One of our local police officer’s has gotten into the Police Blotter spirit. He sent over his take on a recent event that landed a guy a $400 or so fine.

It seems that this particular officer gets irked when someone parks illegally in a handicapped space.

Well, the other night he was off-duty and stopped to pick up some take-out. When he pulled into the parking lot, a car was parked in a handicapped space with the engine running, the lights on, and a woman and children inside. The driver was no where to be found and there was no sign or placard indicating that driver was handicap.

The off-duty officer went inside and placed his order. Both the officer and the man in front of him in line waited about 10 minutes for their food and walked out about the same time.

As luck would have it, the man in line was the driver of the car that sat running in the handicap space.

The officer walked past him, and kindly said, “Hey man,you may not realize it and it’s not marked very well but that is a handicapped space.  You might want to be careful.”

He turned quickly to the officer and with a smirk said, “I realize that.  What do you want to do? Write me a ticket?”

With a chuckle, the officer said, “okay.”  

It should be noted here that this officer was off-duty and in plain clothes, so the driver had no way of knowing the man was a cop.

But when he saw the white Crown Victoria parked in the lot, he turned sheepishly and said “Are you a police officer?”

The officer replied in a  very cheerful voice, “yep. I sure am.”

The man high-tailed it towards the officer with an “I am so sorry. I just really had a tough day. And I know that you are going to write me a ticket anyway but I am so sorry.”

The officer started writing the ticket, and replied, “you know, if I was in a wheel chair and I pulled in here to get a food on my way home after I had a really tough day, and the only place for me to park in this crowded parking lot was in this one space, and some guy that wasn’t even handicapped was parked in it so that he wouldn’t have to be inconvenienced by walking all the way across the parking lot to get his to-go-order, well that would just have made my day just a little tougher, don’tcha think?”

He continued his apologies until the officer told him  just to go wait in his car.

The officer finished writing  the ticket and went over to his car and handed him the ticket. As he did, the officer said, “you know, I tried to give you a break instead of writing you a ticket.” The driver responded, “I know.  And I am so sorry.”

The way the officer said he  figures it is, “about $200 of his $440 ticket was for parking in a handicapped space. One hundred of it was for being such a jerk when someone was trying to be neighborly and give him a way of his obvious faux pass. And the rest way for trying to whine his way out of a ticket. And all three of those events in front of his wife and kids,” the officer told the Moultrie News. In all three cases, what sort of example are you setting for your kids and the future of our country. Hope his pizza was good. It cost him a fortune.”

•••

Message retrieval

Police responded to a woman’s home because she believed someone had been listening to her voice mail messages on her land line phone. She called the phone company who suggested that someone may have obtained her pin number. She had the phone company change the pin number and even considered getting rid of the land line altogether.

The woman was concerned about the situation because she just served jury duty and the county clerk informed her that personal information had been stolen from them which contained her information.

She went on to tell officers that she felt like someone had been in her house. She said she noticed windows open that she knew were shut and locked. However she never found anything taken, damaged or disturbed.

She said since her identity had been stolen, five packages that were delivered to her house had been opened, however left on her front porch.

She said she has never seen anyone around her residence and no items were ever taken from her deliveries.

The officer promised the let all the neighborhood officers know about the situation so they could keep a close eye on her.

•••

Have I got a proposition...

A woman received a harassing voice mail asking if her residence was a meat market of sorts. She called police because she believed her adult daughter put someone up to making the obscene call.

Police tracked the number back to a local woman who suspected that two men who were doing home repair work in her residence at the time, might have made the call.

Officers responded to the workplace of the suspects but neither were in. The officer left a calling card with the message that the suspect give him a ring.

Instead of calling the officer, he called the elderly woman back and said he was the one who made the call.

She informed the officer of this and said when she used to be a teacher she taught this suspect’s son.

The officer responded back to the business and the suspect admitted to making the call. He said it stemmed from an incident that occurred in the past — one he did not want to mention.

Because the man admitted to making the disgusting comments and apologized, she decided against pressing charges.

•••

Liquid courage

A cabbie drove an extremely drunk man back to his house one night. It took the help of two other men to even get him in the back seat.

When the cabbie arrived at the passenger’s house all hell broke loose. The passenger flipped out, became violent and started swinging punches at the driver. None of them connected and the driver managed to call police.

About the same time, some kids from the neighborhood came over to watch the dispute and started laughing at the drunk man.

This distracted him away from the cabbie and he screamed, “what are y’all laughing at?”

He then lunged at them as if he was going to chase the kids but did not.

He must have turned and went inside, because by the time officer arrived, he was gone. They spoke with the cabbie and then went and rang the suspect’s doorbell.

He could hardly talk and in a matter of seconds went back and forth from a crying sob to being angry and cursing. The officer asked him what happened and the suspect refused to talk about it. He did say he was sorry and that he was going through a divorce.

He was not being charged with anything but the officer was concerned about leaving him in this condition.

The suspect was able to apologize to the victim and offered to pay his cab fare but the cabbie declined it because he did not have change for the large bill he was presented.

Several of the neighbors came down the street to inquire about the subject. They said he had been acting strange for a while due to his recent divorce and they promised to keep an eye on him for the rest of the evening.

•••

(The Police Blotter is intended to be a humorous column written from police reports obtained from the Mount Pleasant Police Department. Many of the stories come from the initial incident reports and, occasionally, supplemental reports. Generally, cases have not been adjudicated at the time of publication. Read these and all Police Blotter columns online at www.moultrienews.com.)

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