Officers remember cases that left them laughing

Columbia County is considered one of the more affluent and educated counties in the state, but like any community, it also boasts its fair share of residents who do dumb things and police who are there to clean up after them.

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Columbia County sheriff's Lt. Andy Shedd said he remembers being called to a wreck on Cobbham Road in Appling. A man driving drunk ran off the road and got his car stuck in a ditch.

Instead of calling for help, the man wedged a jack against the accelerator and went to the back bumper to rock the car, Shedd said. When the spinning tire got traction, the car shot into a nearby tree.

"He went from being stuck in a ditch to totaling a car," Shedd said.

Grovetown Public Safety Chief Al Robinson said he's been in law enforcement since the 1980s. He remembers the summer of 1989, when he was the object of mistaken identity.

On a hot night, Robinson, then a road patrol officer, was driving with the windows down. At a stop sign, he heard a voice say, "It is about time you got here," and realized a very drunk man was trying to get into the back seat of his patrol car.

"He was so drunk, he couldn't even stand up," Robinson said. "He had a fifth of liquor in the front of his pants. He thought I was a taxi cab."

The man was adamant he wanted a ride, so Robinson gave him one -- to the city jail.

As an officer at a sheriff's office in south Georgia in 1986, Robinson said, he buzzed two women into the back entrance of the jail and into the booking office.

"It was obvious they had been fighting," Robinson said. "Their hair was messed up. They were dirty. Their clothes were in disarray."

One woman tossed a large bag of marijuana on the desk and said she wanted the other woman arrested because she was dissatisfied with the quality of the marijuana and the other woman wouldn't refund her $100.

Both were arrested for possession and had a short trip to a cell.

"That was the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life," Robinson said. "They (employees) talked about it for years."

Robinson and Shedd shared one crazy call that turned out to be quite serious.

In October 1993, Shedd said, the 911 dispatch center got a call from a man who claimed his daughter was driving around Grovetown with a dead body in the trunk of the car. He said she and an accomplice planned to dump the body in the quarry near Grovetown.

"We were all like, 'Yeah, right,'" Shedd said.

But after staking out the quarry with Shedd, Robinson caught up with the car a few hours later. The couple led police on a chase ending in Evans, and the body of a Florida man was found in the trunk. Both were convicted in Florida, sentenced to prison and have since been released.

"It was crazy," Shedd said. "It all started with what we thought was a joke."