When a man was asked by police why he was pushing a shopping cart full of beer down an Athens street, he had a good answer. Really. "I am drunk. I don't know why," he said, according to the police report. Makes sense, right? You’d pretty much have to be altered to go into a grocery store, fill a cart with four 30-count boxes of beer and walk out — all caught on the surveillance camera. The man’s story also included claims that he bought the beer from a bootlegger and tried to exchange the cans for bottles of beer at a Kroger.

Though the beer shopper may have been intoxicated, at least he didn't threaten violence. A woman tried to steal five steaks from an Athens-area grocery store then threatened to stab an employee after she was caught. The woman walked out the door with the meat, but an employee stopped her outside and she returned the items. When the employee tried to prevent her from leaving, she turned and said, “I’ll stab you.” The employee wasn’t sure she actually had a knife, however.

In Norcross, it was a shoplifter, not a store employee, that was allegedly threatened with a knife. A Norcross man told police he was coerced into shoplifting at a Walmart. The man explained to officers that the suspect came up from behind and held a knife to his throat, demanding money. After the man said he didn’t have any money, the suspect told him to go into the store and "steal some stuff,” according to the police report. Police told the man it would have been better to call authorities rather than commit a crime.

On the other hand, if you have already committed a crime, it is probably best not to call authorities. A Walton County resident got into some hot water after he reported a fraudulent charge on his credit card. But, after Walton Sheriff’s Office deputies responded and looked into things they found the man had his own outstanding warrants in two other counties. 

A Gwinnett County Police officer looking into things during a traffic stop on I-85 made an interesting discovery. The officer smelled overwhelming odors of marijuana and air freshener coming from a rental car driven by a Stone Mountain woman, with a South Carolina man in the passenger seat. The officer wrote in his report: “I noticed there were two clip-on air fresheners stuck inside the air vents. This stood out to me because this was an Enterprise rental car and the average motoring public does not add air fresheners to a rental car.” The officer later found a USPS box with a PlayStation 3 box inside. Inside that box were three pounds of pot.

In another case of deceptive packaging, an Atlanta man ended up with framed pictures of iPads in bubble wrap. The man told Norcross Police he agreed to buy iPads from a seller at a shopping center parking lot. The seller, who stayed in his car, showed the man the wrapped-up fake goods and asked to see the money. When the man pulled out $1,000, the suspect threatened the buyer saying, "Give me all the money or I will kill you!" The man handed over the cash and was left with the picture frames.

Just as the Atlanta man's actions in agreeing to buy iPads from a guy in a car in a shopping center parking lot contributed to his losing $1,000, a Dacula-area musician told police that his style of music playing might have contributed to a burglary that resulted in his Yamaha 250 keyboard being stolen. “[The victim] said he frequently plays his keyboard ‘like a cathedral’ for his own personal enjoyment,” the officer wrote in the incident report. “[The victim] said that he suspects that someone may have gotten tired of it.”

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