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5

Drunk Prowler

It was almost 6:00 in the morning. The next shift would be coming on at 6:30 and then I could go home and go to bed. Instead, the call from radio meant that I would not be getting to bed on time: “Be enroute to a Prowler attempting to force entry at a residence. The description of the perp is a black male wearing a black jacket.” I hurried to the address that dispatch sent me to. A big, fat white male met me at the door wearing nothing but his white Fruit of the Looms. I could see his wife holding a baby standing behind him. I thought, You could have at least put some pants on!

As he told me what had happened, however, it was clear that this poor fellow had just been awakened by the black guy banging on his front door. He said, “Officer, I heard this banging on the door so I went to see what the commotion was about.”

I said, “You didn’t open the door, did you?”

He said, “Well, I just opened it a crack and this black guy shoved his way into my house. I didn’t know what he wanted so I shoved him back out and slammed the door. That is when I called the police.”

While I was talking to Mr. Fruit of the Loom, I heard the dispatcher advise that the same male was trying to get into another home on the next street over. I quickly drove to that location. A lady met me at the door. She was clearly shaken. I asked her what had happened. Her story was almost identical as the first one. “I heard someone pounding on my door and went to see who it was.”

I asked her the same question, “You didn’t open the door, did you?” She said that she had opened the door but she had been holding her poodle at the time. When the suspect tried to shove his way into her house, the poodle started barking and lunged for the intruder. This was enough for the guy to call it quits at this house. He did not want to have to deal with a vicious poodle. The prowler ran away.

As I was talking with this lady, another call came over the police radio in reference to an intruder breaking into another home. This one was also in the same neighborhood, on the street behind the one I was on. I drove over there and found that the suspect had gone around behind this house. The front door was not working out so good for him so he decided to try the back. He had walked up on the deck. This home had beautiful double French doors leading into the house from the deck. The prowler grabbed a piece of firewood that was laying there and smashed open one of the doors.

The homeowner told me that he awakened immediately when he heard the glass shatter and he could hear someone walking in his house. The homeowner had yelled out, “I have a shotgun and I’ll kill you.” He then heard the sound of someone running out and across the deck. When he checked, he found that the suspect had fled.

“It’s a good thing he did, Officer, or I would have shot him,” the victim told me. I assured the man that I understood completely and he was certainly entitled to protect his family and his home.

At that moment, another call came from Police Dispatch of a suspicious person pounding on someone else’s door. This call was also in the immediate area, just down the street. When I got there, the suspect had again already fled. The lady at this house said she had been awakened by someone pounding on the door. She was not expecting any visitors at 6:15 in the morning so she immediately called the police.

How long are we going to have to chase this guy? I wondered. He will eventually get into a house and hurt someone or he is going to get shot. As it turned out, the prowler’s night on the town was about to come to an end.

While I was talking with this lady, one more 911 call came in of a black male attempting to get into another house a few streets over. This time, when I pulled up in my cruiser, I saw a black male wearing a black jacket pounding on the front door of the residence. The homeowners were watching him from their living room window, still on the phone with the 911 operator.

I approached the suspect with my service revolver drawn and ordered him to the ground. He complied and I was able to get him handcuffed, searched and in my police car. When the man realized that he was under arrest, he started crying like a baby. He bawled for several minutes. It didn’t take long to realize that he was very intoxicated.

After he quit crying, I interviewed this intoxicated man, Lamont, and was able to piece his sad story together. Lamont was from Columbus, Georgia. That is about three hours South of where he ended up. He and several of his friends had come to Atlanta to party. After everybody got good and drunk, they were trying to find their way back to Columbus but got very lost. Lamont told me that at some point, his friends got mad at him and dumped him out in Snellville, Georgia. He wasn’t sure what he did to make them mad. “I don’t remember a whole lot,” he said.

What he did remember, though, was that he did not know where he was and was trying to get to a phone. “I didn’t mean no harm,” he assured me. I am sure that made everyone that he had terrorized that morning feel a lot better!

The Magistrate Judge gave me three warrants, a felony and two misdemeanors. I wanted three felonies but the Judge would not give them to me. The felony was for the house that he had smashed the French door open. The two misdemeanors were for the two houses that he shoved his way into when the people had opened the door.

When this case went to trial, I got pretty disgusted with the way the prosecution handled it. The District Attorney’s Office (they prosecute felony cases) decided that the felony Burglary charge that I had made was not a good charge. Try telling that to the man whose house was broken into. The DA’s Office dropped the charge down to a misdemeanor Criminal Trespass charge like the other two.

Now the case was going to be handled by the Solicitor’s Office (they prosecute misdemeanors). They decided to drop the two cases where the guy shoved his way into people’s homes. “You can’t prove criminal intent to commit a crime,” one the Assistant Solicitors told me.

In the end, they let Lamont plead guilty to the other Criminal Trespass charge in which he violently broke into the house. The sentence was twelve months of non-reporting probation and a two hundred dollar fine. Maybe the next time this perp gets drunk and lost at 6:00 in the morning, he will wind up at one of the Assistant DA’s or Assistant Solicitor’s houses. Or better yet, maybe he will meet an armed homeowner who is not afraid to do what it takes to protect his family.