Archive for March, 2009

It’s raining.

It’s going to rain a lot. The most severe of the weather is going to include severe and heavy thunderstorms so all you Little League coaches can go ahead and get your excuses ready for the honey-do list because unless you have a dome you’re going to be rained out.

The heavy thunderstorms, tornado watches, are also nature’s way of telling you social animals that this might be a good time not to close the bar down in the wee hours of the morning and instead just go home a bit early.

With rain come the wrecks.

It goes together like ice storms, bread, and milk. As I speak it is lunchtime and the accidents are already piling up. Although we didn’t have the big ice storm this year (I miss the mad rush to the store for milk and bread,) with a lot of rain will come the wrecks and the ones late at night are the worst.

Standing water isn’t as noticeable when everything else is wet when you’re driving. Take that and a half dozen Margaritas and you’ll cause …

Continue reading Rain should come with warnings signs »

One of our officers recently met with a girl and her mother at a local convenient store.

The mother of the 18-year-old handed over a $100 bill that she was told was counterfeit by the clerk. (Clerks are good at recognizing, mostly by feel, the bills that float around in the area.)

The girl said she was asked by a fellow high-school student if she had change for a hundred. She did and gave him five $20 bills. She later tried to use the hundred which is when she found out she was out of a hundred bucks. I know, I know, we’re checking to see if she’s on the level but I think that she is because we’ve had a rash of counterfeit presentations at some of the local restaurants and convenient stores.

The ones that I’ve seen were not so good to reasonably good. Some passed the water-marker test, but they just didn’t feel right. Anyway, all this leads up to what we all figured would happen and that is the current trend of stimulus money fraud.

Why not? Every other form of payment …

Continue reading Beware of stimulus scams and phony $100 bills »

Notes from the Sandy Springs police blotter:

Burglary

A woman reported that someone pried the front
door to her apartment in the 2000 block of the Valley and then took a 19” TV, DVD
player and Timberland boots.

An apartment in the 600 block of Willow Creek Drive was broken into and a PS2 game system and two rifles were stolen.

Another burglary was reported in the same area. This victim said a number of items including electronics, jewelry, cell phone, and a laptop were taken. The victim’s front door had been kicked in.

Someone broke a glass rear door and entered an apartment in the 500 block of Summer Drive sometime between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. He said two laptops, a PS3 game system, and a digital camera were among the items stolen.

Theft

An apartment resident said someone stole two money orders for rent, left in the leasing office of the apartment complex on Roberts Drive. They were later altered and cashed. You’ve seen this scenario before because I list at least …

Continue reading Crime & punishment: A cop’s take »

Notes from the Sandy Springs police blotter:
Flat-Screen TV Thieves Arrested

In what is a multi-jurisdictional investigation, several people are in jail charged with stealing flat screen televisions from bars, restaurants, and similar locations. Part of the evidence obtained was courtesy of our CSI Detective Shane Barkley. He pulled a print off of a snack bag on a case that originated in Smyrna. I often talk about how good our CSI operation is and they continue to pull a rabbit out of the hat on a number of cases.
Burglary

Someone gained entry to the home in the 200 block of Virginia Avenue by cutting the screen on a window. A flat screen and a PS3 video game system were taken.

The victim reported she returned home in the 5300 block of Peachtree Dunwoody Road and found her front and back apartment doors open, lights on, and the apartment ransacked. She listed jewelry and a camera among the stolen items.
Thefts

A woman reported that over $500 was taken from her closet in her …

Continue reading View from the cop: Watch your TV, laptops and game players »

One of the more enjoyable aspects of crushing crime is the anticipation and participation in drug screening tests to determine that your behavior is not altered by chemicals, alcohol, or second hand smoke from a recent Allman Brothers concert.

In other words, they prefer you go wacky all naturally—which is fine, and surprisingly easy to do.

My Uncle Dewey spent so many years drinking that we accepted this as his natural state. He finally quit drinking after his last arrest where he showed up at his probation office in the stolen nun’s habit, reeking of Prince Ivan Vodka, and carrying a chicken. In sobriety, he intended to and expected to fit in with normal people but normal to him was the Moose Lodge at 2 a.m.—or Wal-Mart on Saturday mornings.

In our business, a good quality is to be systematically unsystematic. No patterns and hopefully a minimum of predictable habits. Patrol officers should not do the same things day after day and so on. Drug testing is designed to be …

Continue reading View from the cop: Drug-test tales »