The Blotter May 19 2010

BITE THE DUST: A 33-year-old woman said her dental retainer disappeared while she was at work. (She’s a gate agent at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.) She said she took her dental retainer out of her mouth, wrapped it in white tissue and put it on a counter near her computer. Then, she said, she walked down the jetway to a plane. She said after the plane pulled away from the gate, she returned to the counter and her dental retainer was gone. She said she asked a female passenger sitting nearby if she saw anything suspicious. The passenger reportedly said a woman wearing tan pants and a gray T-shirt walked up to the counter and grabbed something, but she couldn’t see the item in her hand.

The gate agent figured out the suspect’s name and told police the suspect already left on a flight to Dothan, Ala., and would arrive in about an hour. She said she called Dothan Airport police, but they wouldn’t do anything without a police report. So she filed a police report. No word on if the woman’s dental retainer was returned. The dental retainer is worth $700.

CONDIMENT WARS: An 18-year-old woman said a man poured mustard all over her and physically assaulted her. She said after she got out of school, the man was waiting for her at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. and Joseph E. Lowery boulevards. She said the man does not attend her school. The woman refused medical treatment, and police explained how she could take out a warrant on the suspect. No possible motive for the alleged mustard attack was given in the police report.

FAKE OUT DENIED: An officer stopped by a tanning salon in Midtown to talk with the owner about a reported burglary. “There is a surveillance camera pointing toward the front door,” the officer noted. The officer asked the owner whether the camera recorded any video of the alleged burglary. “He stated the video camera does not work, it is just there for looks,” the officer wrote. The owner said someone stole a 26-inch flat-screen TV from the tanning salon. He gave police the TV’s serial number. The TV is worth $1,200.

TIME TO MOVE, PART I: A 25-year-old man said his roommate hit him in the face with a ceramic bowl. He said they were arguing about food at their apartment on Ormond Street. The man said his roommate threw the ceramic bowl and it hit the wall and cut him near the corner of his left eye. The roommate is described as a 44-year-old man with a tattoo on his bicep, wearing a white T-shirt and brown jeans.

A police officer wrote, “There was a visible quarter-inch laceration on [the man’s] face. The wall was cut up where the bowl hit, near the kitchen.” Also, the man said his roommate ransacked his bedroom. Apparently, the roommate left before police arrived.

TIME TO MOVE, PART II: An officer responded to a fight call from an apartment on Myrtle Drive. According to the officer’s notes, he talked with a “very intoxicated” 40-year-old woman who said a large group of people had been drinking beer outside her apartment. She said a person known as “Tweet” used a baseball bat to break her front window and dent her front door. The woman said Tweet lives in her apartment complex. The police report didn’t indicate whether Tweet is male or female.

DRINKIN’ AND SCRATCHIN’: A 54-year-old man allegedly tried to shoplift a bottle of beer and a box of Preparation H at a grocery store on Metropolitan Parkway. A security guard stopped the man and called police. The man went to jail on a shoplifting charge. The beer and the Preparation H are worth $17.

JUST PLAIN BOLD: On Oakdale Road, a 60-year-old man said two women tried to steal his porch swing — while he was home. (It was about 3:30 p.m.) He said the women parked their black SUV in front of his house, walked onto his porch and tried to take his swing. He said when the women noticed him through the window, they ran back to their SUV and drove away. A police officer noted, “I was unable to lift any fingerprints from the wooden swing.” The man gave the SUV’S tag number to police.

TRAFFIC PRETENDER: Around 11 p.m., a police officer was patrolling Little Five Points when he saw a 53-year-old man “walking in and out of vehicle traffic.” The officer told the man he needed to get out of the road so he wouldn’t get hurt. The man complied and walked away. After a few minutes, the officer circled around and witnessed the man standing in traffic once again. “This time, [the man] was attempting to play ‘traffic guard’ and stop traffic,” the officer wrote. “[The man] was yelling at the cars because they would not stop for him. At one moment, [the man] was almost hit by a vehicle when an unknown pedestrian jumped out and pushed him out of the way.”

The officer immediately arrested the man. “I could smell a strong odor of alcohol coming from [his] breath. Some unknown pedestrians yelled out, ‘He just downed a 40-ounce beer.’”

“While in the back seat of my patrol vehicle, he began to choke and complain he could not breathe. I called for an ambulance to have [the man] checked,” the officer wrote. Medics arrived and declared the man was OK, but heavily intoxicated. Due to his drunkenness, the man was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he could be monitored.

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