http://blog.nola.com/davewalker/2008/06 ... he_bo.htmlWGNO-TV is counting 'Tat-2 The Bounty Hunter' to capture a few news viewers
Posted by Dave Walker, TV Columnist, The Times-Picayune June 07, 2008 5:00AM
Categories: On the air
New Orleans viewers first met Tat-2 The Bounty Hunter, the latest addition to the WGNO-TV news team, during May "sweeps."
"Attention to all fugitives," reporter Sheldon Fox said in one of two introductory stories that aired during 10 p.m. newscasts. "When Tat-2 comes a-knockin', let him in, or he may just kick down your door."
Ted Jackson / The Times-Picayune
Eugene Thacker, nicknamed "Tat2," stars in a new show WGNO-TV hopes will become a ratings hit. The next sound was Tat-2 cocking a weapon. Then viewers saw footage of Tat-2 -- wielding a rifle and heavy on the arm ink -- kicking down a door and shouting, "Get the (bleep) down!"
"Some people just know how to make an entrance," Fox said. "ABC-26's Tat-2 The Bounty Hunter is one of them."
Tat-2's target, apprehended in his underwear, was a West Bank "wanted drug offender."
No question, unchecked crime is a post-Katrina crisis in New Orleans.
Larry Delia, WGNO's general manager, said Tat-2 is an out-of-the-box tool in covering that story.
The station has attached a "Crime Tracker" brand to its newscast coverage and initiated a regular "Wheel of Justice" feature during which an admittedly "hokey" "Wheel of Fortune"-like device -- borrowed hokum, actually; stations elsewhere pioneered the "Wheel" concept -- is used to introduce Crimestoppers fugitives to the audience.
Crimestoppers is a citizen-run national nonprofit that offers rewards to citizens who track crooks via anonymous tips. In the past, WGNO was among the local outlets to feature Crimestoppers mug shots during newscasts. The "Wheel," sometimes spun by local law enforcement officials, came about as an answer to this (paraphrased) Delia question: How do you present the Crimestoppers segment so viewers might actually watch it?
"If it's just homogenized, and getting tips about purse-snatching, and tips on how to secure your deadbolt with 2-inch screws instead of the half-inch screws they come with, I don't think anybody is paying attention to that," Delia said. "We saw some other markets doing 'Wheel of Justice.' We looked at it and said, 'My God, we can't do that. That's the hokiest thing on Earth.' But that's exactly what you need to get people to notice something. We put our reputation on the line by putting something out there that might be criticized.
"If people want to make fun of it and laugh about it, that's fine. But when it starts to work, they won't."
So far, seven Crimestoppers faces featured in "Wheel of Justice" segments have been apprehended or surrendered -- an "amazing" success rate, Delia said.
"We can look at ratings and make judgments (WGNO's May news ratings were, as usual, last in the market), but just like an advertiser, if the cash register rings, that's all that matters," Delia said. "In this scenario, the cash register is ringing for the people of New Orleans, because .¤.¤. these bad guys have been taken off the street.
"We know we're doing the right thing."
Tat-2's hire, Delia said, came via brainstorming with Lee Abrams, chief innovation officer for WGNO's parent, the Chicago-based Tribune Co.
"It was his idea to go out and get somebody who could really be our voice, our face, our coach, if you will," Delia said. "We weren't necessarily looking for a bounty hunter. We were looking for anyone in law enforcement who could be different.
"We knew right away that he was our guy."
Abrams is a former broadcast radio executive (he's credited with inventing the audience-research-driven "Superstars" classic-rock format that transformed FM radio three decades ago) who also has worked as an executive for XM Satellite Radio.
Recently, he's positioned himself as a tub-thumping change agent within Tribune.
"I watch typical local newscasts, and it's murder, murder, rape, murder, stabbing, murder," Abrams said. "But the presentation is so desensitized. It's an anchor person who reads these stories every day reading another one.
"Nobody's going beyond the traditional reading of the story and showing the crime scene.
"I've noticed in television that there's an arms race in weather graphics, to, like, 'own' weather. With crime, it's the same old story. (There's) a big opportunity to get more involved."
Ted Jackson / The Times-Picayune
New Orleans viewers first met Tat-2 The Bounty Hunter, the latest addition to the WGNO-TV news team, during May "sweeps." Abrams said he considers Tat-2's door-kicking introduction a success -- "I think it's great, and it will only get better," he said -- and added that he sees the station's new crime coverage as a pilot program for similar initiatives at other Tribune stations (the company owns 23).
"One of the things we've talked about around the country is having more specialists in crime reporting," he said. "You have a weatherman. You have a sports guy. Why not have somebody who's focused on crime, and really dig in, instead of treating it like another generic story?"
An Air Force and Army veteran who later worked in the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office jail, Eugene Thacker got his Tat-2 nickname from one of the first bail-jumpers he ever collared. (The tattoos started when he was in the service, he said.)
Proprietor of the Hook'em and Book'em Fugitive Recovery company, founded in 2000, Thacker said his WGNO position is an opportunity to spotlight bounty-hunting work.
"There is a very big misconception of what bounty hunters do," he said. "I want people to see how it's really done, and the right way to do it."
Thacker's My Space page, framed against a flaming skull, opens to a heavy-metal version of "Ghost Riders in the Sky."
"I AM THE ONE YOU HAVE TO ANSWER TO WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT ... DEAL WITH IT," says the page's "about me" text. "I SUFFER FROM A DELUSION OF INVINCIBILITY, AND A FETISH FOR KICKING ASS WHENEVER ITS NEEDED. ... NEED I SAY MORE."
At the very least, we know which local TV station will have the most interesting office Christmas party.
But Thacker's colorful professional persona and the way it's been promoted by WGNO -- not to mention his position as a station employee -- raises a slew of questions among defenders of Big-J Journalism.
Were the news staffers who accompanied Thacker on the "wanted drug offender" takedown in danger? Thacker said he's been injured several times on the job.
"I worry about everybody with me, OK?" Thacker said. "What I do is I make sure I do everything safe before I even let them come close.
"When anybody rides with me .¤.¤. (these are) the words I use: If I tell you to jump, you better jump, because something's going to happen. If I tell you to move behind a tree, you may think it's stupid, (but) you better do it, because it's done for a reason."
Delia said members of his news crew wore bulletproof vests on the shoot.
"The first line out of my mouth at all times is, 'Safety first,'¤" Delia said. "Our direction is, always use your best judgment. Do not put yourself in a position you don't want to be in."
Does Thacker's employment at WGNO dangerously blur the line between journalism and law enforcement?
Reporters aren't cops. The jobs are different, greatly so. Even given the paralegal role bounty hunters fill in the criminal justice world, Thacker's "the law" in the eyes of his targets.
Are WGNO reporters now, too? If so, they're conceivably in peril beyond the dangers of reporting on a bounty hunter's takedown drama.
And for what?
"There's absolutely no journalistic purpose to that type of video," said Kelly McBride, journalism-ethics group leader at The Poynter Institute, a Florida nonprofit professional development school for journalists, who reviewed the Tat-2 stories archived on WGNO's Web site (
www.abc26.com). "It's done strictly to get the stereotypical definition of 'good video,' which isn't good video, really.
"It doesn't further anyone's understanding of crime."
A story like the May 22 door-kicking report -- which painted "ABC26's Tat-2 The Bounty Hunter" as heroically ridding a neighborhood of a drug dealer, when, strictly speaking, he was rounding up a bail-violator for pay -- might achieve the opposite.
"The problem with this type of segment, as I see it, is that it distorts elements of the criminal justice system," said Mike Perlstein, a visiting assistant professor in the School of Mass Communication at Loyola University and a former Times-Picayune reporter who covered crime and cops in New Orleans. "I know a lot of very intelligent, well-spoken bounty hunters who look a lot like tax preparers. I suspect (Thacker) was chosen to add gritty street 'cred' to the low-brow info-tainment.
"From the segments I found posted on the Web site, I saw Tat-2 break down a door to round up a shirtless, toothless, over-the-hill drug suspect. Then I saw him apprehend an obviously stoned young man accused of violating a stay-away order. Of course, neither of these would warrant an actual news story. Lame."
The Tat-2 segments that have aired, couched as they were in news-brand-enhancing hyperbole and emphasizing his affiliation with the station, trample "the line between journalism and advocacy," McBride said. "That undermines the journalism. 'Crime is bad and we are on your side and we're going to stop it for you' ... it's very disingenuous.
"This is a new member of their 'team.' They want you to identify them as the crime-and-justice people. If you really did want that, if that's really what you wanted to stake your claim on, there are sound journalistic ways of doing that. This is just cheap and easy."
Delia said that the "Get the (bleep) down!" story -- the profane sequence aired three times during the three-minute package -- and one other similar May story highlighting Tat-2 -- were intended solely as introductory pieces.
"That's not what he's going to be doing for us," he said. "We have to allow people to understand what he does."
Rather, Delia said, Thacker's role at the station going forward will be similar to the lawyers and political observers his and other stations retain for news-set analysis and commentary.
"He's going to be the coach," Delia said. "He's going to be talking about the dirtbags on the 'Wheel.'
"By and large, he's in our crime unit to act as our expert, to help connect people in finding these bad guys.
Ted Jackson/The Times-Picayune
Larry Delia, WGNO's general manager, said "Tat-2 is an out-of-the-box tool" in covering crime in New Orleans post-Katrina."He's not a journalist, and we will never make him a journalist, nor will we ask our journalists to go out and literally catch the bad guys. There is a line. He is simply acting as our expert, and therefore helping (viewers, via Crimestoppers) in finding the bad guys."
From Delia's perspective, Tat-2 and the "Wheel of Justice" are merely extreme, attention-getting devices to cover an overwhelming local story -- rampant crime -- that traditionally has been covered in ways that leave viewers enervated and little more.
"You know what? We're tired of delivering the viewer pictures of a press conference of officials behind a microphone," he said. "Of course, that is news and you do provide that. We're trying to bring more effective ways to get results. In this case, we're asking people to help themselves."
Delia said the response from those people so far -- both to the "Wheel of Justice" and Tat-2 -- has been overwhelmingly positive.
"Tat-2 can't go anywhere without being asked for an autograph," he said.
"I'm getting a lot of compliments," Thacker added. "As well as, 'Thank you for helping us protect our streets.'"
TV columnist Dave Walker can be reached at
dwalker@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3429.
So, what's a bounty hunter?
Bounty hunters such as Eugene Thacker, aka Tat-2, also are called bail-enforcement or bail-recovery agents. They are licensed by the state Department of Insurance.
"Bail bonding is an insurance product," said Ron Henderson, the department's deputy commissioner of licensing and compliance.
Bail recovery agents apprehend bonded suspects who "decide, for whatever reason, not to show up for their hearing," Henderson said.
The licensing process involves 16 hours of study, a 50-question test and then ongoing education totaling 12 hours of study every two years. It's the same licensing requirements "as a guy who is just selling the bonds," Henderson said.
Aside from the license, the state's legal requirements for bounty hunters are minimal: Bail recovery agents have to wear apparel identifying themselves as an employee of a bail bond company during an apprehension and must notify local law enforcement before attempting an apprehension at a private residence. All other state laws, including those governing gun use, apply to bounty hunters as they do to other citizens.
"They don't have the same rules as a police officer," Henderson said. "They kind of work sometimes outside of those specific rules. They don't have to have a warrant. They don't have to knock. Those are certain things they work outside of."
Thacker said the state's licensing requirements "are very demanding, actually, (though) most of your training is done on the job."
Thacker said his appearance, especially the tattoos, are beneficial in his line of work.
"Because I can fit into a lot more places," he said. "If you have two people standing side by side, one straight-laced and one tattooed person .¤.¤. who do you think the criminal is going to feel more comfortable dealing with?"
-- Dave Walker
