Although determined to catch this fugitive, they say they will not do anything
rash.
"If shots are fired, we retreat," said Shandrew, a big, calm man whose gray
goatee and cap make him look like an undercover cop.
They're not police officers. But in some ways they have more power. Armed with a
bail agent's authority, they can pursue fugitives into most other states and
bring them back without going through extradition proceedings.
Bounty hunters possess their power because they represent the bail agents who
posted the bond for defendants who then broke their promise to return to court.
Such fugitives not only lose their bail but also face the prospect of being
hunted down and recaptured by bounty hunters.
"In the old days, bounty hunters were outlaws ... who had decided it was more
lucrative to chase bad guys than it was to rob banks," Zeke Unger, a veteran
bounty hunter, said from his office at World Executive Protection in Van Nuys.
"Since the beginning, bounty hunters have always been on the edge."
Even with the recent reforms, the shadowy image persists. The field continues to
attract "the worst and the best," said McKenzie Green, a San Francisco bail
agent and bounty hunter who wrote part of the bail for the fugitive Shandrew and
McInroy seek.
Just last month, two bail agents got into trouble in Los Angeles County. On the
trail of a drug defendant, they encountered the fugitive's girlfriend and
allegedly forced her to accompany them in the hunt. They got their man, but they
were later charged with kidnapping. One was accused of raping the woman. The
charges are pending.
Bounty hunters say such incidents obscure the fact that they have captured
thousands of dangerous fugitives without incident. And sometimes, they get
blamed for things they didn't do.
That happened in 1997 in Phoenix when five armed robbers, wearing body armor and
posing as bounty hunters, broke into a house at 4 a.m. and kicked down a bedroom
door as a terrified man grabbed a firearm in a futile attempt at self-defense.
He and his girlfriend were killed.
The assailants carried documents seeming to back their claim to be bounty
hunters. By the time they were exposed as bogus papers, cries for reform had
swept the nation.
California, with its Bail Fugitive Recovery Persons Act, is among the many
states that have since passed laws to regulate bounty hunters.
"They've gotten more professional [since then]," said veteran Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Sgt. Larry Landreth.
But not everyone in law enforcement agrees, saying some bounty hunters still
illegally claim to be cops.
"I think they served a great role in the Wild West," said Burbank Police Capt.
Gordon Bowers. "I'd be hard put to say the good outweighs the bad."
But he concedes that bounty hunters do serve a function, because police would
rarely spend weeks tracking bail jumpers by staking out homes and haunts.
Shandrew and McInroy started tracking their current quarry when he failed to
appear at a preliminary court hearing in Sonoma County.
The trail led to Los Angeles three months later, when Green, the San Francisco
bail agent, tracked calls from the fugitive's ex-girlfriend to relatives in
Downey. One call led her to a sister, who confirmed that the fugitive was in the
area.
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