Have Guns Will Use Them

This is an article I read this morning:

Have guns, will use them (THE TIMES/ by Damian Whitworth)

AS WE strap on bullet-proof vests in the car park of a motel on the east side of Indianapolis, the motley crew who style themselves America's Hardest Bounty Hunters make a few wisecracks. “What's his name?” asks Matthew Tellez, a Mexican-American man mountain, gesturing towards the Times photographer. “I like to know before he gets shot. If it's right to the forehead it's over.”
The men check their weapons — Glock and Smith & Wesson handguns, but also one pump-action shotgun — and listen to the briefing on the fugitive they know to be hiding in a room at another motel down the road. Jeffery Berger, 38, is wanted for failing to appear in court to answer numerous charges of driving while intoxicated and while his licence was suspended. These may not sound like heavy-duty crimes but he was released only on a hefty $200,000 bond so there must be more to the charges than meets the eye. He has been on the run for the best part of a year.
An agent has made contact with someone close to the wanted man who was persuaded to shop him for $500. I am told not to identify this person. The snitch reported that the fugitive had boasted that if “anybody comes in there he's going to kill them”.
One of the bounty hunters, Fred Slack, a US Army veteran, recounts a story about storming a motel room with just his brother, Robert, expecting to find a similar lone fugitive. Instead they disturbed 15 armed drug dealers. “That was one time if you turn tail they are going to shoot,” he recalls. He negotiated his way out by saying: “I know I'm dead but if I'm going to die I'm taking some of you with me,” and insisting that all he wanted was the one guy he had come for. When that man jumped out of a third-storey window the brothers were able to extricate themselves from the room. “In this job you have to be prepared for anything. You think a case is small beer and all of a sudden you are in a firefight.” Very reassuring.
Slack abandons his Humvee, with its leather seats and gleaming bodywork, because he doesn't want it to “get shot up” and we jump in a convoy of cars. “Roll it! Roll it! Roll it!” Slack shouts into the radio as the vehicles screech to a halt in the car park of the Always Inn. Ten men, dressed in black with “Agent Fugitive Recovery” emblazoned on their backs, leap from the cars and sprint, guns drawn, towards a ground-floor motel room with a door opening straight on to the pavement. The Times follows at what is hoped is a safe distance.
The key to the room has been obtained from the hotel receptionist and as it is slipped into the lock all guns are trained on the doorway. With an accompanying shout of “Warrants!” the door is thrown open. A man, who had been sitting on the edge of a bed eating a hamburger, stands up and turns as if trying to bolt, but he is trapped between the two beds and falls over on to one of them as three men pile on top of him.
“What the f*** is going on?”
“We have a warrant for your arrest. Get down!”
The man is struggling. “Stop resisting right now.” He soon gives up the fight and the handcuffs go on.
The whole raid has taken less than 90 seconds. The men of US Bounty Hunters have once again got their man.
The new Tony Scott film Domino, starring Keira Knightley, is based loosely on the life of Domino Harvey, the privileged British daughter of the matinee idol Laurence Harvey and the socialite Sophie Wynn, who, after a career as a model, became an unlikely bounty hunter in Los Angeles. Harvey, who had a history of drug problems, died in her bath earlier this year, apparently in an accident related to a powerful pain reliever.
One of the very few ways in which the film resembles real-life bounty hunting is in its portrayal of an almost exclusively male profession. Domino is a somewhat absurd gunfest in which a zillion people are killed. The less explosive reality of bounty hunting makes for more compelling viewing: the TV shows about Slack and his team and another reality series called Dog the Bounty Hunter are big hits in the US and can now be seen in Britain.
Slack turned to bounty hunting after a stripper and two men posing as potential business partners robbed and tortured him. The stripper tried to shoot him, but the gun jammed. She became his first fugitive and he decided to become a full-time bounty hunter after he caught her. “I wanted to do something to even the score.
I wanted to put people in custody who hurt other people,” he says. Now he claims that US Bounty Hunters is the largest enterprise of its kind in America, with 26 agents based in Indianapolis, Atlanta and North Carolina fanning out across the US in search of their prey.
They hunt people who have been charged with crimes and released on bail. In return for a fee of 10 per cent of the total bond — which can range from dollars 500 to dollars 1 million — bail bondsmen guarantee to pay the full bond if the accused fails to show up in court. When someone goes on the run the bail bondsmen hire bounty hunters to bring them in and reap a reward of 10 per cent of the bond. Bounty hunters are licensed by the states and the best, like Slack, make big bucks.
Much of the work is straightforward; picking up petty criminals who skip court appearances. Nevertheless, Slack estimates that in 5-10 per cent of cases the fugitive is armed and about a third will fight or make a run for it. Slack has been shot three times in the line of work and once shot a defendant in the leg. Only one fugitive has died while resisting arrest by his team. Slack's strategy is “always go in with force, no matter what the case. The element of surprise is everything. If you suddenly have four or five men coming at you there's not much you can do.”
Much of the time is spent investigating and tracking quarry. The majority of fugitives are men and Slack has a simple creed: “Find the woman, you find the man.” He is the chief negotiator. We go to the last known address of Jerreld Morrow, who has jumped dollars 25,000 bail on charges of possessing marijuana and numerous counts of driving while suspended. His uncle claims he thought his nephew was already in jail. “Everybody lies at first; 99.999 per cent of people lie,” says Slack.
He obtains an address for Morrow's girlfriend. She's not there but her teenage son lets slip that Morrow was there the previous night. Slack calls her and she denies having seen him. She says she'll call the wanted man but then claims that his mobile is out of order. “No it isn't, sweetie,” Slack tells her. “I don't want you to go to jail for harbouring a fugitive.”
He offers a deal: if Morrow turns himself in to them now he will be able to walk free from jail that night. Will he really, I ask. Slack smirks: “No.” He says to the girlfriend that he will give Morrow two days to turn himself over to police. This too is a lie. If he turned himself in to the cops the bounty hunters would not get their fee. He wants Morrow to relax, think he has bought some time, and slink back to the girlfriend's house. Then “we'll come back at 3am and smash the door down”.
Everywhere we find women protecting their men. “What's the problem? Warrant for what?” screams one woman out of a window when Slack's men come looking for a fugitive who was bailed on a $10,000 bond and failed to turn up to face driving charges. The team burst in and start searching by torchlight. A couple are discovered having sex even while the raid is taking place. The fugitive is found hiding in a wardrobe.
Despite all the drama of the raids, it is remarkable how underwhelmed neighbours are by the gun-heavy spectacle. During one hit a neighbour looks up briefly and then carries on washing his car. As another address is stormed a passer-by laughs: “Looks like someone didn't turn up in court.”
In the car on the way downtown to the police jail I sit next to Berger, the man arrested at the motel. He looks beaten. He had just returned to Indianapolis after hiding out of state and the raid came “completely out of the blue. It's frightening looking down the barrel of a gun. These big guys coming in is enough to scare anybody.” He is surprisingly charitable to the bounty hunters. “They are just doing their job. You can't fault them.” But he is preoccupied with how they caught him. “I don't know how they f****** knew I was there.”
After nearly a year he is relieved to have been caught. “Every corner I turn — looking over my shoulder. Every time you get somewhere comfortable you hear a car door slam. Peeping out the window and s**t like that. The TV doesn't lie: you can run but you can't hide.” This is a reference to the catchphrase on Slack's show America's Hardest Bounty Hunters.
Berger is worried that “the jail is so crowded here” and that at 38 he will be unable to cope with the “young kids, the gang bangers”. He hopes he will only be inside for a few months but the bounty hunters think he is being optimistic; it emerges in conversation that on one of the occasions he was driving he was involved in an accident. He does not elaborate. “I'll just have to deal with it. Keep praying nothing happens to my family while I'm gone.”
He is led into the bowels of the jail. Slack starts the Hummer. The team have caught four fugitives and still hope to get Morrow very soon. They have made $24,000 in two days. Business is booming. “For every person we arrest there are two more waiting,” says Slack. “Everyone wants to go to jail.”

Real pro BEA's usually make low impact arrests, these gun blazing door kicking "Bounty Hunters" may seem very exciting but their approach may very well get them arrested and / or sued one of these days.

_________________
Chuck

WORSE than sued OR Arrested - - - DEAD
Me, I like being able to sit on my porch and drink tea and let the bad guys come to me. Too many other things that have to be done (dogs, fish, cats, laundry. . . and so on) to spend my time out spinning my wheels.
and yes I usually end up with them on my porch or calling me and asking for a ride.

_________________


Do not consider anything for your interest which makes you break your word, quit your modesty, or inclines you to any practice which will not bear the light, or look the world in the face .... Marcus Antonius

I AM Some Folks "KARMA" and A MODERATOR @ FRN

How can anyone believe there were 15 armed drug dealers in one motel room? Perhaps it was a drug dealers convention?



This one doesn't have even the slightest semblance of common sense. Where do these people come from and where do they find such stories?



These types of comments are what the media love to share with the public. What a shame... what a waste... WHAT A LOAD OF SHEER BULL!!!!

Unbelievable! Its getting worse and worse in the field with people like this "exploiting on their explosive exploits"... reality TV featuring you-know-who has truly damaged the industry more than any one person ever has... America's Hardest Bounty Hunters, my sainted Aunt's @#%!

_________________
Lance Allen Wilkinson
Recoveries by L.A.W.
Serving since 1984
“What is sought is found... what is overlooked escapes” (Oedipus Rex)

Thay are taking the Dog approach...... all BS fluff and no real substance.

Amen... Couldn't have said it better myself!

I'm with you, LuVonda. A little sugar goes a long ways. I only send out the team if I can't sweet talk them in, and with the people I bond I have about a 98% success rate. Unfortunately I can't say the same when we're going after other bondsmen's skips. If you write bad bonds, you can expect bad results.

_________________
Kathy Blackshear
Blackshear Investigations
Blackshear Bail Bonds
Sales Associate, Prepaid Legal Services, Inc.
Walsenburg, CO

Proud Member of the AB Reject Club

This TV bounty hunter crap and I mean crap is getting truly out of control-this garbage has to end --it will take the true pros down with the crap--the really sad part is the public eats this crap up like ice cream-- come on people we need to show the public the real bea stuff we need to get the media on our side---i think we need a publisist to get the word to the right people---ANY VOLUNTEERS PLEASE SPEAK UP--WE NEED PRESS RELEASES FOR EACH POP WE MAKE WITH NO VIOLENCE--WE NEED TO SHOW OURSELVES AS REGULAR PEOPLE NOT THUGS OR CRAZEYS LETS GET ON THE STICK--LAW ON I SEND OUT PRESS RELEASES ON OUR MAJOR BUSTS I THINK WE WILL DO MORE

Hadley,

I concur with your analysis, but I'm not clear on how to go about getting the desired results.

Unfortunately, it seems that the media is not interested in the low-key manner that most arrests arrive from and is in favor of the more flamboyant with no regard to the potential damage that such spectacles may perpetuate.

Rex