The Blotter January 30 2008

Not-so-peaceful MLK Day in the ATL Part I: A 52-year-old man said he parked his red Dodge R25 on Spencer Street, and attended a function at the Georgia Dome on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He returned and noticed that someone had broken out his driver’s window with a rock. The rock was still inside his car. No items reported missing.

part II: No one was home when someone kicked in the front door of a house on Delaware Street on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The homeowner, a 29-year-old woman, returned and looked around. She said nothing was stolen from her home. No suspects.

part III: Around 1:20 a.m. on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, police dealt with a car accident. Apparently, a tire was in the middle of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, and a car hit the tire and crashed into a light pole. The officers followed scratch marks on the street and found the car, a gold Buick, engulfed in flames behind a building. A tree was on top of it. A few minutes later, a man walked up and stood there, watching the gold Buick burn. He had fresh blood and wounds on his face, and snow and dirt on his coat, an officer noted. Medics arrived and said the man’s wounds were possibly scratches from a tree branch. The officer asked: “What happened to your face?” The man said he got punched at a club on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, and he was walking down the road when he heard a loud explosion. The officer asked: “Is your car still at the nightclub? What kind of car did you drive there?” The man refused to answer. “[He] was very incoherent and talking to himself, but he did state that he had four shots of liquor earlier,” the officer wrote. Firefighters extinguished the flames on the gold Buick. The man, age 27, was charged with leaving the scene of an accident.

Part IV: On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a woman said two former co-workers showed up at her apartment on Alison Court and banged on her door and window. (The woman said she coordinates dancers to work at various clubs, and the former co-workers are mad because she decided to exclude them from future events.) She said she refused to answer the door, so the former co-workers kept banging on a window until it broke. Then, she said they kicked her car. An officer arrived and saw several scuffs and scratches on the woman’s car. The woman said she only knows the former co-workers by their first names. She described them as an 18-year-old woman nicknamed “Cash,” and a 19-year-old woman with a treasure tattoo on her back. The woman said she’s lost clients due to these women’s attitudes and actions.

No place like someone else’s home: Around 2 p.m., an officer responded to a call about a prowler at a house on Moreland Avenue. The caller said a woman in a red knit cap and tan pants was pulling on the door handle and walking around the house. En route, the officer spotted a woman fitting that description on Moreland Avenue. “[She] was walking kind of fast, throwing her arms about wildly and throwing what appeared to be a green lighter from her left hand into the yard of a church. ...” the officer wrote. “As I exited my vehicle, I could see her cargo pants pockets were weighed down by some type of heavy object.” After a brief struggle, the woman was handcuffed. The officer asked: “What’s your name?” “Judy Garland,” she replied. No weapons were found on her. “In her cargo pants pockets I felt what I believed was a rather large amount of coin currency,” the officer wrote. Police checked the house on Moreland Avenue — no signs of forced entry or foul play. The woman who calls herself Judy Garland was arrested for littering. The officer checked the woman’s wallet and read the name on her Georgia ID card: first name: Judy. Last name ... isn’t Garland. The woman, age 47, went to jail.

Geek grief: A man said someone broke into his 1991 blue Honda Accord while it was parked outside his home on Milledge Avenue. He said his car doors were unlocked, and someone stole about 20 books on gaming, “specifically Dungeons and Dragons,” from his car trunk, the officer wrote. The man is 33 years old.

How not to get lucky at a bar: One Friday night, an officer saw a man pull out his penis and urinate on the bar at a restaurant on West Peachtree Street. The man was very drunk, the officer noted. The man, age 33, hails from Stamford, Conn. He was charged with public indecency and public urination.

Name that suspect: Two officers saw a white Ford F-250 on Thomasville Boulevard. They checked the license tag — it’s registered to a Toyota Cressida. They ran a computer check for the VIN on the Ford F-250 — turns out it had been stolen in McDonough County.

Police wrote: “Inside the vehicle, officers could see a job application dated on 12/06/2007 by a [possible suspect’s name]. ...” According to the job application, the male suspect lives on Glenwood Avenue. Police called the phone number listed on the job application and got a voice mail. (The Blotter Diva recommends: A potential car thief may want to avoid leaving paperwork with his name inside the stolen car. Just a thought.)

Ex marks the spot: A 51-year-old man said his ex-wife was drunk. He said she took his Jeep Wrangler out of gear and pushed it out of his driveway on Blanton Road. He said the ex-wife caused the Jeep to hit his mailbox. The ex-wife fled before police arrived. There was no visible damage to the Jeep, police noted.

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