The Blotter: Computer Gangs 

A Parent's Nightmare In two separate police reports filed on the same day at the end of March, police noted that graffiti had been found on West 5th Street that read, "KOS 132" in spray paint. The code was sprayed across five windows of a local motorsports business and on the garage door of an apartment complex. In both reports, officers stated that, "It is unknown if the graffiti is gang-related at this time." So we took the liberty of doing a quick "KOS gang" search on Google and found horrifying results. The second result for that search shows that the K.O.S. gang is a crew in the online RPG Roblox, in which the players' avatars appear to be Lego characters. Last year, a website called Family Zone stated that Roblox is "a dangerous game for kids." The crew has only three rules: no bullying or killing crew members, show respect to HRs (high ranks) and try to recruit members every time you join a game. God help us, Charlotte.

Don't Tap the Glass A 64-year-old Dilworth woman learned that a thief can be as easy to scare as a goldfish when she confronted one last week, and in the end she came out of it with a brand new bicycle. The woman told police that she heard a noise coming from her detached garage at 4 a.m., so she looked out her window to check it out. When she saw a man crouching by a hole in the garage door, "she rapped on the window and the suspect fled towards the front of the house on foot, leaving a bicycle in the grass" on her front lawn, according to the report. Nothing was stolen in the incident.

Screw You People steal some weird shit in this city, but one thief in the Blakeney Heath neighborhood was very particular about what they stole from a yard there last week. According to a member of the neighborhood's homeowners association, an unknown suspect went through the neighborhood stealing the screws out of "No Soliciting" signs, leaving them dangling on their post. It's important to note that the crime was committed on April Fool's Day.

Middle Man A 56-year-old woman filed a police report when she realized that she was probably being used as the connecting point in some sort of illegal mail transaction. The incident started when the Harbor Estates resident received a piece of mail that she hadn't ordered, only to be contacted by the person who had sent the mail stating that they had, in fact, used her name and address but were hoping she could now send it to a third party who the package was actually intended for. She was going to play along but told officers that her daughter told her she was probably being scammed, so she turned to police. If she would have opened the package, that sounds like the beginning of a good movie, although one where a lot of people die, so probably you made the right move.

Heavy Metal You've heard the expression "crime doesn't pay," and that becomes all the more true when you go out with the intention of robbing someone and end up preying on a victim who was already dumpster diving to begin with. A 41-year-old man told police that he was collecting scrap metal from the dumpster area in the Oak Park at Nations Ford apartments in southwest Charlotte when he was approached by a man holding a gun. The suspect robbed the victim of his wallet, which contained $25 in cash, his ID and his Social Security card. Here's to hoping he found some good scrap metal and made his money back.

Big Brother It is super depressing to come across regular reports of folks desperate enough to steal baby food, diapers and the like, but one apparent parent was more into surveillance than the essentials when they were caught stealing from a department store near Uptown Charlotte last week. Officers responded to Target at the Metropolitan shopping center last week after a woman was caught shoplifting with her children in tow. Employees told police the woman tried to "defeat anti-theft devices" while leaving the store with three different types of baby monitors, all of which included camera monitors.

Looking for Handouts A man at Sports One, a bar and lounge in Uptown Charlotte, thought he could simply turn down a suggestion that he pay for his drinks last week, but ended up in a world of trouble after finding out it's not that easy. The man ran up a $104 tab, then, instead of slipping out the door like most moochers do, he simply refused to pay the bill. Police responded to the scene, and when they arrived, the suspect, fueled by more than $100 worth of alcohol, assaulted officers as they tried to arrest him. He was finally taken into custody and charged with defrauding an innkeeper (an archaic way of saying someone won't pay for drinks) and assaulting a police officer.

Fresh to Death Police got involved in the case of a fight among children in Enderly Park in west Charlotte last week after household items came into play, and nobody was even eating Tide Pods. Officers spoke with three victims — a 17-year-old boy, a 16-year-old girl and an 8-year-old girl — who told them "they were involved in an altercation with some schoolmates," and that "during the altercation, bleach was thrown on them." The suspects fled before officers arrived, but they left a clean crime scene.

All stories are pulled from police reports at CMPD headquarters. Suspects are innocent until proven guilty.