• Atlanta Department of Corrections
• APD pulled over Atlanta City Councilwoman Cleta Winslow, above in mugshot, after they say she committed multiple traffic violations

Atlanta Police noticed Winslow's gray Honda Accord make several traffic violations near the intersection of Oglethorpe and Peeples streets last night around 11 p.m. in the West End. During the traffic stop, according to police, the officer "noticed that the driver showed signs of impairment." Police say the longtime councilwoman admitted that she had imbibed a few drinks. She was arrested for DUI Less Safe after declining to take a field sobriety test.

In addition to the DUI, Winslow also faces charges of driving on the wrong side of the road, failure to stop for a stop sign, reckless driving, and a red-light violation. We'll post an update if we learn additional details regarding her arrest.

Winslow declined to talk about the arrest when reached by CL this morning but said she might comment later.

Winslow has represented Castleberry Hill, Mechanicsville, Pittsburgh, West End, and other southwest Atlanta neighborhoods on City Council over the past two decades. She's up for re-election this November and will face challenger Torry Lewis and other possible candidates.

UPDATE, 10:27 a.m.: While Winslow has yet to comment, Lewis didn't hesitate to respond to the councilwoman's arrest. In a statement, he said:

I am deeply disappointed in our current councilwoman and her actions, but this further echoes the need for new leadership...a councilperson must be able to make sound judgments for the community's sake and that starts with making good personal judgments.

UPDATE, 6:35 p.m.: According to a police report, Winslow's arrest happened less than two blocks from her West End home. Winslow reportedly had a slow reaction time and had "glassy eyes." After APD officer Meegan Schimmel noticed a strong alcoholic odor, the councilwoman admitted she had spent "a good hour" at Elliott Street Pub, where she had "two dirty martinis."

"I asked her what she did for the city and she stated she was district four," Schimmel wrote. "I asked her if she was a council member and she stated yes."

After denying a sobriety test, Winslow was arrested and taken to prison. The councilwoman was later released on a $3,355 bond.

According to WSB-TV, a man was arrested shortly after he's alleged to have robbed a bank inside Walmart on Gresham Road in Atlanta whilst wearing what they say resembled a Tina Turner wig.

A photo taken shortly after his arrest this afternoon shows the guy in a red ball cap, so the question remains: what incarnation of Tina was the robber channeling? That lady wears lots of wigs. And they're all great.

Here are your options ...
PROUD MARY-ERA TINA TURNER

• Joeff Davis

Officials with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Fulton County District Attorney's office held a press conference this morning to announce an "unprecedented" bust that resulted in the seizure of millions of dollars in drugs and cash and the dismantling of a Fulton County drug operation.

Standing in front of several tables lined with evidence bags, Harry S. Sommers, the DEA Atlanta office's special agent in charge, said officers seized nearly 90 pounds of heroin, more than 4 pounds of crystal meth, $2 million in cash, and guns, from a Gwinnett County stash house.

Sommers says the drugs were found in two "cavities" hidden behind drywall and a refrigerator at a house located on Megan Road in Duluth‬. Police arrested three people at the house, two of whom are Mexican nationals and one U.S. citizen. The discovery of the drugs at the house subsequently led police to a "safe house" in the metro area — agents did not specify where — where they discovered $2 million dollars in cash.

Sommers, who said the use of heroin is a "trajectory of death" and that the drugs seized yesterday would have "obviously gone into the hands of children," told reporters at the Richard B. Rusell Federal Building in downtown Atlanta today that he thinks the drug operation was connected to "drug cartels in Mexico." Specifically, the Gulf Drug Cartel.

Sommers admitted that the amount of heroin on the street is "significantly higher" then it was a decade ago. When asked what the narcotic's increased availability said about America's long-running war on drugs, Sommers said that criminals were finding ways of providing "poison to our children" and that the increased availability was not a reflection of the success or failure of the campaign against drugs.

Government reports issued in 2011 said that despite spending billions of dollars to stop the flow of drugs into the United States, the money has had little impact. Neil Franklin, the executive director of LEAP, a group of police officers, judges, and jailers who are calling for the legalization of drugs, says this type of seizure creates a greater risk for violence in communities.

"When the police take drugs off the street and make arrests, it creates a void that will be filled relatively soon," said Franklin, whose 34-year law enforcement career included positions as a state police narcotics agent and one-time commander of Maryland's Bureau of Drug and Criminal Enforcement. "And usually that occurs by way of violence. The more we push in law enforcement, the more violent our streets become."

Franklin called the drug war a "complete failure" that has resulted in street violence, jails filled with non-violent inmates, and the availability of more drugs. Franklin said that when he was in law enforcement during the 70s and 80s, drug seizures were much smaller because they weren't as readily available. Now, Franklin says, after 30 years and trillions of dollars, there are "drug dealers on every doggone corner."

Photos of drugs and money following the break

• Dramatization.

A less idiotic extreme example of the same principle: if a kid is smart enough to hack into a college's computer system and change his grades, he should get to keep the grades he picked for himself. The State of Georgia does not agree ...

Shayan Panjwani, a former Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) student, pled guilty today in Fulton County Superior Court to two counts of Computer Trespass (O.C.G.A. § 16-9-93 (b)) for illegally logging into Georgia Tech’s grading system and changing his grades.

In July 2011, while he was a student at Georgia Tech, Panjwani accessed the institute's grading system without authorization and increased his recorded grades in two classes. A graduate student noticed the discrepancy and reported it to Georgia Tech. Panjwani confessed upon being confronted and is no longer enrolled at Georgia Tech.

So Ferris Bueller, right? Except with grades instead of absences. Or maybe it's more like WarGames? As Thomas Wheatley pointed out, either way, this kid is basically Matthew Broderick.

Panjwani didn't get to keep the grades, but he didn't have the book thrown at him either. According to a press release, "Judge Karen Woodson sentenced Panjwani under the First Offender Act to two years probation and ordered him to pay a fine of $1000."

• WIKIMEDIA

WHAT A SUCCESS. Oh, I'm just kidding. Smedley pleaded guilty in a Baltimore federal courtroom today to "transporting misbranded medicine across state lines" and spending eight years performing the illegal and really dangerous injections.

Commercial grade silicone is not supposed to go into human bodies. It's supposed to be used to polish furniture and stuff like that. In the incident that led to Smedley's October arrest, she administered 18 shots of the stuff to a Baltimore exotic dancer's butt cheeks. The woman fell ill when the silicone seeped into her lungs, causing her to experience pneumonia-like symptoms. "You almost killed me," the dancer said in a text she sent to Smedley.

Prosecutors say she performed similar procedures on women in Washington, New York, Detroit and Philadelphia — but not Atlanta? — and faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Should've gone with that at-home degree in TV/VCR repair instead, girlfriend.

• Joeff Davis

Rene Pennington, wife of former Atlanta Police Chief Richard "Perception of Crime" Pennington, was arrested for DUI on Saturday morning according to WSBTV.

Apparently, police noticed a vehicle "driving on a rim" in the vicinity of Peachtree and Pine streets at around 2 a.m. Pennington was "arrested after a series of field sobriety tests" and was booked into the Atlanta City Jail.

• YouTube
• What? You've never heard of Birkendahl?

The video — which we posted yesterday evening — is good for a laugh. The ceremony itself is inherently ridiculous. On top of that, Messer repeatedly botches the pronunciation of Birkenau (maybe Buchenwald?), creating a word that sounds something like "Birkendahl." He misquotes scripture. He attempts to turn the Torah into that awful Jim Carrey movie "The Number 23." As someone on a religious forum put it, "Ralph Messer's no more a rabbi than my mom's a cat."

Worth considering, however, are the greater implications of a guy running around, claiming to be a Jewish holy man, and completely misrepresenting Judaism in front of thousands of people.

In a post on The Feminist Wire, religious scholar Wil Gafney was compelled to refute the "specious claims" made by Messer during the bogus ritual. It's worth reading in its entirety, but her are some highlights ...

Regarding Messer calling the Torah cover "a foreskin," which Gafney says was not only gross, but also inaccurate:

The Torah cover is not a “foreskin.” Hyper-masculine, hyper-sexualization of the Torah reduces the holy Torah to a problematic phallic symbol — God’s? or Long’s? — and categorizes the most destructive behaviors associated with New Birth ministries in recent years. Grammatically and symbolically, the Torah is feminine in Hebrew and is personified as “She,” as in “She is a Tree of Life,” in Prov. 3:18.

On the average Jew's relationship to Torah scrolls:

The claim that 90% of the Jews in the world have “never seen, approached or touched” Torah scrolls is utterly without foundation. The Torah is taken out of the Ark during Shabbat and other services; it is processed through the assembly twice where people reverence it (Her!) by touching and kissing it/Her.

On Messer's attempts at number symbology:

The frequent references to significant numbers may be an attempt to mimic the Jewish mystical tradition of Gematria that elicits meanings from numbers and their contexts. However, the speaker is devising his own system without reference to any of the classical texts in Judaism, frequently by simple free- and word-association.

Most important:

His address of Eddie Long as a biblical or Israelite king is without foundation in the scriptures or in reality.

• REGRETSY

See any similarity between the images above? Get more details on the latest chapter of corporate retailers stealing from Atlanta-based artists.