Bounty Hunters
Dave Yoder
“There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.” Ernest Hemingway
Bounty hunters in the United States still track down their fugitives as they have since before the birth of the nation. Though the roots of the profession date back to Medieval England, the ruling most often cited as their authority is the 1872 U.S. Supreme court ruling Tailor v. Taintor, which gives them the authority to track down their “skips.”
Preview
Bounty hunters are freelance man-hunters seldom affiliated with any law enforcement agency, so they are not subject to the constitutional restrictions placed on police officers. Therefore they enjoy much broader powers than police, such as breaking into and searching houses without warrants and transporting fugitives out of state without regard for extradition laws.
Hired by bail bond companies who need to capture clients who have failed to appear for his or her court date, they claim to perform a service to society by taking criminals off the street at no expense to the taxpayer. But that service comes at a price. Because they are rarely subject to any serious state regulations, the lack of oversight has facilitated numerous abuses across the country that finally drew the attention of Congress in the 1990‚s. In Arizona, a young couple was killed in a shootout with bounty hunters who broke into the wrong home. In Missouri an innocent Sudanese immigrant was shot to death when he ran in fright from a bounty hunter who mistook him for a fugitive. Incidents of terrorism, detention and beatings abound.
Different bounty hunters employ different styles and tactics. Ray Meredith of Indianapolis, Indiana, "talks in" most of the fugitives he seeks by coercing them or their families by telephone. When that fails, he spends two or three nights a week searching for them in the darkest hours. He loathes violence and uses force only when it is unavoidable. In Los Angeles, however, the style is more reminiscent of the "old West," where the rowdier skip-tracers wander the streets of South-Central Los Angeles slinging laser-guided assault shotguns and other hyper-lethal weaponry, which they often are unlicensed for, as California permits anyone to carry a firearm without a license when in the pursuit of an arrest. Only two of the fifty states in the U.S. have acted to eliminate bounty hunting within their borders. Ten states require bounty hunters to be licensed and/or trained, though the training is rudimentary at best and laughable at worst.
At the time of this writing, Congress is hearing arguments on H.R. 2964, The Bounty Hunter Responsibility Act, which if enacted will make bounty hunters and their employers more accountable for their actions.
