THE BLOTTER: How not to hit on women

In the Lindbergh neighborhood, cops got a call from a Kroger security guard about a randy 36-year-old man verbally badgering random female shoppers for sex and refusing to leave the grocery store in Broadview Plaza. Apparently, the man’s sex requests were words-only, and he kept his hands to himself.

“Upon arrival, I immediately observed (the 36-year-old man) outside the front of the store, making furtive, erratic movements, “ the reporting officer wrote. “Upon speaking to (the man), he made multiple utterances of him wanting to get ‘pussy,’ and that he had $250,000 in his account and knew multiple celebrities. “Through my knowledge, training, and experience, I knew these all to be the signs of someone under the influence.”

The 36-year-old man told the cop that yes, he’d taken methamphetamines. The cop asked: How much? About one gram, the man replied. “(The man then began to walk away from the above location, screaming to all the women that he saw — asking them, can he ‘holla’ at them and then running toward multiple women — and when women walked by, it seemed to stimulate (the 36-year-old) even more,” the cop added. “I then detained (the man) for his own safety as well as the others around the area for his erratic, unpredictable actions” until Grady medics arrived to check him out.

After 30 minutes, the 36-year-old man “began to get more agitated and became more disorderly. And the cop used this time to review surveillance video of the man’s earlier sex requests caught on tape.

“Due to still waiting on Grady and from witnessing these advances toward multiple women, I then placed (him) into custody and tried placing (him) in the rear of my patrol vehicle.” The 36-year-old allegedly “contorted himself upside, refusing to sit correctly.” He was charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing police.

Times are tough when a) you take meth and b) decide that your best chance of getting naked with someone involves going to the grocery store. And you fail. And wind up in jail.

Go big or go home

In Buckhead, a 24-year-old man was relaxing in his bedroom at his family’s home on West Paces Ferry Road. Suddenly, a middle-aged woman burst into the home — using a house key — and insisted this was her home. And she was not leaving. The 24-year-old man asked her to get out several times, but she refused. So the man called police. Apparently, he’d never met this random middle-aged woman strutting around his home, with a house key.

The posh Buckhead home has nine bedrooms, 18 bathrooms, a home theater, three wine cellars and a wine tasting area, a recording studio, pool, three outdoor grilling areas, plus a game room, hair salon and bar (according to Zillow).

When a cop arrived, the middle-aged woman was standing in the door entrance, stating, “This is my house!” The cop asked the woman to explain what was going on. “(The 57-year-old woman) said she had been working at the mission and wanted to take a break, so she decided to come home, and she noticed that the side door was open,” the cop noted. “She said she entered her Buckhead home and said, ‘Hello, hello, hello’ — and then unknown individuals came into the room, and they began to have a verbal dispute over who actually owns the home. The middle-aged woman said her husband bought her the home, and she’d had the house key for about a month now. “(The 57-year-old woman) then showed me the house key and stated she didn’t have any way to contact her husband to confirm it was her home,” the reporting officer wrote.

The 24-year-old man said his family was having construction work done on their Buckhead home — and the family had noticed that the spare key had been missing from the key box for a while. The 24-year-old man wanted the strange woman clutching a house key arrested for trespassing.

The cop searched the woman and allegedly found a crack pipe in her purse, along with six or seven lighters. “(She) stated she only smokes marijuana from the pipe.” The cop handcuffed the woman and took her to Fulton County jail, charged with trespassing and possession of drug paraphernalia. According to the police report, the middle-aged woman doesn’t live in Buckhead, she lives in East Atlanta’s Gresham Park. That’s bold ambition, lady.

Shitty escape route?

In Macon, GA, two men are behind bars for allegedly trying to break into the California Cereal Products warehouse on Mead Road. Bibb County sheriff’s deputies rushed to the scene — and the two burglary suspects raced into nearby woods. Deputies spotted footprints and captured one suspect, a 37-year-old man with a handgun. Eventually, deputies found the second suspect, a 56-year-old man, hiding in a sewer. It’s unclear how long the 56-year-old hid in the gross, stinky sewer — so cops took him to a hospital to be examined. And washed. Both men remain jailed without bond. California Cereal Products makes non-fun-sounding cereals with very serious names like “Gluten-Free Toasted Oats,” “Crisp Whole Oat Groats” and “Organic Bumped White Quinoa Bran.” What a boring place to try to rob.

Post-art meltdown

In Midtown Atlanta on Peachtree Street, cops got a 911 call from an Uber driver at the High Museum of Art.

“Shortly after I arrived on scene, I received updated info that the caller was parked on 16th Street,” the reporting officer noted.

The Uber driver, a man in his 30s from Lilburn, said he got a request to pick up two women at the High Museum. (One woman wore a crisp white blouse, the second woman wore all black.) He said the woman in the white blouse demanded to go to Decatur. The Uber driver told her that Decatur was not the current destination listed in his Uber app, according to the woman’s Uber reservation. He simply asked her to update her Uber destination to Decatur.

Apparently, the woman became “upset and argumentative.” Then, she allegedly went all Karen and punched the Uber driver three times in the face with a closed fist. “She also grabbed the back of (his) shirt and pulled it backwards, so the front of his shirt was pulled against the front of his neck,” according to the police report. The Uber driver said he was having trouble breathing with his shirt wrapped around his neck, so he pushed the white-blouse woman’s face then stepped out of his Toyota Highlander SUV. He added that the second woman dressed in black did not attack him in any way. She simply left.

“At that point, (the 32-year-old white-blouse woman) poured coffee all over his front seats and broke a plastic cell-phone holder that was in (his) center console,” the cop noted. The Uber driver “showed me his bottom lip and I could see that it was split in the middle.”

The cop drove around the High Museum area and spotted a woman in white blouse, walking on 16th Street. The Uber driver positively identified her as the woman who punched his face three times. The cop started to arrest the 32-year-old woman — but she resisted mightily. First, she refused to get in the back seat of the patrol car and tensed her arms so the cop couldn’t handcuff her. Eventually, the cop got her into the patrol car. At the Zone 5 precinct, the woman “refused to get out of the police vehicle and had to be pulled out…. Then she turned and spit on (another officer) and spit toward me,” the reporting officer wrote. “Once inside the office, she kicked me and (the second officer) … She also spit one more time on me as I was typing and the spit landed on the left side of my vest, near my badge.”

The woman’s red purse contained one rolled joint, a small amount of loose marijuana inside a white plastic container, along with Vaseline, a cigarette lighter, two tea containers and a silver Movado watch. The woman went to jail, charged with simple assault and obstructing police. Remember, this all started because she threw a hissy fit when asked to change her Uber destination to Decatur.

Painted into a corner

Under pressure, Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum finally returned three looted ancient artifacts to Greece — after waiting 16 years. “The pieces — a marble sculpture of a goddess or muse; an ancient bathtub; and a marble seated figure — were acquired by the museum in the early 2000s,” The Emory Wheel reported, adding that the first piece “Seated Figure From a Grave Naiskos” was part of a recorded archive of looted antiquities seized by Swiss authorities in 2002. The second piece “Bathtub (Larnax)” is “believed to have previously been in possession of an antiques trafficker named Gianfranco Becchina. And the Carlos Museum purchased the third piece, “Statue of a Goddess or Muse (Terpsichore),” from a seemingly shady arts dealer named Robert Hecht who was later charged (but not convicted) of trafficking illegally excavated antiquities, with evidence suggesting the third piece had been “uncovered in 1997 during illicit excavations.”

Professor Emerita of History Cynthia Patterson said she has a hard time believing Carlos Museum staffers did not know the third statue was looted when they bought it in 2002, because the Carlos Museum’s then-curator of Greek and Roman art previously worked for said dealer Hecht right before landing his job at the Carlos Museum.

The nation of Greece had asked The Carlos Museum to return the three artifacts back in 2007. In January, the museum finally did so. Emory was under pressure to address the issue — especially after August 2023, when “The Chronicle of Higher Education” published an extensive investigative article focused on the Carlos Museum, named after a Greek-American benefactor, and its acquisition of looted antiquities. —CL—

The Blotter Diva compiles reports from the Atlanta Police Department and local news reports — and puts them into her own words.