Dog The Bounty Hunter...

[LawDog]

You have bounty hunters knocking on your door, you have bigger problems.
I have not heard of one story (please enlighten me) of a bounty hunter kicking in a door he/she wasn't supposed to.

http://www.ifrsgroup.com/news1.html

These should be some more examples somewhere.

LawDog

[ATW525]

Good link there, Lawdog.

Being a law abiding citizen who doesn't have any fugitives residing in the house, I most certainly would light up anybody who kicked in the door unless they were real LEOs. If somebody forces thier way into my home claiming to be a "bail agent" I would treat as them home invaders. The fact is that I wouldn't even know if they are legit and I'm not going to risk my life on it. Better safe than sorry I say.

[BatmanX]

Lawdog, good post and thank you.
Not much recently though. (Within 5 years) I wonder why the intense reports in the late 80s and mid to late 90s and then nothing.

I admit, if a "bounty" hunter came banging THROUGH my door, I would probably not allow him/her to do so.

[Daniel Boom]

I watched the HBO show "family Bonds" and those bonds men never used guns either. What with the unarmed bounty hunters. I know one guy who does bail bonds and he goes loaded for duck.

[Hkmp5sd]

Not much recently though. (Within 5 years) I wonder why the intense reports in the late 80s and mid to late 90s and then nothing.

There was a crackdown on bounty hunters toward the end of the 90s. After some headline screw-ups, some states passed laws putting restrictions on how they operated. Some of the bounty hunters that operated on the edge of legality were busted and/or sued out of business.

[LawDog]

Lawdog, good post and thank you.
Not much recently though. (Within 5 years) I wonder why the intense reports in the late 80s and mid to late 90s and then nothing.

I believe, although I am not sure, the list I posted was put together in late 2000 or early 2001.

LawDog

[somethingmustdie]

****ing lawyers.

these stories are all pretty bad...but not everyone in the bail enforcement profession is scum. i'm a middle class, well educated, non-criminal record, law- abiding citizen. the bottom line is that there simply aren't enough cops to go track down and arrest everybody that doesn't bother appearing for court. and for the people that said they would light up bounty hunters kicking your door in, well you don't strike me as the kind of people that would be housing fugitives. 5 minutes away in oakland (the mog), cops and bounty hunters are unfortunately high-potential for getting a firstful of 9 milly when knocking on a door...

basically though, for the most part, we're on the good side.

[Mike in VA]

I'm willing to admit that bounty hunters do provide a useful service, there seems to be a HUGE potential for abuse, and what's really scary about all the listings in Lawdog's post is the general lack of consequences for the mistakes.

If anything like that happened to me, I'd be pressing charges and suing everything in sight, and maybe arranging for a little 'bounty hunting' of my own. :barf:

[TheeBadOne]

I'm willing to admit that (Insert Anything) do provide a useful service, there seems to be a HUGE potential for abuse

Can pretty much be said about anything

[115grfmj]

at my residence I'm going to tell him I'm armed, and that we can sort everything out when the police arrive, btw their on the way. I think thats
the best way to handle it. If he insists on pressing home an assault on
my home with out annoucing himself.....well sorry guy....but I've got
a wife and three small children to defend.

[somethingmustdie]

again i dont think bail enforcement would come to your house unless you skipped bail...which you dont strike me as a skip (or someone who would have to appear in court for that mater).

i watched a good show on court tv last night on bail enforcement, it was really good. i gained a little (very little) more respect for Dog watching him in action when its not on his show.

[missourigunner]

My opinion of Bountyhunters differs from the majority on this forum. I believe that Bountyhunters and Bountyhunting should be outlawed completely. They are nothing more than vigilantes. Law enforcement should be left to the professionals. If a person skips bond, a bench warrant is usually issued. Let the Police handle it. Bounty Hunters are mostly untrained, non-professionals and that folks to me leaves a lot of room for error. Just my $0.02 worth

[Hkmp5sd]

The problem with outlawing bounty hunters is that they do perform a useful function. Without them, chances are that people being arrested would be less likely to be released on bail. Bondsmen won't want to take the chance of losing their money on risky people. That means more would be required to sit in jail until trial/hearings. That means more tax $$$ wasted on housing these folks. Plus, law enforcement doesn't waste resources looking for these low level BGs with bench warrants out for them. Unless they are stopped for speeding or something, odds are that they would remain free indefinately.

[Spotted Owl]

What legal basis do bounty hunters have for doing what they do? Dog and his crew wear badges on chains around their neck--are these badges issued by a police agency or the state, or are they like the "concealed weapon permit" badges you see advertised in gun magazines?

[somethingmustdie]

the badges are not state or agency issued, but theyre good for identification when going to pick up a skip.

i didnt mention this because i didnt want to bring this topic back up, but court tv did an 'anatomy of a crime' documentary on bounty hunters. it was pretty good. it showed 'dog' noty being filmed by the A&E guys which made me gain a little (very little) respect for him. but then! i magically caught the montell williams show and him and his whole damn family were on there. i really dont like all this sudden attention bail enforcement is getting right now. and it going to get even worse when the movie based on domino harvey's life comes out. what the f*ck?!?!?! honestly. i dont know what ill do if i see one more bounty hunter thing on tv.

[Spotted Owl]

The "Stephanie Plum" series of books (One for the Money , etc.) by Janet Evanovich makes good reading.

[molonlabe]

Law enforcement should be left to the professionals.

The chief selling point for professional policing seems to be the idea that sworn government agents are more competent crime solvers than grand juries, private prosecutors, and unpaid volunteers. But this claim disintegrates when the realities of police personnel are considered. In 1998, for example, forty percent of graduating recruits of the Washington, D.C. police academy failed the comprehensive exam required for employment on the force and were described as "practically illiterate" and "borderline-retarded."196 As a practical matter, police are more dependent upon the public than the public is dependent upon police.197

Cops rely on the public for a very high percentage of their investigation clearances. As the rate of crimes committed by strangers increases, the rate of clearance by the police invariably declines.198 Roughly two-thirds of major robbery and burglary arrests occur solely because a witness can identify the offender, the offender is caught at or near the crime scene, or the offender leaves evidence at the scene.199 In contrast, where a suspect cannot be identified in such ways, odds are high that the crime will go unsolved.200

Studies show that as government policing has taken over criminal investigations, the rates of clearance for murder investigations have actually gone down. For more than three decades — while police units have expanded greatly in size, power and jurisdiction — the gap between the number of homicides in the United States and the number of cases solved has widened by almost twenty percent.201 Today, almost three in ten homicides go unsolved.202

196 Tucker Carlson, Washington's Inept Police Force, WALL ST. J., Nov. 3, 1993, at A19.

197 See SILBERMAN, supra note 6, at 297. Silberman points out that New York City police solved only two percent of robbery cases in which a witness could not identify an offender or the offender was not captured at the scene. See id.

198 See id. at 296 (saying clearance rate dropped precipitously between 1960 and 1976 as proportion of crimes committed by strangers increased).

199 See id. (citing figures registered between 1960 and 1976).

200 See id. at 296.

296 Compare Howard v. Lyon, 1 Root 107 (Conn. 1787) (involving constable who obtained "escape warrant" to recapture an escaped prisoner and even had the warrant "renewed" in Rhode Island where prisoner fled), and Bromley v. Hutchins, 8 Vt. 68 (1836) (upholding damages against a deputy sheriff who arrested an escapee without warrant outside the deputy's jurisdiction), with United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411 (1976) (allowing warrantless arrest of most suspects in public so long as probable cause exists).

Additional read http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm

[Eghad]

Cmon guys a Dog should be thrown a bone every once in a while....

I watch the show every once in a while when channel flipping to see if he is ever going to have to pepper spray his wife...lol

[Hkmp5sd]

Actually, I think the wrong member of the group is labeled "Dog". Nothing like a 4 foot tall, 300 pound women in high heels mouthing off to entire neighborhoods.

[Eghad]

I think 150 pounds are located in two areas..lol

[gordo b.]

Hawaai might be unique in the corruption in the PD and Dog moght be the only one who is interested in taking down a Meth Dealer who is somebody on the PD's cousin. According to my son who is doing his PHD there; the PD seems only interested in finding some white boy with an unregistered bike they can confiscate (and give to their meth head relative) while the infestation of iced up muggers goes unchecked unless they do a high profile caper that brings a public outcry.
From what my own research about Hawaain law enforcement tells me, they got a BIG problem of years of corrupt racist leo policies that create a niche for butt clowns like Dog!

[neoncowboy]

lol. I lived on Maui for 12 years...just moved to Georgia in December (04).

You pretty much hit the nail on the head. Law enforcement in Hawaii is a complete joke. Especially the judges.

[Purdue_XD40]

haha yea i watched this show when it was on, my roommate and i laughed so hard. it was hilarious, i mean just watching it, not sure if it is scripted but, i recall an instance when he goes to some crack trailer house, and they are all standing around, then he comes out of no where and sprays them with that beer foam ****. haha just waiting for that day when miss crack sniffer herself comes out of the trailer with a 12 guage and starts shooting at Dog himself.

show is such a joke

[ATW525]

I actually saw this for the first time just this past week, and I thought I was going to fall off the couch laughing. That said, however, I didn't see anything illegal going on in what I saw. He actually asked permission to search and didn't just kick in the door with his fire extiguisher-sized can of pepperspray in hand.

[TwoGuns]

Haha, he tries so hard to be a badass. One of my most favorite "cover my face with my hands cause it's that embarassing" moments is when right after catching a guy, they're driving in the car and Dog says, stuttering throughout the whole thing mind you, "Convict, in the words of Donald Trump, 'YOU'RE FIRED!'".

Wow, ya really stuck it to him, Dog.