Woman's Car Stolen Twice in One Day, Blames Police Department

A southwest Atlanta woman blames car thieves for stealing her car from outside her son's home the first time, but says that it is the police's fault that they were able to come back hours later and take it again.

According to reporting done by WSB, on Monday, March 25th, Tanita Williams had her Jeep Cherokee stolen from outside of a home in southwest Atlanta.  She told WSB reporters that she, "she started her car to warm it up and went inside to get her son. When she came back out, the car was gone."

Cascade Patch has attempted to determine exactly where the car was initially stolen from, but was unable to identify the street or neighborhood. 

Ms. Williams' problems seemed to be all over with when Fulton County Police discovered the car about an hour later, "parked behind an abandoned group home on Bakers Ferry Road," according to WSB.

This is where the jurisdiction confusion began for APD and Fulton County PD.  Ms. Williams told WSB that an APD officer took her to the scene where her stolen car was found, but the key was not with the car and the towing company said it would take a few hours to come pick the car up.

In the meantime, according to this WSB report, the APD officer informed her that he could not stay and wait with her and the car, so the APS officer left.

Ms. Williams says that they waited near the car, maybe a block away, because they were still worried the thieves would come back and see them.  Then, "lo and behold, we see my car driving down the hill past us. The thieves have come back and they’ve taken my car, yet again," she told WSB.

This time she called 911 and they dispatched a Fulton County Police officer, who informed the victim that she could not take the report because it was not in her jurisdiction.  The WSB report says that Ms. Williams had to wait an additional 2 hours for the 2 police departments to figure it out and once again send a Fulton County officer to her location to take her report.

WSB says that the car was found a second time, this time in a nearby park.  Kay Lester with Fulton County Police Department told WSB that, "we thoroughly do believe that this was a miscommunication between our initial responding officer and Mrs. Williams."

Ms. Williams told WSB she disagrees and that she thinks the officer, "wasn’t listening to what I was saying."