Cop Shop Blog

Fireworks ignite spat, lead to jail after Ga. man tells cop, ‘My IQ is higher than yours’

A Monroe County sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to a house near High Falls Lake about, as an incident report described it, “subjects shooting off fireworks.” The deputy soon encountered the man who had called the cops. The man was described as irate.

According to the July 4 report, the man said his neighbors’ fireworks were “landing on top of his trailer.” One of the neighbors said the man, 63, had been acting “ugly” to the neighbors. The deputy informed the man who’d called the cops that no laws were being broken and that he could “take the issue to civil court.”

The man was said to have then gotten angry at the deputy, insulting the deputy and telling him, “My IQ is higher than yours.” Another neighbor later informed the deputy that the man complaining “was drunk.” The neighbor and his family said they were, in fact, shooting fireworks but that none of them could have reached the man’s trailer.

Some other neighbors said the complaining man had threatened to “shoot them” if they didn’t knock it off with the fireworks. Others in the area said the man had yelled at others as well. He was said to have screamed some more when the deputy handcuffed him and arrested him on charges of disorderly conduct, terroristic threats and obstruction.

Dispatches: On the day before Independence Day, a woman on Buena Vista Drive in Macon reported a problem with her 17-year-old son. She told a Bibb County sheriff’s deputy that the son “got upset” when she informed him they were going to his aunt’s to celebrate the Fourth. She said the teen “began throwing stuff and tearing up things” in the house, and when the deputy arrived the teen was said to still be “cursing and banging on the walls.” After refusing to calm down, the teen was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge. . . . There was a report of a shoplifting incident at Walgreens on Gray Highway in east Macon July 12. A woman was said to have walked in wearing, as a sheriff’s report would later note, “a bonnet on her head.” She allegedly then “removed approximately 15 cans of Degree deodorant from the display shelf. She put the items inside of a large purse.” She then walked out and rode off in a blue Cadillac.

Joe Kovac Jr.
The Telegraph
Joe Kovac Jr. writes about local news and features for The Telegraph, with an eye for human-interest stories. Joe is a Warner Robins native and graduate of Warner Robins High. He joined the Telegraph in 1991 after graduating from the University of Georgia. As a Pulliam Fellowship recipient in 1991, Joe worked for the Indianapolis News. His stories have appeared in the Washington Post, the Seattle Times and Atlanta Magazine. He has been a Livingston Award finalist and won numerous Georgia Press Association and Georgia Associated Press awards.
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