by Guardian Newspapers
All bounty hunters like a good adventure, it comes
with the terrain, and for Scott MacLean it was that time in North Carolina
when a fugitive held a 9mm handgun to his forehead.
Steady nerves and quick reflexes - he describes a nice move of using his
forehead to slide back the safety catch - saved his life. It was also a
learning experience, one that MacLean can pass on to other would-be bounty
hunters who sign up for his course at the Virginia-based National
Association of Bail Enforcement Agents.
The prey had been fast asleep when the bounty hunter walked into his mobile
home at 4am. Unluckily for MacLean, the man slept with a gun wedged between
the bed and the wall. "That taught me a lesson," he said yesterday. "Always
check their hands before you wake them up."
Among bounty hunters - bail enforcement agents to use the designation
MacLean prefers - near-death experiences, betrayal, police obstinancy and
personal blunders are common fare. He has encountered more than his fair
share of scrapes, clocking up about 860 arrests of bail jumpers since
November 1999. But he was at great pains to point out yesterday that what
was uncommon were the unorthodox methods deployed by the bounty hunter Duane
Lee Chapman - or Dog, as he prefers to be known - in the capture of Andrew
Luster, the cosmetics-kingdom heir convicted in absentia on 86 counts of
rape.
Luster had eluded police for six months when Chapman, two of Chapman's sons,
Chapman's agent and a television crew, wrestled him to the ground at a taco
stand in the resort town of Puerto Vallart on Wednesday. Not everyone was
impressed. Although some tributes arrived at Dog's website yesterday, other
contributors showed little sympathy for Dog and his crew, who spent the day
in a Mexican jail. "DUM PUNK DOG AND HIS PUPS HOPE ROT IN THERE DUMBASS LEG
HUMPER," said one writer. The FBI essentially agreed, saying it would not
intervene on Dog's behalf, and his fellow bounty hunters just winced in
annoyance.
Cowboys, sniffs MacLean. "If you do bail enforcement correctly there is no
drama," he says. Had he been hunting Luster, he would have immediately
notified the US embassy, and handed him over to the authorities.
The way he sees it, bounty hunters are a dying breed in America, unsung
heroes making the streets safe for law-abiding citizens, and practitioners
such as Dog give them a bad name. And according to MacLean, America's
criminal justice would be unsustainable without bounty hunters.
MacLean's idols in the bounty business are self-motivated, independent
types, who think on their feet and are skilled at deception. They can come
from all walks of life - he is a former mechanic. Most have a healthy
disrespect for police, who are not known for their co-operation with bounty
hunters.
Although there are a few celebrities out there - such as Chapman, and a
pint-sized redheaded woman named Mackenzie Green who was profiled in the New
Yorker earlier this year - the real hunters work in the shadows; they are
loners. Most are restricted to a geographical area of the US, where they
rely on a steady bank of contacts among petty criminals or the police. A few
high-fliers may spread their base of operations further, or trade cases and
infor mation coast to coast. But they do not appear to be doing it for the
money.
Of the 3,000 members in MacLean's National Association of Bail Enforcement
Agents, he estimates all but 300 are part-time operators, who earn perhaps
$10,000 to $20,000 (£6,000 to £12,000) a year working nights and weekends.
MacLean puts himself into a different category altogether. He won't reveal
his income - bail enforcement is a cash business - but notes: "My wife
drives a BMW and I have two Harley-Davidsons. I do very, very well."
Unlike Britain, America has operated a system of commercial bail since the
middle of the 19th century. It is a way of life that could be on the wane as
some US states outlaw the practice of bounty hunting, and courts in some
jurisdictions assume the role of bail bonds, removing the profit incentive
for the hunter.
Until then, however, there will be commercial bondsmen, who will post bail
for the accused, usually once they produce evidence of collateral: a house,
a car. Sometimes, they can't, and that is where the bond business becomes
risky. If the accused fails to turn up for the court date, the bond agent
becomes liable for the sum posted. That is where the bounty hunter comes in,
tracking down the fugitive for a typical fee of 10% of the value of the bail
bond.
They have become a sort of institution in America - although a largely
unregulated one. Nowadays, 20% of America's felony defendants jump bail.
Almost all are eventually brought back for trial - not by the police, but by
the bounty hunters who track down 88% of the fugitives who eventually turn
up in court.
That, argues MacLean, shows that the police are either too uninterested or
too overburdened to track down bail skips - particularly those charged with
minor offensives. He says the bounty hunters make America safer, preventing
criminals from bringing down neighbourhoods by returning to their old
haunts, and they save the taxpayer money.
That version of the dogged, hardworking investigator has yet to make any
imprint on the popular impression of bounty hunters as larger than life
romantic figures - embodied by Chapman's credo of "born on a mountain,
raised in a cave, arresting fugitives is all I crave".
The day-to-day work of real bounty hunting is far less glamorous. It starts,
say the bounty hunters, with a phone call. The vast majority of people who
fail to turn up for court are afraid, or absent-minded, says Solomon
Hamilton, a bail agent in the Washington area. Once alerted, most come in of
their own accord, although he readily admits to using subterfuge. "It's a
lot better to fool them in than to fight them," he says. "Make the initial
phone call, tell them a lie. That's what I tell my people: lie, lie, lie.
Bribe, bribe, bribe. Do not pull a gun. Do not fight. Lie."
Hamilton's technique appears to be successful. In his 30 years in the
business, he has never been shot at, and never used his own gun. He has had
his own terrifying moments though - like the time he lured a fugitive in
South Carolina to the door by sending in a little girl with a package. The
fugitive said he would not be taken alive; Hamilton said he had to use all
his wits to persuade him not to shoot the child.
Then there was that case in Florida, where he handcuffed a runaway cocaine
dealer to a bedpost for a night before flying him back up to Maryland, and
handing him over to the sheriff's office.
However, such excitement is not an everyday occurrence in the business of
bounty hunting. Much of it is grunt work, Hamilton and MacLean admit, and it
has become increasingly hi-tech. Aside from computerised research tools,
trawling the data banks of credit card companies and the motor vechile
department, the savvy hunters now resort to global satellite positioning
network systems to track the fugitive through cellphone calls.
But almost always - despite the histrionics of men such as Chapman and the
efforts at professionalism of men such as MacLean - in the end it comes down
to the most basic of tactics: tapping the fugitives friends and relations to
see who is willing to talk.
"There is always a Judas," says MacLean. "There is always somebody somewhere
doesn't like you. My job isn't to find you, my job is to find the person who
doesn't like you. Nine times out of 10, you don't even know who that person
is."