The Blotter January 13 2011

A man with a red beard and apparent anger-management issues walked into a bank on Cheshire Bridge Road, and, according to an employee, began pacing back and forth, beating on the tellers’ windows and yelling, “You are lucky the glass is here or I would punch you all in the face.” So, was he miffed about crappy customer service or exorbitant fees? Not likely. The man happened to leave behind a business card with his name on it, and it turns out he’s not even an account holder — nor will he become one. The bank manager told police she would ask bank headquarters to send the man a letter requesting that he not return to the bank.

JUNK FOOD NIRVANA: Police say group of OTPers made their way to a Ponce de Leon Avenue grocery store to do a little shopping — or, rather, shoplifting. A security guard reported that three suspects, a 20-year-old woman and two male counterparts, tried to hide food in their coats and to leave without paying. The woman allegedly tried to steal a three-piece friend chicken box and a Dr. Pepper soda (worth $8.08). A male friend allegedly took a piece of red velvet cake and a Red Bull energy drink. Another male friend allegedly took brownies and Vitamin Water.

WHERE ARE THE BRAKES, AGAIN? At the Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown, a valet called the cops when a guest drove into a wall and just left. According to the valet, an older man in a black Lexus rammed into the hotel’s marble façade, “causing it to break in half.” The man reportedly drove away, saying he had to pick up his wife from a lunch date and that he would return later to the hotel, but he never came back. The valet gave police the man’s tag number.

HOME SAD HOME: An officer got a call about a person hanging out at a vacant home on Blyss Avenue. “I checked the home,” the officer wrote, and found a 63-year-old woman, who said she’d lived in that very home for nearly 40 years. She presented the officer with an “old laminated card” that showed her address there.

“The home was in very hazardous condition,” the officer wrote. “There was no power, water, or heat. Doorways were exposed to the outside elements.” The 63-year-old woman said she’d gotten tickets for code violations, but she couldn’t afford to fix them. The officer wrote, “[The woman] was visibly cold and stated that she makes a fire in the fireplace to stay warm. It was about 31 degrees outside at the time of this investigation.”

The woman said she had no place else to go. Also, she said, she had 14 children, but all her kids had already died. The officer arrested her for occupying a vacant home “for her safety and per city code” and took her to jail. She’s charged with trespassing.

CLEAN AND HEALTHY ... IN JAIL: A 28-year-old man is accused of walking into a pharmacy on Broad Street and trying to steal six sticks of Dove deodorant and a bottle of niacin dietary supplement. Apparently, the man admitted to the theft after a security guard stopped him. He went jail on a shoplifting charge.

HITLER TAKES THE HIGHLANDS: A woman in her 20s reported to police that someone had stabbed a bunch of holes in her tires while her car was parked outside her Virginia Avenue apartment. But that’s not all. “While I was talking to [her], I noticed a swastika scratched on the driver’s side front door of her car. The swastika is not ‘canted’ to the right,” an observant — and accuracy inclined — officer wrote in his report. The woman said she found the swastika on her car in November, and a police report was filed them. The woman also said someone wrote, “Get all the [n-word] out of Virginia-Highland” in the laundry room of her apartment complex, but the message had since been removed.

The officer then proceeded to barrage her with weird questions: “I asked [her] if anyone has been calling her and leaving messages and she said no. I asked if she recently got a raise or promotion at work where someone felt like they deserved it over her and she said no. I asked if she had a white boyfriend where that may make someone mad and she said no.” The woman did say her neighbor, a creepy drunk, tried to talk to her last night when she came home, and she told him sternly to leave her alone.

Items in the Blotter are taken from actual Atlanta police reports. The Blotter Diva compiles them and puts them into her own words.