InTucker Magazine

On the Beat with Lt. Schoeppner

Lt. D.G. Schoeppner is Tucker’s liaison to the DeKalb County Police Department and can be followed at facebook.com/dgschoeppner or emailed at dgschoeppner@dekalbcountyga.gov.

Just last month I had talked about how DeKalb County Police are partnering with technology companies like “Ring” and “FLOCK Safety” in order to help us solve crimes. Here we are just over a month later and I have an example of how we are putting this technology to good use in supporting solid police work.

On Valentine’s Day, our officers responded to a robbery call in the parking lot of the Tucker Meridian shopping center at Lavista Road and Northlake Parkway. The male victim said that he was walking in the parking lot of the shopping center when he was approached by three suspects. These suspects began to assault the victim and rifle through his pockets. After taking a substantial amount of money the suspects fled the scene in a black Nissan Maxima.

Our detectives wasted no time using tag reading cameras in the area to search for cars that matched the description of the suspects vehicle. They discovered a match to a rental car out of Texas. We put a lookout on the vehicle, and it was stopped the following day down in Troup County. It was presumably on the way back to Texas.

Lieutenant Stanfield and Detective England traveled to Troup County to interview the suspects. When they arrived, they discovered that two of the suspects were wearing the same clothes from the robbery the previous day. The detectives were also contacted by the police agency where the car was rented from in Texas. The police down there were looking at these same suspects for several robberies in the Lone Star State. The suspects from the vehicle were all charged with robbery and brought back to DeKalb County.

These suspects had no affiliation with the victim. They also lived out of state. These two facts probably made the suspects confident of being able to get away with assaulting and robbing someone in broad daylight. If it wasn’t for our embracing new technology the chances are high that they would have gotten away with it. But because of our forward thinking and diligent detective work, these suspects now have to answer for their crimes. Hopefully the word will get out that Tucker is not the place to commit crimes like this.