year-old man said his screaming friend wanted to hang out with him, but the 43-year-old refused because he had to go to work the following morning. The 43-year-old said his friend hollered at him and then prepared to fight. The friend reportedly took a swing at the 43-year-old, dislocating his own arm. The 43-year-old leaned forward to block the punch and fell, hitting his head on a car.

SALUTATION SMACKDOWN: Three men work at a gas station on Roswell Road. One guy asked, “Are you having a good day or not?” The second guy replied, “I’m not having a good day.” The third guy rushed up and yelled, “You are always having a bad day!” The second guy jumped out of his chair and punched the third guy in the face. The man who threw the punch took off before police arrived.

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Furniture wars!

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STAND YOUR GROUND: The finer points of interior design sparked a couple’s late-night battle in Downtown. A 54-year-old man said he and his younger boyfriend were in bed when they got into a spat over “available overnight stands.” According to the 54-year-old, his lover reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. The 54-year-old grabbed his cellphone to call police and said his younger lover slapped the phone from his hands and then slapped him in the face. The 54-year-old said he left their home because he felt outnumbered — even though only two of them were there.

NO SEX, NO SOFA: A marital spat broke out at an East Atlanta home. The husband said his wife went into a furious rage one morning because she didn’t want to have sex with him. The wife allegedly grabbed a kitchen knife and started stabbing the sofa. The husband said that as he tried to stop her, he grabbed the knife and sliced his hand. They called police. The husband and the wife blamed each other for his bloody hand and the mangled sofa.

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Looney spirits roaming ATL

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JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL: In Downtown, a 28-year-old man refused to leave the SkyView Atlanta Ferris wheel area on Luckie Street. “He said that he was there because GOD told him to do so as a daily journey and that a gravitational pull forced him in that direction,” a cop noted. Medics examined the man and said there was nothing wrong with him. The cop gave the man a trespassing warning and told him not to return to SkyView, then offered him a ride home. Nope, the man said, he’d just walk.

An hour later, the man’s gravitational pull was triggered again. He returned to SkyView and plopped down in a chair. The same cop returned and took the man to jail for trespassing.

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MISSIONARY MAN: At Ansley Mall, a guy said a strange scruffy man was “preaching at him” outside a cafe about his supposed “sins and lifestyle.” The guy said Preacher Man grabbed the chair he was sitting on and flipped it forward, dumping him to the ground. A cop searched Ansley Mall and eventually found Preacher Man outside a nearby sandwich shop. The cop asked him about the alleged incident. Preacher Man said the guy in the chair was “not a real man” but a “half-man.” He explained the chair incident by saying he needed to get something from behind the chair the guy sat in but refused to vacate, so Preacher Man dragged the chair while the man was still sitting in it. Preacher Man said the force he used to move the guy’s chair did not cause him to fall out — the man must have jumped out of his chair.

Preacher Man admitted to preaching earlier outside the mall. The cop charged the 39-year-old suspect with “acting in tumultuous and violent manner toward another.” En route to jail, Preacher Man started “speaking in tongues” and “talking out loud to himself.”

Also, the woman said she received a text message that read: “If I were you, I would follow these instructions: ‘THE BLOOD IS OFF MY HANDS SAITH THE LORD.’”

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Brave new world

WAY OFF BASE: At Turner Field, a father-son outing to a Braves game went horribly awry. The father and son were in a group of four guys who were busted for seat-hopping during the game. Three men cooperated with security and agreed to move back to their seats. However, the father went berserk. He stood up, threw his beer can onto the ground, and lunged toward a security guard while swinging his fist. “This is because of Obama!” the father yelled. “I am a Republican!” The father pushed a police officer into a stair railing and continued screaming obscene statements about Obama. The irate father flung his arms into the air and screamed as more police swarmed in.

Police carried the angry father down the stairs. The father, 52, was dragged, screaming profanities and resisting authorities, out of Turner Field. Now the father is banned from Braves games “indefinitely.” His son was allowed to stay.

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ATL celebrity fears

GUCCI GALORE: During an arrest, a 29-year-old revealed one of his fears: being locked up in the same jail cell with Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane. The 29-year-old recently moved to Atlanta from Illinois. “My baby mama is gonna kill me,” he said as he was stopped at a Northside Drive roadblock. “It’s not fair, my license is from out of town,” he said,

“He flipped through his wallet, which from the outside appeared to be a Gucci wallet,” the officer wrote.

The man, who reeked of booze, admitted he’d had a few drinks at a nightclub on Piedmont Avenue. Turns out, his Illinois driver’s license expired in 2011. Also, the man’s car is actually owned by his baby mama — the mother of his six children. The man said he’s in big trouble because he doesn’t have the money to get the family car out of impound.

The officer arrested him for suspected DUI and put him in a patrol car. The man “was not making sense” and kept repeating himself and focusing on his one massive fear, the officer noted. “While in the back of my patrol car [the man] asked multiple times if he was going to be locked up with the Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane.”

DRAMA QUEEN: A 36-year-old man said he was an ex-producer for a reality TV show about hot Atlanta singles. He claimed that weird things happened after he was fired from show. “[The ex-producer] feels like the show may end up being a huge success and for the past six weeks, he has been receiving phone calls,” a cop noted. “[The ex-producer] stated that an unknown male has been calling him, asking for his name and Social Security number. ... Also, he feels like someone from the production has been stalking him at home and videotaping him at his house. [The ex-producer] feels that his life is in jeopardy. He advised that no one has directly threatened him, but he fears for his safety.” The ex-producer couldn’t name any possible suspects from the Atlanta singles reality show.

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Waste matters

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STINKY BROOM FIGHT: In the Westside, a 31-year-old man said his baby mama came over to get her belongings from his home. Conveniently, he’d already put her stuff all over his front yard. Enraged, the baby mama grabbed a broom and clobbered the man’s hand, leaving a bloody cut.

After the broom smackdown, the man allegedly retaliated by throwing a bucket full of paint and urine all over his baby mamma. (No explanation of why a bucket filled with paint and urine happened to be nearby.) The woman had paint in her hair, as well as on her arms and shirt. Plus, the tangy aroma of urine wafted from both the man and woman.

The officer arrested both the man and baby mama on battery charges and took the stinky pair to jail.

SHIT STORM COMETH: A woman parked her car outside her home in the Westside. Around 2 a.m., long after she went to sleep, the woman heard a loud noise followed by what sounded like young people laughing. The next morning, the woman looked outside and saw a “soiled commode” smashed into her car. The filthy toilet left severe damage to her car’s roof and front windshield. Cops asked the woman for any possible suspects. She said she had no clue why anyone would smash her car with a toilet. The cop talked to the woman’s neighbors and noted, “The next-door neighbor advised that the commode [had] been laying on the pavement for days, but never got picked up.”

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Southern culture on the skids

GONE WITH THE WIND: A 32-year-old woman was urinating outside a bar in East Atlanta. A cop walked over for a chat. “During the conversation, [the woman] said she’d had two alcoholic drinks and that she’s a Southern girl who is accustomed to urinating wherever she pleases,” the cop wrote. Then the woman spontaneously said, “Take me to jail!” The officer arrested her for public urination and put her in his patrol car. Apparently, she really does believe Southern girls can pee wherever they want. En route to jail, the cop noted that the woman “urinated in the back of the patrol car.” The woman hails from Milan, Ga., a small town between Cordele and Vidalia. Population: fewer than 700.

TRUCKER DELUXE: A 22-year-old from Athens, Ga., posted an ad on Craigslist to sell his iPhone and received an offer from an unusual man. The 22-year-old agreed to meet the man outside a McDonald’s on Northside Drive to complete the sale. The man had a silhouette of a naked woman shaved onto the side of his head. The 22-year-old told police, it’s “the same kind of naked woman silhouette that is commonly seen on truck mud flaps.”

Undeterred, the 22-year-old decided to go ahead with the deal. He handed over the iPhone and the man gave him a stack of 12 $50 bills and drove away. Moments later, the 22-year-old realized all 12 $50 bills were counterfeit and tried to chase the man. Alas, the man was long gone. Note: Never do business with anyone who has body illustrations “commonly seen on truck mud flaps.”

DECORUM DISCORD: A Las Vegas man visiting Atlanta called police about the dress code at a Buckhead restaurant. The Vegas man said the restaurant manager asked him to remove his hat before dining at the restaurant, but he refused. The manager said it was a standing policy for all patrons to dine without hats and pointed to a decorum sign posted at the entrance. Outraged, the Las Vegas man called police. A cop dutifully went to the restaurant and wrote a report about the incident. The cop told the Las Vegas man that the hat matter is not a crime; the restaurant can require patrons to dine without hats. The cop said the Vegas man could pursue the hat spat by taking it up as a civil dispute in court.

FEELING SAUCY: A 55-year-old man drove a food delivery truck to a warehouse on Southside Industrial Parkway. Apparently, it was closed when he arrived, so the man decided to sleep overnight in his truck in the parking lot. As the man slept, someone cut the lock on his trailer and stole 73 cases of Vidalia Sauce. The man woke up in time to see the suspects driving away in a white Jeep.

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Music madness

DIRT ROAD ANTHEM: A man called 911 because a bloody young man “wearing a flannel shirt and blue jeans” was in his backyard trying to open his back door. A cop found an 18-year-old Alpharetta man “standing by the rear door with what appeared to be blood on his face and shirt,” the cop noted. The Alpharetta man said the last thing he remembered was arriving at a concert at Aaron’s Amphitheatre at Lakewood (Jason Aldean and Florida Georgia Line performed that night). After that, everything was a blur.

“He had no idea where he was or whose house he was at,” the cop noted. Apparently, after the show, the Alpharetta man hiked about two miles to get to the stranger’s house. The cop searched the Alpharetta man and found four fake ID cards. The suspect said the fake IDs were for buying alcohol since he’s only 18 years old. He went to jail, charged with prowling, trespassing, and false identification.

ONE NIGHT CAN LAST FOREVER: An Atlanta musician said he met a woman and had a “sexual encounter” with her that same night. The man alleges that, since then, the woman has harassed him with threats of blackmail and has called and texted him more than 40 times a day. The man said he’s scared because the woman is a felon with an extensive criminal record. He says the woman even called a family member to track him down. The man said he is scared for “his life, and his guitars and other equipment.”

DANCE-HALL DAZE: Trouble broke out on the dance floor of a local dance club. According to a security guard, a 22-year-old man “head-butted” a middle-aged Marietta man on the dance floor. Moments later, the middle-aged man staggered off the dance floor with his friends’ help, bleeding from a large gash under his right eye.

The cop asked the man what triggered the head-butt. The middle-aged man said he was dancing with a lovely lady when the 22-year-old cut in front of him. The Marietta man politely asked him to get the heck out of his dance space, and the 22-year-old reared back and used his head as a weapon. The 22-year-old denied head-butting anyone, but security guards and dance-floor witnesses said otherwise. He went to jail for “striking another in the face with his head.”

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Cops do weird stuff

SNOTTY SITUATION: In the Westside, an undercover cop was working a vice operation when a 31-year-old woman approached him. “She asked me was I looking for a date and I said yes,” the officer wrote. “She said it would cost $40 and I said that’s cool.” The woman opened the car door and hopped inside. The officer noted: “Once inside my vehicle, I asked her what can I do for $40 and [she] said we can have sex, oral sex, but no anal sex. I asked her if she eats boogers during sex and she just looked at me and said no. I then asked her if it was OK for me to eat my boogers when I cum and she said that it was up to me.” The woman allegedly agreed to $40 for oral sex and intercourse. The cop took the woman to jail for prostitution.

SCRIBBLE RAGE: Near Freedom Park, a white-bearded man in a checkered shirt was hurling garbage cans onto Ralph McGill Boulevard. The bearded man stomped from yard to yard while screaming violently as he grabbed trash cans and tossed them into the street. A neighbor shouted that he was going to call the police, and the white-bearded man ran toward Freedom Park.

A cop found the bearded man in the park, “dragging large fallen tree branches into the roadway and throwing large broken pieces of concrete curb in the roadway,” the cop wrote. “He rambled something to me about how he was just trying to help.”

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The cop asked the man for his name. Apparently, the cop had forgotten his trusty note pad, so he scribbled the name on his hand. Outraged and stunned, the bearded man yelled, “That’s what note pads are for!” The bearded man refused to talk or give any more biographical information since the officer didn’t have a note pad to write on. Plus, the bearded man kicked the cop in the calf as he went to jail for disorderly conduct.

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Dumb and dumber

FAILED CITIZEN INVESTIGATOR OF THE YEAR: In the West End, a 53-year-old woman was walking to a grocery store when she had an eerie experience. A flash of toes poking out from a pile of dirt caught her eye. Peering closer, the woman saw “an object resembling a baby foot in the dirt” that was freshly plowed outside a home. She proceeded to move toward the object, picked it up — ick! — and rushed to the grocery store. Frantic, the woman clutched the foot and called police.

“[The woman] said she was very concerned because she thought a baby could have possibly been buried at the location,” an officer wrote. Police and a medical examiner rushed to the scene and carefully examined the foot. The medical examiner “determined the object was a white porcelain baby foot, not human remains.”

FIANCÉE OF THE YEAR: A 30-year-old man said he and his fiancée keep getting into arguments due to her hormone imbalance from the birth-control pills she is taking. In the latest spat, the man said his fiancée took things to a new extreme. The fiancée allegedly bit the man on his forearm, leaving a cut and a bunch of scratches. The man said his fiancée also smashed a bunch of stuff around their house.

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Then the cop spoke with the fiancée — a 25-year-old woman — who confirmed that, (A) yes, she’s taking birth control pills and, (B) yes, she’s been acting differently since she started taking the pills. She admitted that she did go berserk earlier and bit her fiancé’s arm due to her “uncontrollable hormones,” the officer wrote. The woman went to jail and was charged with aggravated assault.

STUPID THIEF OF THE YEAR: In Ormewood Park, a Georgia Tech student said she left her apartment to go work out. When she returned, she tugged on her front door but the locks were severely damaged. She rushed to the back door and went inside. Her apartment had been ransacked. On a wall near the front door, someone scrawled this note complete with a smiley face: “James was here! ... I found you!”

Immediately, the woman called police. A cop looked around and asked if the woman knew anyone named James. She said no.

The woman said her “piggy bank dressed up as police” was smashed to pieces and $30 cash was stolen. Other missing items: two flat-screen TVs, a cable box, DVR, her guitar, her Georgia Tech book bag with wheels, 10 white towels, 10 pink towels, 10 green towels, toothpaste, tissue, and food from her refrigerator. Apparently, “James” not only robbed the wrong house, he also left behind blatant clues to his identity: The officer lifted five suspicious fingerprints from the front door, doorknobs, and the refrigerator.

STUPID STONER OF THE YEAR: In Downtown, a cop pulled up to police headquarters on Peachtree Street. In plain view, a stoned 21-year-old man was sitting on “the steps of police headquarters, where there are ‘NO Sitting’ and ‘NO Trespassing’ and ‘NO Loitering’ signs posted,” the cop wrote. In his right hand, the man clutched a “blunt cigarillo” commonly used for smoking marijuana. “I smelled a strong odor of raw marijuana coming from his person,” the cop noted.

Upon spotting the uniformed cop, the 21-year-old voluntarily began to empty out his pockets. The man “gave me his wallet and I felt a bulge in his wallet,” the cop noted. Inside the man’s wallet, the cop found a bag of suspected weed, so the cop tried to handcuff the 21-year-old. The stoner tried to resist arrest by stretching out on the steps of police headquarters. No surprise, his resistance was futile. It was probably the easiest marijuana bust in APD history — on the steps of police headquarters.