Macon man jailed on marijuana charge says weed in Chevy not his

Police officers will tell you from experience that criminals have a tendency to repeat their acts. DUI cops tell of catching the same drunken drivers again and again — and on rare occasions catching them driving under the influence twice in the same night. Those offenders also tend to stand out. Others, though, don’t always ring a bell. On the night of April 21, a Bibb sheriff’s deputy on patrol in north Macon saw a 2011 Chevrolet Cruze zip through a red light at the intersection of Northside Drive and Forest Hill Road. When the deputy pulled the car over and spoke to its driver, the deputy smelled “the aroma of marijuana” wafting from the car. The deputy asked the driver, 34, if there was any weed in the car. No, the driver said. “I advised him,” the deputy later noted in his report, “that if there is marijuana in the vehicle and he gives it to me without a search, I would issue him a citation and release him. But I warned him that if he lied and I found contraband during a search, he would be arrested.” The driver spoke up then. “I’ve been through this with you before,” he told the cop, reminding the deputy about a time the man had been stopped and charged with misdemeanor possession. “I did not recall this incident prior to him saying something about it,” the deputy noted in his write-up. The deputy asked the fellow again if there was any weed in the Chevy, adding that the driver “was very insistent that there was none.” The deputy had the man step out of the car and, in the back seat, promptly found a shoe box with a small plastic bag of pot in it. The driver said his nephew had been in the car recently and “must have left the marijuana” behind. Upon arresting the man on a possession charge, the deputy told the guy to have his cousin go to court with him “to testify to that claim.”

Dispatches: On May 2, a man on Ell Street in Macon reported that someone stole “Smoke,” his gray pit bull. … The same day, a woman on Holt Avenue near Macon’s Central High School told a Bibb sheriff’s deputy that in April she let a female friend stay at her apartment. When the guest moved out, the resident noticed that five pairs of her pants were missing and she wanted to press charges. … A Macon woman called the law April 16 to report that a man she knows as “Bulldog” had taken $40 from her when she hugged him. The woman, 46, said she saw the man while she was outside a food mart at the intersection of Pio Nono and Montpelier avenues. A sheriff’s report noted that the woman had the money in her hand and that Bulldog took it. “Supposedly he told her the reason he took the money was because she owed him money in the past for drugs.” The woman, the report went on, “is an admitted drug user but stated she no longer takes drugs. However, in observing her disheveled appearance she may still be using.” … The newspaper in Forsyth, the Monroe County Reporter, reports that in late April parts of the county jail were evacuated “after a swarm of bees briefly invaded the facility.” … An employee at the Waffle House on Gray Highway in east Macon told the cops that someone in the diner about 3:30 a.m. on April 25 “became irate during an argument and punched the glass screen on the electronic jukebox.”

This story was originally published May 13, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Macon man jailed on marijuana charge says weed in Chevy not his."