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The Blotter: Best of the Blotter (2016)

A roundup of most bizarre crimes from the past year

People love to tell me their favorite Blotter stories. It amuses me how much pride people display when their friends make it into the column. “Remember the one-eyed man dressed up as a Squirrel Superhero, who stole his neighbor’s acorns? That was my friend!” Or “Remember the drunk and stoned lady who insisted alien ‘buzzing’ noises were emitting from her bed? She called police, warning of imminent intergalactic invasion. Cops found her pink vibrator — turned on and buzzing — stuffed under her mattress. That was my best 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. I’ll keep those naughty secrets safe. Their blissfully euphoric, goofy grins and proud swagger are all the clues I need.

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

— The Blotter Diva

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IDENTITY DELUSIONS OF THE YEAR

Holy infant, so tender and coiled

Cops received a call about a “woman refusing to leave” an Old Fourth Ward motel. “I met with the woman. She said that she had a bomb,” the cop noted. “She did not have a bomb — it was clothing under her shirt in the shape of a baby.”

“I pulled the clothes out of the bottom of her shirt, after placing her in cuffs,” the cop noted. “She then accused me of aborting her baby. She said that she was an Anaconda.”

For the grand finale, the woman screamed a bizarre threat directed at the cop: “I am going to wrap around you and bite your dick off!”

The cop took the woman to Grady Memorial Hospital for a mental evaluation. “She was not cooperative ... she continued to threaten harm and ... to spit on any staff member close to her.”

Flexible space oddity

Outside a West End shopping mall, a cop saw a black car stopped with a twitchy male driver inside “[The driver] had a very hostile demeanor toward me,” the cop noted. “I asked [him] why he was so agitated. [He] advised that he felt that he was being harassed and that he didn’t do anything wrong.”

The driver, a 34-year-old man from Douglasville, admitted to consuming alcoholic beverages before getting into his car. The man said he was bipolar and has a thyroid condition. “[His] movements were very erratic,” the cop noted.

The driver failed several field sobriety tests and blew more than three times the legal limit for blood-alcohol content. “It took me and multiple other officers to hold [the driver] on the hood of my patrol vehicle in order to finish searching him,” the cop noted. “While in the rear of my patrol vehicle, [the driver] became increasingly irate. [He] screamed that we were extorting and kidnapping people. At one point, [the driver] screamed, ‘I’m an alien!’ and also screamed, ‘Can you suck your own dick?’”

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LOONY LADIES OF THE YEAR

Chicken McNutty

In Buckhead Village, a 23-year-old man was driving along East Paces Ferry Road when a woman jumped into the street and started hurling bottles at his new silver Jeep. One bottle struck the Jeep’s door. After he drove by, the woman started flinging bottles at another car, so the man called police.

A cop found the bottle-launcher — a 30-year-old woman from Auburn, Georgia — and sat her down for a chat.

“[The woman] said she was getting off of work from the chicken processing plant near the location and wanted to get her car from the valet, which was driving in circles around her,” the cop noted. “[She] said she threw bottles at the cars due to the fact that she thought one of them belonged to her, and her car had been stolen from her.”

The cop found the woman’s story quite bizarre — there’s no chicken processing plant in Buckhead Village. “She did not appear to be in her right state of mind,” the cop noted. “[She] said she had been working at the chicken processing plant, which is now actually a multi-living apartment building.”

The woman went to jail for disorderly conduct.

Planting ahead

A cop saw a woman “seated in a flower bed” outside an apartment complex in Midtown. The 58-year-old woman was clutching a purple purse and wearing a hospital armband. The officer said he “asked her kindly to get out of the flower bed,” and she refused. After asking her a second and third time, the woman stood up and began ranting, “You just want to slam me to the ground and take me to jail!” The cop replied, “No, I Just need you to get out of the flower bed, that’s all.”

The woman decided to get out of the flower bed and then ran into oncoming traffic on Peachtree Street yelling, “Fuck you!” The woman ignored the officer’s commands to get back on the sidewalk and ran further into traffic. Eventually, the officer got her back on the sidewalk and arrested her for violating her pedestrian duties.

Eyes wide shut

A cop patrolling a Sweet Auburn park saw two men smoking at public picnic tables inside a pavilion. The cop approached the smoking men and overheard other people inside the pavilion warning a woman to throw away her liquor bottle before the cop arrived. “She waved them off and refused to listen as I approached,” the cop noted. “Once at the pavilion, I observed the female ... had an open 50ml bottle of Jack Daniels Old No. 7 Black Label.”

The cop gave tickets to the two smoking men and the woman for violating park ordinances. “[The woman] loudly stated that she was legally blind and could not read the ticket, although she was playing a game on her cell phone when I approached her,” the cop recalled. “She requested to write that she was legally blind on the ticket and did so on the bottom of the ticket. She then signed the ticket without hesitation.” The woman, 49, hails from Grant Park.

Naked and afraid

In Ansley Park, cops responded to a dispute between a 36-year-old woman subletting a home to a couple with a 1-year-old son. The distraught parents said they came home one day and the 36-year-old landlord was alledgedly “running around the home naked.” The parents claim the naked landlord snatched their 1-year-old son out of bed. By the time police arrived, the naked landlord had disappeared.

Days later, the agitated landlord returned to the home while everyone was asleep and started screaming and yelling until everyone woke up. The father, fearing for his son’s safety, called 911. As she tried to flee, the landlord hopped into her car, put it in reverse, and nearly hit the father as she backed out to the street. The landlord is described as an unstable drug user. Police told the parents to change the locks to their home.

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DAFT DUDES OF THE YEAR

Furry frenzy

A cop received a call about a possible dispute with a weapon at a fast-food restaurant on Metropolitan Parkway. “Upon my arrival, [the fast-food restaurant] employees [pointed] to a 27-year-old in the store wearing a red Papa John’s uniform and a fuzzy hat in the shape of an animal,” a cop noted.

Earlier, the same cop had responded to two calls from the same restaurant, including one from the man in the fuzzy hat himself.

The man began to yell at the cop and shouted, “They are conspiring against me! It’s a set up!”

The cop handcuffed the man for safety purposes, noting, “He stated that the items on the table were his evidence that his ex-girlfriend ... and her manager were trying to set him up. The items included two Xbox 360 games, his house phone, his son’s walkie-talkie, two sets of keys, a jacket, chapstick, his cellphone, and his wallet.

The cop asked the man how the items counted as evidence. The man replied, “It’s all there!”

Suddenly, the man in the fuzzy hat blurted, “Officer, I don’t feel so good. I need Grady.” He claimed to be fainting, and began to lie down on the floor. Then he got up and leaned his head on a table.

“While waiting on medics, the man stood up again and began yelling at his ex-girlfriend in the middle of the lobby,” the cop wrote. “He shouted at her, ‘Are you going to suck me or fuck me?’ in front of others in the restaurant.” The cop ordered the man to sit down.

The man’s ex-girlfriend agreed to talk to police, but she refused to give her last name. She said the man in the fuzzy hat has come into the fast-food restaurant for the past three days harassing her and the customers because they recently broke up.

Medics examined the man, who refused to go to the hospital. “I got you,” he shouted. “Something is coming, I got you. You took my job away from my kids.”

At this point, the cop arrested the man for disorderly conduct and took him to jail. The man asked that all his belongings and “evidence” be left with his ex-girlfriend because she would give his evidence to his grandmother.

Chasin’ Jason

In East Point, a 24-year-old man had a strange encounter with a guy in a white hockey mask. While walking home from a MARTA station, the man heard a woman talking to herself. The man glanced over his shoulder, spotted the woman, and wondered why she was talking to herself.

The man looked back again and saw two oddly dressed guys following him. One guy wore a white hockey mask on his face, a black T-shirt with “Trill Gang” written in gold, and green pants with a floral print. The second guy wore a lime-green shirt with stripes.

“Why aren’t you guys laughing?” the strange lady asked. The 24-year-old said he and the two guys “began a casual conversation” about the strange woman. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked. “We don’t know,” the hockey-mask guy replied.

Then, the hockey-mask guy whipped out a gun and pointed it at the 24-year-old while his accomplice stole his cell phone and wallet.

Minutes later, the 24-year-old flagged down police. Cops quickly tracked the suspects to a nearby apartment complex. The Jason Voorhees wannabe came out with his hands in the air. He’d ditched his white hockey mask. Cops searched him and found the 24-year-old’s cell phone along with a stolen gold chain necklace with a gold cross and a gold watch. Alas, the white hockey mask is still at large.

Terminal meltdown

At Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, a 40-year-old man triggered a brouhaha at the Spirit Airlines counter. “He was yelling to the point that everyone in the terminal was focused on him,” the cop said. “The man ranted about his Social Security check, outraged because there’s only $66 in his bank account.”

Loud Guy declared that he’s no bum. Sitting on the floor, he spread his legs and waved his hands in the air as he yelled.

“Lower your voice right now,” the cop ordered. Loud Guy’s howls hit earsplitting levels. “He could not be reasoned with, he would not listen, and he ranted Bible verses while making accusations that he would be murdered. He screamed that he was HIV positive, that he had hepatitis B and C,” the cop noted.

Then Loud Guy blended religion and drugs for his final words to the growing crowd. “He recited Bible verses, asking us to kill him,” a cop wrote. “He stated he was smart with his IQ at 140. He also advised he used crystal meth 105 times in the past four years — along with once yesterday. He even asked if he was murdered.” Loud Guy’s meth voyage quickly ended with a lengthy mental exam.

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HOW TO STAY SINGLE

Flirting with disaster

A 21-year-old woman left her apartment in Edgewood for two days. When she returned, her rear window was smashed. A knife was positioned on the kitchen table near the shattered window. “Someone placed an inflated air mattress over the window,” a cop noted. Nothing was missing from the woman’s apartment. “A pair of tennis shoes that had been in her bedroom were now sitting on the couch,” the cop observed. “She advised that the intruders may have watched TV while they were inside the home.” The woman said something similar happened recently, but she didn’t call police. “She advised after the first time, she received a note on her door, which read: ‘I broke into your house, but I think you are cute.’” No suspects.

Wannabe groupie

A 30-year-old Stone Mountain woman refused to pay her tab at a Downtown hotel bar. A cop asked the woman why she wouldn’t pay for her booze. The woman replied, “I am not paying because the Musically Incline Men are going to pay for my drinks.”

The cop noted, “There were no Music Men, nor any men inside the bar at the time.” According to the bartender, the woman did not come to the bar with any men or drink with any men while at bar. “She asked for a water, walked out, and then came back inside the bar for one Maker’s Mark.”

The woman went to jail, charged with failing to pay her $10.55 bar tab. Maybe she’ll meet a cute musician in the slammer.

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PEOPLE STEAL WEIRD SHIT

Pilfering fame

In Glenwood Park, a 42-year-old woman said she parked her Porsche in a secure parking lot one night. The next morning, her front passenger window was shattered and “a placard award bearing her name was stolen” from the car. Nothing else was missing. The Blotter Diva wonders: How valuable is an award with someone else’s name on it?

Twisted mister

A 46-year-old man walked into a big-box superstore with an unusual mission: to steal a Twister game, two packs of ground beef, and one package of turkey. He didn’t get very far, though. Security guards tackled him. The man went to jail for allegedly shoplifting $35.62 worth of meat and the board game.

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MIND-ALTERING MISHAPS

Firestarter

A rowdy 38-year-old woman refused to leave a gas station/convenience store on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. According to a store clerk, the woman allegedly threatened to burn the gas pumps with a stick of incense that she just shoplifted. Given the potential fire hazard, the clerk called police.

The woman was still clutching a lit stick of incense when the officer arrived. And she smelled of booze. The cop noted, “On the transport ride to City Jail, [the woman] kept screaming and yelling cusswords at me”

At the jail, the woman apparently switched focus. The cop noted: “She urinated all over herself and the holding area and started yelling even louder about a Lotto ticket.”

Bang your head

Police received a call about an inebriated man stumbling down the street in East Atlanta. When a cop found the tipsy guy, “he was head-butting the telephone pole” on Memorial Drive.

“He was talking to himself in heavily slurred words and the front of his pants were soaked in what was most likely his own urine,” the cop noted. “[The man] said he had been drinking all day with ‘some guy’ and that I needed to go get his money back for him. All [the man] would talk about was that he went ‘somewhere’ with ‘someone’ and he passed out from drinking too much. When he woke up, he began to walk home and then noticed that he didn’t have his money anymore.”

The cop continued: “The entire time that I was talking to [the man] he was stumbling side to side and even fell over twice onto the sidewalk.” The man, 54, went to jail, charged with disorderly conduct.

Stupid stoner

A 29-year-old man called police after a skinny drug dealer nicknamed “Ace” reportedly ripped him off in Virginia-Highland.

From the victim’s report: “I was robbed by Ace for $300 close to Little Five Points on St. Charles while trying to purchase some weed. I got in the car with Ace and some other guy I never seen before. ... We entered the car, and the driver pulls off and stops and pulls out a big knife. Ace then pulls out a shiny gun and says, ‘Fuck ... give it up.’” Ace and his accomplice reportedly stole $300 cash and the man’s wallet.

Ace is described as a tall, slim man “with a goatee not connected to a beard,” according to the police report.

The cop patiently took the 29-year-old man’s statement about getting robbed by his drug dealer. Then, the cop arrested the man for attempting to purchase marijuana — a crime he had just confessed to — and took him to jail. Perhaps next time a drug dealer rips you off, just let it go.

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EROTIC ADVENTURES OF THE YEAR

Love of art

A man got amorous with outdoor statues outside the High Museum of Art. “Upon my arrival, I witnessed the suspect with his pants down and his genitals exposed, fondling a statue in front of the location,” a cop noted. A security guard said that earlier, he caught the frisky fellow in the act of rubbing the statues and repeatedly asked the man to leave. Cops took the 21-year-old art lover to jail on a public indecency charge.

Don’t be shy

In the Edgewood neighborhood, a woman spotted a man “making loud noises and pleasuring himself” while she drove home on Walthall Street. “She stated he kept doing this for 30 minutes,” a cop noted. Another Edgewood man reported “strange noises.” The man stepped outside his home and saw a naked couple fornicating on the sidewalk. Still groping, the hedonist duo got up, strolled over to a nearby vacant lot, and continued to perform various sex acts.

A cop arrived and “heard sounds commonly associated with sexual intercourse coming from an open lot.” The horny exhibitionist couple — a 25-year-old man and a 39-year-old woman — went to jail on public indecency charges.

Sidecar Sally

An officer responded to a dispute at an apartment in Midtown. “Upon my arrival, I was met at the door by [a 36-year-old married woman], who appeared to be distraught and stated that her side piece (a.k.a. the man she is sleeping with) was upset because she asked him to leave her apartment [and he] grabbed her hair,” the cop noted. “After grabbing her hair, he put his hand on her face, pushed it away. She ran downstairs and into her garage. Once in the garage, she locked herself in her car and used her husband’s (who has been out of town this month) phone to call police.”

The woman’s “side piece” was still pissed, and his next move suggested their fling may be nearing an end. The cop noted, “He grabbed her house keys and threw them in the sewer and left her apartment to return home to see his girlfriend.” The married woman requested a police report — even though she repeatedly said she wasn’t hurt and declined an ambulance.

Touching faith

In the front yard of a large Midtown church, a 33-year-old naked man who was laying in the grass started to pleasure himself — during church services. Flustered, a church employee called authorities. Cops dragged the nude 33-year-old man from church grounds.

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NASTY NEIGHBORS OF THE YEAR

Brown trickle woes

A war between neighbors that had been brewing for two years finally bubbled over at a Midtown condominium building. The opponents: two male neighbors who live above/below each other. The lower-floor neighbor, a 46-year-old man, claimed “the ceiling light fixture in his bathroom was leaking a brown fluid — suspected methamphetamine” from his neighbors’ upstairs unit, a cop noted.

The man described his upstairs neighbor as a “chubbily built” man in his 40s with brown hair and glasses.The man also said the upstairs neighbor has an aggressive dog, which is forbidden by condo rules, and claims the dog has attacked residents and visitors at the condominium. “The dog also [alledgedly] bit someone at the location,” the cop noted. The man said the condo association found out about the dog, issued a memo to evict it, and is now charging the upstairs neighbor a $25 daily penalty until the dog is gone. The man said throngs of people are constantly coming and going from the upstairs neighbor’s place, and sometimes people enter by climbing a wall. He described a previous instance when his ceiling was leaking brownish fluid (“suspected methamphetamine”), and he walked upstairs, knocked on his neighbor’s door, and heard “items rattling and fast footsteps as though he is hiding something illegally suspicious.” The man said he walked inside and saw “a sheet covering possibly suspicious items over the bathtub,” according to the police report. Police took a sample of the brown liquid dripping from the ceiling to test for possible methamphetamine.

Walk the line

In Ansley Park, two lady neighbors had an epic showdown about the property line dividing their homes. The first neighbor, 47, called a surveyor to resolve the ongoing dispute. When the surveyor arrived, the second neighbor, 64, walked outside, yelled at the surveyor, and displayed “very irate and unstable behavior,” a cop noted.

The second neighbor said she’s “too nervous to go back home” so the cop agreed to meet her at a nearby gas station on Peachtree Street to hear her side of the story. The second neighbor’s rant about the property line squabble “went on for almost an hour,” the cop noted. “She is the primary issue in the dispute and is the problem.”

Even though Halloween was long past, the second neighbor has “a Halloween decoration with a tombstone and some orange cones facing the front door of her neighbor’s property,” the cop observed. “This is an example of some of the small things that she is doing to harass her neighbor.”

Smell the magic

On the Westside, police busted two young men for stealing a UPS package off their neighbor’s porch. Police got a search warrant for the townhouse, where the two men, ages 17 and 20, were hiding. The mother attempted to persuade police that her boys weren’t involved. “The mother makes this claim of her son’s innocence due to him acknowledging the theft taking place, making mention of it via Facetime, and mentioning the stupidity of the criminal act,” the cop noted. His virtual confession was all police needed.

Inside the UPS package, cops found a massive supply of “super-absorbent advanced odor control pads.” The Blotter Diva wonders: Why would two young guys want a gazillion odor-control pads?

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ANIMAL INSTINCTS

Beefy brawl

A 20-year-old woman recently called police to her grandmother’s house in Mechanicsville. “[She] advised me that several girls she didn’t know but followed ... on Instagram had posted videos to Instagram,” the cop noted. “The unknown females were outside a house she described as her grandmother’s house and yelling for her to come out and squash some beef. She was not concise nor completely forthcoming about the situation that got her involved with the unknown females. [She] stated she only knew it had something to do with her grandmother being a lesbian.”

The woman said one of the unknown females was armed with a knife. “At some point, glass broke, possibly due to a knife being thrown at the window, but [the woman] could not advise when it happened,” the cop noted.

Meat man

In Edgewood, a man said a strange thief dressed in red and black clothing broke into his apartment — while he was home. The thief stole one thing: a box of hamburgers from the refrigerator. The man tried to stop the Hamburglar, who closed the refrigerator door on his head, causing a visible injury.

Vegan thieves

Two men broke into a local discount meat shop through a hole in the roof. The men lowered themselves “through a whole (sic) caused from a previous burglary that had not been fixed,” a cop noted. “After making entry, the males grabbed plastic plates and plastic cups and exited the location the same way they entered.” The entire incident was captured on surveillance camera.

That’s right: Two guys robbed a meat shop but only stole plastic cups and plates.

Special sauce included

A 64-year-old man was accused of swiping various forms of animal flesh at a Downtown grocery store. A cop noted, “I observed the male pulling a package of meat out of his pants.”

The cop asked: What else you got in there? After a pause, the man “advised that he had the package of oxtails stuffed in his pants and an onion that he was going to pay for,” the cop noted. “The package of oxtails was completely damaged from being stuffed down [his] pants.”

The Blotter Diva wonders: How does a package of meat get “completely damaged” inside someone’s pants? Wait. I don’t want to know.

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BOYS IN BLUE

Just plain bold

A cop recently spotted a man having trouble on the sidewalk outside a nightclub in Midtown. “He was leaning on a parked car and sobbing,” the cop noted. “I approached him and asked if he was OK, or if he needed an ambulance. He looked up at me and said, ‘I would really like to slap you in the face right now.’”

“I was shocked by his response,” the cop wrote. “[I did not] take him seriously, figuring him to be under the influence of some substance. Before I could determine the appropriate course of action, he swung his open hand and slapped me in the face.”

Another cop working near the nightclub tackled the man. Police then handcuffed the man and removed him from the street. The man began to shout and curse during the arrest.

Apparently, the man lost his balance. “I stepped away and turned my back to use the radio and receive my case number from dispatch,” the cop noted. “When I turned back around [the man] was laying on the ground, partially sitting up, with a fresh gash on his right eyebrow and some other scratches on his face.”

Sweet patriotism

A very drunk man refused to leave an Atlantic Station candy store. “I just want to get some candy,” the 25-year-old man hollered, adding that he did not have to leave because “this is America” and it was his first amendment right to say whatever he wanted to. He allegedly caused a ruckus and bothered other sweets-seeking customers. Management feared he was going to start a fight. A cop noted, “I asked [the agitated man] for his name and he refused to provide it. I asked [the man] if he was with anyone who could take care of him and he refused to answer ... [His] eyes were bloodshot and he was continuing to behave in an agitated manner.”

Two cops had to physically escort the tipsy man outside and arrested him for disorderly conduct. “While waiting for transport, [the man] repeatedly attempted to insult [the two cops] by calling us ‘batty boys’ which is Jamaican slang for a homosexual male,” the officer noted. The tipsy man “began to talk about the Freemasons and asked one officer if he was a [M]ason.” He went to jail.

Hat can hope, Mr. Grammar

In Grant Park at the Zone 3 police precinct headquarters, an officer found a gray baseball cap in the “Morning Watch” office with a sticky note, which read: “Left in Patrol Car.”

“The gray baseball hat has been sitting in the Morning Watch office for about two days,” the cop wrote in his report. “The hat states, ‘Original Chuck,’ on the front. The hat was sitting in their office, hoping someone would recognize it and place it inside Police Property. However, no one came up and recognize it. I transported the gray baseball hat inside the Zone 3 precinct and place the baseball hat into Police Property.” Hmm, the Blotter Diva did not know a hat could sit there, “hoping someone would recognize it.” Very special hat!






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