Grant walked up the steps with a set of handcuffs on his belt, an extension wand billystick, pepper spray and a .40-caliber pistol on his right hip. His uniform was tennis shoes, jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt.

A bondsman has the right to re-arrest a person he’s bonded out, even if he’s not missed a court date. We can arrest them if they’re not abiding by the contract, if they’ve co-signed it.”

“No,” he responded. “White people and black people can lie well, but Hispanic and Indian people can’t lie well. I always look at their face while they’re looking at the picture, and I can tell.”

“I’d make entry by force because I believe (the defendant) may be in there, but the only thing stopping me is the notice only gives the street address and doesn’t list which apartment,” he said. “That could be used against us in court. Now I’ll go back and get an arrest report — something definitive with the correct address — that says where they arrested him.”

He said he is “not an attorney and doesn’t give legal advice.”

Maj. John Gibson with the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office said bonding companies are a “necessity” in the law enforcement and criminal justice system.

“No matter what the economy’s like, you have weeks where you have a lot of people in (jail) and you have weeks where you don’t hardly have anyone,” she said. “The economy being as it is, people are still going to jail but they don’t have the money to get out ... Typically, a bondsman tries to collect their money up front, (but) they don’t have it. So we’re doing a lot more bonds on credit. People are making payments.”

I know a few who go out Hawaiian shirt and board shorts, flip flops and handcuffs.