From the AJC…

Two DeKalb County fire paramedics escaped serious injury Saturday when they were taken on a wild, high speed ride in the back of a stolen ambulance that eventually crashed into a chiropractor’s office near Decatur.

The paramedics had just dropped a patient off at Emory University Hospital on Clifton Road shortly before 2 p.m. and were in the back of the ambulance completing their paperwork when “a patient came out of the hospital, dressed in a gown and rubber gloves, jumped in the front seat, locked the doors and took off in the unit,” DeKalb fire Battalion Chief Christopher Morrison Jr. told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

And man, the picture of the ambulance crash is worth a 1,000 words.  Glad no one was hurt!

As part of $33.6 million in budget cuts demanded by the DeKalb County Commission, DeKalb Police have decided to ground its police helicopter.  From the AJC…

DeKalb Chief William O’Brien grounded the helicopter to meet a $4.7 million budget cut, according to a memo obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Effective immediately, helicopter response to calls for service is very limited. Aerial Support is suspending all helicopter activities, operations and call-outs,” Assistant Chief Lisa A. Gassner wrote to staff on Thursday.

The helicopter will only be used for critical public safety emergencies, such as floods and officer-involved shootings, police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said.

Sounds like DeKalb police chases may have just gotten a bit more challenging.

Lots of bad checks and a moldy house? I don’t even know what to do with that!
Stone Mountain, are you seeing this!?

h/t: DeKalb Officers

UPDATE: Another interesting development.  The DeKalb Officers blog calls out the AJC and GBI and defends their department.

Everybody starts jumping on the bandwagon accusing Whittington and others of making the wrong decisions and showing favoritism toward Commissioner Sutton. Un-informed buffoons from the GBI and the Gwinnett Sheriff’s Office (click here for AJC article “GBI, sheriff question DeKalb handling of wanted commissioner”) jump in and give their two cents worth.

Small problem though. See, the warrants were issued on January 8, 2008. According to O.C.G.A. 17-3-1 (2009), there’s this little ole sentence that reads: “Prosecution for misdemeanors must be commenced within two years after the commission of the crime.” So, if Commissioner Sutton had been arrested, then that could have caused big problems for all involved. (Also see Pickens v Hollowell and Opinion of Thurbet E Baker, Georgia Attorney General).

This story continues to develop in truly odd ways, so it felt appropriate to give it a new post.

The AJC reports the story of the DeKalb Commissioner with four outstanding warrants NOT being arrested by DeKalb Police after a traffic accident has now attracted the attention of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who says they might want “to look at [DeKalb's] procedures and process to see if there were extenuating circumstances or retraining was needed for the officer.”

And that’s the latest piece of the “Why didn’t the police arrest DeKalb Commissioner Sharon Barnes Sutton?” puzzle.

But what about the “Why did the judge recall warrants?” question?  In this latest article, Gwinnett majistrate judge Gene Cantrell told the AJC that the merchant [Costco] asked for the charges to be dropped and that they didn’t know “who is person was.”  So why was Costco so eager to recall warrants that sat open for years?  Still no answer on that front.

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UPDATE III: The only new piece of info I can find in this morning’s hard-copy iteration of this story is this…

Other DeKalb County commissioners said they were unaware of the warrants and could not comment.

UPDATE II: Weirder still!  The AJC updates the article for a third time and NOW the lawyer’s claim of identity fraud is gone.  Instead we have this statement from Sutton…

Sutton said she paid Costco the outstanding money late Thursday and her attorney had the warrants dropped.

“We paid them all the money that is due,” Sutton said. “This is just very unfortunate and embarrassing. This is a reminder that we all need to pay very close attention to your banking transactions because this could happen to anyone.”

Uh yeah, thanks for the tip.  Still no explanation as to why the Gwinnett judge recalled the warrants.  Hopefully the AJC won’t let this drop.

UPDATE: The story just got a lot weirder.  Sutton’s lawyer is now claiming identity fraud is to blame for 4 bounced checks to CostCo and the charges were cleared by a Gwinnett judge this afternoon.  How Sutton was able to prove identity fraud so quickly, we don’t know.  Also, Sutton has a bit of a history and I’m a bit unclear how she wouldn’t be aware of this issue.

After the warrants were issued last year, the Gwinnett deputies contacted Sutton via mail. They then forwarded the information to DeKalb law enforcement, which is the normal procedure when a warrant is for a suspect outside Gwinnett, Powell said.

Court records show Sutton also had previous problems with bad checks. In 1996, she pleaded no contest in Gwinnett to writing bad checks to West Building Supply in Stone Mountain.

Sutton said the 1996 charges happened after she “accidentally” overdrew her account.

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