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Guns drawn, through the doors they come
Bounty hunters qualify for a wide array of police powers. They can even force their way into a house without a warrant. Licensing requirements are minimal.MELISSA SANTOS; The News Tribune Published: September 16th, 2007 01:00 AM
Washington’s bounty hunters can and do use firearms, handcuffs, batons and stun guns to apprehend bail jumpers and bring them back to justice.
They can even enter a private home without a warrant if they have reason to believe a bail skip is inside.
Despite that power, the state’s requirement that bounty hunters be licensed is easy to meet – agents qualify with only 12 hours of training, a fraction of what law enforcement officers receive.
The state’s oversight once a bounty hunter gets a license is minimal, and the Department of Licensing is reluctant to punish bounty hunters, even for forcing their way into the wrong house.
Erik Brown knows how that goes.
The Spanaway man found himself staring into the barrel of a shotgun in June after four men entered his home and held him and his wife at gunpoint. The bounty hunters were looking for a man Brown said he’d never heard of.
The men were two bail enforcement agents and two bail bondsmen from Liberty Bail Bonds in Tacoma. Though they didn’t break any doors or locks, they entered uninvited and weren’t marked as bail bond agents, Brown said.
“I was sitting at my computer and my door opens up and some guy comes in pointing a shotgun at my face,” he said recently. “I had no idea (who they were). “To me, it was a stranger in my house pointing a gun at me.”
Though the number of complaints has been relatively few, the state’s system for handling bounty hunters worries some people.
“There are a lot of people that believe the powers of bounty hunters are potentially abusive,” said Craig Adams, legal adviser to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. “Everyone thinks, ‘Oh, OK, the regulations are taking care of it,’ but they’re really not.”
Since a set of regulations approved in 2004 went into effect last year, the state has revoked only one bounty hunter’s license, and that was for activities involving his bail bond business, not his role as a bounty hunter.
Of the 12 complaints filed against bounty hunters since the new law was implemented, the department has closed eight of the cases without taking action.
One of four complaints the department is still investigating involves Brown and Liberty Bail Bonds. The company’s attorney, Kim Shomer, declined to comment on the complaint.
Sherri Lonsbery, manager of the state’s bail bond licensing program, said the standards for what’s an offense are unclear.
“We don’t regulate bad behavior,” Lonsbery said. “We don’t regulate their actions once they’re licensed, necessarily. If they break down the door to the wrong house, (state law) doesn’t say they are responsible to replace that door.”
NO MORE ‘FREELANCING’
There are 135 licensed bounty hunters in Washington. Pierce County is home to 15 of them.
State licensing regulations require that bail bond recovery agents – as bounty hunters often are called – be at least 21, pass a background check proving they’re not convicted felons, pass a state-issued test, and earn certification in defensive tactics and firearms.
The state also requires them to carry their license while they work, have the contract for the person they’re apprehending with them, and wear clothing labeling them as “bail enforcement agents” when entering homes or businesses.
“Freelance,” or noncontract, bounty hunting is no longer allowed.
Not having a signed copy of the license or bail bond contract likely would result in a fine, not a license revocation, Lonsbery said. A violation would have to be “very severe” for the department to revoke a bounty hunter’s license, she said.
“I don’t even know what that would be, because we haven’t had one yet,” she said.
Sen. Mike Carrell, R-Lakewood, who sponsored the bail bond regulation bill in 2004, said he wanted some control over bounty hunters but didn’t want to fundamentally change the power they have.
“Anyone could call themselves a bounty hunter prior to 2004,” Carrell said. “Down the road perhaps we’ll decide they need more regulations, but I’m not one that believes in regulating just because I can. I legislate to fix problems.”
Carrell pushed the legislation after an incident outside a South Tacoma Starbucks in 2003.
A 19-year-old bounty hunter pointed a shotgun at a woman and a baby in a car before handcuffing and taking away a male companion he erroneously thought was a bail jumper. The bounty hunter was arrested and later pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree assault and one count of second-degree kidnapping.
Eleven states have licensing requirements similar to Washington’s. Some other states have background checks and age requirements for bounty hunters, but don’t require them to be licensed.
Illinois, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Oregon and Washington, D.C., don’t allow bail bond businesses or bounty hunting at all. Neither does Canada or Mexico.
‘THAT’S A LITTLE CRAZY’
Washington requires bounty hunters to receive training, but doesn’t specify what most of it should entail or establish a certification process for trainers.
The exception is firearms training. Applicants who want to carry a gun must take an eight-hour course from an instructor certified by the state Criminal Justice Training Commission.
The state doesn’t endorse trainers who teach the other skills the law requires – a knowledge of civil rights laws and use of batons, pepper spray, stun guns and defensive tactics. The law says training in the four areas should take at least four hours.
To prove they’ve received this training, applicants merely must present a signed statement from someone that says, “I trained this person,” Lonsbery said.
“We don’t require any justification,” Lonsbery said. “As long as someone is willing to say, ‘Yes, I trained this person in this particular thing,’ we don’t have the ability to tell someone they haven’t.”
Most other states that have licensing requirements, such as Virginia, also regulate the trainers of aspiring bounty hunters, said Mel Barth, executive director of the National Association of Bail Enforcement Agents.
Barth said he was surprised that Washington doesn’t do so.
“That’s a little crazy, to be honest with you,” he said. “I don’t approve of that.”
Washington applicants must take a state-issued test on the legal aspects of the trade. The 50-question test, which requires a score of 70 percent to pass, is 85 percent common sense, said bail bondsman and bounty hunter Ray Napier.
By comparison, a Pierce County sheriff’s deputy goes through a six-month training academy, followed by six to eight weeks of field training and 40 hours of continuing education every year.
“Police will train all day long until it’s perfect,” said Napier, who trains bounty hunters in investigative tactics at Liberty Bail Bonds. “When you’re taking some eight-hour course and bouncing between batons and tactics, the trainer only has so much time to shove this training down their throats.”
Pierce County sheriff’s deputy Eugene Allen said it’s not fair to compare the training requirements for bounty hunters to that which law enforcement officials receive. Allen trains bounty hunters in his garage during his spare time.
“Our jobs are different,” Allen said. “A security guard that works for Wal-Mart doesn’t need the same training as a deputy sheriff.”
‘IT WAS ALL NEGATIVE’
John O’Brien and his partner, bail agent Lauri Spencer, opened Advanced Bail Bonds in Tacoma in January 2006, the same month Washington’s bail bond regulations went into effect.
Like many other bail recovery agents, O’Brien is ex-military. Many others who enter the profession have past experience in law enforcement or security that help prepare them for the job, he said.
“There are people out there doing things they’re not supposed to, in my opinion, but not a lot of them,” O’Brien said. “History shows there are always people willing to break the rules.”
He does most of the recovery work for Advanced Bail Bonds himself. Most of his time is spent in the office, tracking people down through database searches and by phone.
Fewer than 4 percent of the estimated 700 people he and Spencer have issued bonds for have jumped bail. In fact, he said, he’s chased down only 29 people since they opened the agency. That’s because he and Spencer don’t write bonds for people who they think are likely to skip.
His “recoveries” often resemble a conversation more than a confrontation, he said. Usually, the 6-foot-2 O’Brien apprehends fugitives in public places like parking lots where they don’t have weapons at their disposal or a good place to run. Nine times out of 10 they come with him without a fight, he said.
“When I first started back in 1998, there were doors kicked in and stuff,” O’Brien said. “It was all negative. You got the yelling in the neighborhood and the commotion going on, and you’re scaring everybody.”
That same year, John Delin was relaxing after a late summer barbecue at his Key Peninsula home when he heard a strange voice in his kitchen. He grabbed his shotgun and found himself facing three armed bounty hunters.
No shots were fired, but it took a sheriff’s deputy to defuse the situation. The bail agents, who entered his house through an unlocked door, were after a man who had skipped out on a $1,000 bail.
O’Brien said that in his 10 years as a bounty hunter, he’s pulled his gun only four times and has never fired it. Each time it was in a situation where the person he was chasing had a gun within arm’s reach, he said.
One time he and a partner entered a hotel room and found their target lying on a bed next to a semiautomatic rifle.
“You have to reduce that threat,” O’Brien said. “Otherwise, that use of force would be excessive.”
‘WE AREN’T GOING TO ASSIST’
Erik Brown and his wife, Caprice, are considering a civil suit against Liberty Bail Bonds over the incident at their home.
Erik Brown said he’d like to see protection of third-party residences added into the state’s bounty hunter laws so that what happened to him won’t happen to anyone else.
“The police can’t come in without a probable cause search warrant, but these guys can come in just because they think they saw someone here 20 days ago,” Brown said. “I have a problem with that.”
So do some law enforcement agencies.
Since the 2004 legislation, bounty hunters are required to call local law enforcement offices before entering a home to retrieve a suspected fugitive. Tacoma and Pierce County don’t keep statistics on the calls.
Adams of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said the calls are useful not so deputies can monitor bounty hunters but so that they can stay away. They don’t want to be held liable for what the bounty hunters might do in a private home, he said.
“We aren’t going to stand by, we aren’t going to assist, because we can’t give the credibility of our office to what might be an illegal search,” Adams said.
The Browns said that if the people who entered their house with drawn guns been uniformed police officers, they would have felt differently about the situation.
“It would have been so much different if a Pierce County deputy had done it,” Brown said. “I would have laughed about it if he’d been properly marked and uniformed and had the wrong house, because I would have known he was trained and had just made a mistake.”
The state Department of Licensing has investigated 12 complaints against bounty hunters since the agency began regulating the profession last year. Four of those cases are still active and not available for public scrutiny. The others, which the agency closed without administrative action, are as follows:
April 2006: A Shoreline, King County, man accused a bounty hunter of assaulting him in his home while looking for the man’s stepson. The bounty hunter claimed the man provoked the assault by pushing him. The department found the assault was justified and that the bounty hunter didn’t violate any aspect of bail recovery law.
April 2006: A bail bond agent in Ellensburg, Kittitas County, was accused of using an unlicensed bounty hunter to perform recovery work. The department found there wasn’t enough evidence to support the allegation.
June 2006: A bail bond agent in Mount Vernon, Skagit County, was accused of using an unlicensed bounty hunter to perform recovery work. The department found there wasn’t enough evidence to support the allegation.
July 2006: An anonymous bail bond recovery agent accused a bail bondsman and a bounty hunter in Everett of hiring unlicensed bounty hunters and impersonating police. The accused tried to make his car look like an unmarked police vehicle, the accuser said, by installing police lights, a siren and other equipment. The department determined there weren’t enough witnesses to support the allegations.
November 2006: A bail bond agent accused a bounty hunter in Bellingham of taking an unlicensed bounty hunter with him to perform recovery work. The department found no evidence to support the claim.
DECEMBER 2006: Police in Richland, Benton County, reported a bounty hunter broke down a door and entered an apartment to take a man into custody.
Though the bounty hunter called police to advise them he was about to make a forced entry, he didn’t tell them the name of the man he was trying to apprehend or the reason for the arrest, as required by law.
He also was accused of threatening to arrest a bystander. The damage to the apartment door was estimated at $150.
The department decided the violations weren’t severe enough to warrant sanction, especially since the bounty hunter involved was a first-time offender.
January 2007: A licensed security guard reported being recruited by a bail bond recovery agent in Port Orchard to perform bail recovery work, even though he wasn’t licensed as a bounty hunter. The security guard had been arrested for impersonating a bounty hunter at the Emerald Queen Casino. The department found that the accused bail bond recovery agent violated no bail bond laws, and took no action against him.
March 2007: The bail bond recovery agent mentioned above who was accused of hiring an unlicensed bounty hunter filed a complaint against the security guard who filed the original complaint. He said the man who accused him falsely represented himself as his employee, and stole a badge and license from his office to do so. The department said the man who allegedly impersonated a recovery agent would be prosecuted for it in criminal court. When someone is charged with a serious crime, a judge will set bail to ensure that the person shows up in court. The more serious the crime, the higher the bail amount.
For some crimes, such as murder, a judge may order a suspect held without bail.
Because bail for some crimes can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, a bail bond agent will often be contracted to post a bond in return for a percentage, generally 10 percent, of the bail amount. Bond agents often seek collateral from defendants or their friends and family.
If the defendant “skips,” or fails to show up for court, the bond agent may be liable for the entire bail amount.
According to state law, if a defendant isn’t apprehended and rebonded within 60 days, the entire bail amount (not just 10 percent) is forfeited – which is why bail bondsmen employ bounty hunters to locate and apprehend the fugitive.
Fugitives who are apprehended generally face additional fees from the bail bond agent. The bounty hunter typically receives at least 10 percent of the bond amount.
What bounty hunters can do in Washington:
• Arrest a person for whom a bail bond company posted bail and who subsequently failed to appear in court.
• Enter private homes and businesses without a search warrant to arrest bail jumpers they believe to be inside.
• Carry guns, stun guns, batons, handcuffs and other tools used by police officers.
• Use whatever force they deem necessary to take a bail skip into custody.
What bounty hunters can’t do in Washington:
• Perform a bail recovery unless they have a license issued by the state.
• Be under 21.
• Be a convicted felon.
• Arrest anyone other than the person with whom they or their employer have a signed bail bond contract. (They must carry this contract with them while making the arrest.)
• Perform planned forced entries of homes or businesses without wearing a vest that says “bail bond recovery agent” or “bail bond agent” on it in 2-inch-high capital letters.
• Enter a home or a business without calling local law enforcement first to tell the police who they are, who they’re trying to arrest and the address they plan to enter.
• Pose as a police officer by wearing a police-like uniform, or disguising their car to look like a patrol car. (Bail bond agents have state-endorsed badges they can wear but they aren’t allowed to wear any other kind of badge that could be confused with a police officer’s.)
• Work as a bounty hunter unless they have signed a contract with a licensed bail bond agent. This is intended to prevent “freelance” bounty hunting by average members of the public.
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Steve Faircloth
A Way Out Bail Bonds
(220) 204-9733 Cell
NSIN# SF0105
LIC. #704058
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