Posted on 06/19/2003 7:53:05 PM PDT by socal_parrot
LOS ANGELES – A bounty hunter who calls himself "Dog" captured convicted rapist and cosmetics heir Andrew Luster, but it has cost him time in a Mexican jail and the disdain of his colleagues.
Duane "Dog" Chapman – his nickname is God spelled backward – and two others took Luster down at a taco stand on Wednesday, witnesses said. Luster, 39, was deported to California Thursday, but Chapman and four others remained in Mexican custody, facing potential charges ranging from entering Mexico illegally to kidnapping.
Fellow bail enforcement agents, as they prefer to be identified, were disgusted.
"This Chapman ... is a disgrace to humanity. He's an idiot," said Mel Barth, executive director of the 3,200-member National Association of Bail Enforcement Agents. "In my schools, we tell them cross-border stuff is a no-no. ... You don't go into a foreign country and try to kidnap."
"He represents all of the things that bail agents are trying to get away from – the cowboy image, the renegade, bring 'em home dead or alive. That's just not the way it works," said Penny Harding, executive director of the California Bail Agents Association, which represents 500 bail bondsmen.
Luster was convicted of drugging and raping three women between 1996 and 2000. He fled in January, before being sentenced in absentia to 124 years in prison. He was returned to California from Mexico on Thursday.
Bounty hunters work for bail agents, tracking down those who fail to show up in court after bail has been posted. They usually are paid 10 percent to 15 percent of the bail amount. It's a deal because bail companies lose the full amount to the court if a fugitive fails to show up for six months.
However, Luster, a Max Factor heir and trust fund recipient, made his own bail. A $10,000 reward was posted but no one knows if Chapman would qualify.
Despite Hollywood's guns-and-fists image, professional bounty hunters say they rarely resort to violence.
Rick Mills, owner of International Fugitive Recovery Services of Buena Park, averages four arrests a week. Once a month he might have to tackle a fleeing fugitive.
"We always joke our biggest weapon is the phone," said Craig Stephenson, who has been catching fugitives for 18 years.
Stephenson has traded punches with his targets and once had his car peppered with rifle fire, but he doesn't even carry a gun. Three weeks ago, when Stephenson captured a fugitive in Mexico who was wanted for allegedly molesting a 13-year-old girl, he simply called relatives and convinced them they should turn him in or lose their bail money.
"I paid for his plane ticket and he flew to Tijuana. He walked up to the (U.S. immigration) people and they took him into custody," Stephenson said.
"An American is easy to get out of Mexico," he added. "You have him arrested locally on immigration violation with the locals. They'll send him over."
In fact, the FBI was only hours behind Chapman, said spokeswoman Laura Bosley in Los Angeles. A vacationing couple who had partied with Luster in Puerto Vallarta and photographed him saw a TV report on him and contacted Chapman, who apparently never passed on the information, Bosley said.
The FBI's Seattle office was contacted by the same couple about two days later and an FBI agent in Guadalajara was en route Wednesday to hunt for Luster when he was captured.
"We were acting on the same information as Chapman. He got there before us but we believe we would have lawfully taken him into custody" with the help of Mexican authorities, Bosley said.
Stephenson, who also has a bail agency in Sacramento, said he wouldn't hire someone with Chapman's style because of the chance of being sued in California.
"Never. Never. The civil liabilities are brutal, "he said. "We don't have door-kicking privileges anymore. And if they snatch the wrong guy. ... You can't violate civil rights."
No national law regulates bounty hunters, but there are a patchwork of state laws. Some states don't require any license. Others, including California, vigilantly regulate bail enforcement agents and require background checks and strict training. A few, including Illinois and Oregon, have outlawed the profession.
Many bounty hunters come from military or law enforcement backgrounds and prefer to keep a low profile. By contrast, Chapman is a reformed convict who served time for murder in Texas. His Web site describes him as a "modern-day Billy the Kid."
Many bounty hunters work part-time, on evenings and weekends. Some take home blue-collar salaries of, say, $30,000 a year. But a hard worker can make $100,000 or more.
Most of the bread-and-butter work of a bounty hunter is finding people sought for drunken driving, prostitution, narcotics and check fraud.
"It's a lucrative business but it is not a glamorous business by any stretch of the imagination," said L. Scott Harrell of Austin, Texas-based CompassPoint Investigations. He has made more than 1,000 captures in the past decade.
"We spend a lot of time in surveillance. And surveillance is a very boring business. You sit in cold cars for days on end," he said.
Harrell estimates that bounty hunters capture 90 percent to 95 percent of the people they seek. They have advantages over official fugitive hunters because their caseloads are smaller. Also, many states still permit them to enter private homes without permission to get their man.
"Over my 26 years, we've worked hand-in-hand with bounty hunters on several occasions," said Bill Woolsey of the U.S. Marshal's office in Los Angeles. "They used to do stuff that we can't, like knock down any door they want and enter without warrants."
"That's a pretty easy way to catch people but we do it the legal way."
Rough tactics can be troublesome. Last summer, a Kansas City man died when bounty hunters arresting his brother placed him in a chokehold. One man was charged with involuntary manslaughter and civil rights groups called for national regulation of the industry.
In April, police in New Haven, Conn., charged two bail bondsmen and a bounty hunter with kidnapping for allegedly holding a New Haven man at gunpoint several months ago, fearing he might jump bail.
But Harrell says bail enforcement agents fulfill a mission.
"As long as there are bail bondsman and as long as they're financially on the hook ... there will always be people like me," he said. "We will always have a job."
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