Teen jailed after sassing great-grandma and flipping off cop

As it is outlined in the Georgia criminal code, “disorderly conduct” is an offense against “public order and safety” that happens when, among other things, someone uses “opprobrious or abusive words which by their very utterance tend to incite.” The legal language also mentions that the crime can involve “acts in a violent or tumultuous manner toward another person whereby the property of such person is placed in danger of being damaged or destroyed.” It was such an episode that recently prompted a 70-year-old great-grandmother in east Macon to call the police to her house on New Clinton Road. On Nov. 19, according to an incident report, she told a Bibb County sheriff’s deputy that her great-grandson, who is 18, “has been so disrespectful lately and that he has damaged” a window screen. She said that he also talked back to her, and that when she called the police he had told her she was “acting like a child.” The deputy then spoke to the great-grandson. The teen apparently wasn’t interested in curtailing his foul behavior. “He shot me a bird,” the deputy noted in his write-up, adding for clarity’s sake that the young man “gave me the finger.” The great-grandson was jailed on a charge of, yes, disorderly conduct.

This story was originally published December 1, 2016 at 1:00 AM with the headline "Teen jailed after sassing great-grandma and flipping off cop."