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Do people/business owners have the right to not agree to let bounty hunters try to apprehend fugitives on their property?

Was there a "No Bounty Hunting" sign posted prominently on the front door?

Sure. You can stop any person acting in a private capacity from doing most things on your private property. You can ask a regular Joe to leave, and you can even ask a police officer in uniform to leave.

By time the average person would realize what is going on, it would likely be too late to do anything about it.

Take repossessing here in Missouri/Illinois. If a recovery agent went onto the private property of a business to look for an employee's car, that business could ask them to leave, and they would have to. Let's assume they are now there in a tow truck and hooked to the car. The business owner can not make them unhook the car, then leave. They will leave with the car.

In this story, the agents were there for several hours. The business could have asked them to leave at anytime. It sounds as if they presented themselves as law enforcement. Still wouldn't have mattered. Even if they were the police, the business owner wouldn't have had to cooperate with them. Once Mr. Bad Guy showed up though, it was too late.

Missouri does require bail enforcement agents to be licensed and insured. It wasn't always that way, and it still isn't in some other states. Same as private investigators. Once upon a time, Missouri did not require a license to do that either. I used to joke about a barber needing a license to cut your hair, but none was required for somebody performing investigative work for hire.

A threefer as far as I'm concerned. Idiots.

If I owned or managed a business and one day "bounty hunters" showed up, I'd call the police in a New York minute. If they represented themselves as Federal agents, I'd ask to see ID on the spot. Lacking the presentation of proper identification, I'd call the police in a New York minute. Fucking clowns.

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I'm a bounty hunter if I say I'm a bounty hunter, no training required, and this is the result.

They "identified" as bounty hunters. Guess it was a case of mistaken identity.

This thread brings back memories of the bounty hunter thread of years ago. You know, after they stormed the wrong house out west.

Not much has changed since then.

By the way, representing themselves as federal agents is quite common. Same thing happened locally here too.

After arrest the bounty hunter guy said that what he meant was his authority comes from the federal level. Which ironically it does.

Stop, I have federal authority.

Stop, I'm a federal authority.

Stop, federal authority.

All in the language used.

I think this country would be much better off if the entire bail bond industry were eliminated. If perps can't make their bail, they stay in the county lockup. If they make bail and skip, real LEOs go after them.

No more untrained blockhead cop wannabes chasing people around.

Is this fake? It was filmed in landscape!

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If they make bail and skip, real LEOs go after them.

If they skip bail isn't a warrant is issued? If the police had the time and manpower to deal with all of them, bounty hunters wouldn't exist to begin with.

They're simply filling a demand.

Bounty hunters exist because of the bail bond industry. As I'm sure you know, the bondsmen front the accused the money to to pay bail, and if the accused skips, they lose the money if they bondsman doesn't find and return the skip. I don't know why this industry needs to exist, including the bounty hunters.

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Originally posted by a1abdj:

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If they make bail and skip, real LEOs go after them.

If they skip bail isn't a warrant is issued? If the police had the time and manpower to deal with all of them, bounty hunters wouldn't exist to begin with.

They're simply filling a demand.

Yes, warrants are issued when people skip. But depending on the offense, there is a thing called a "Pickup Radius". Which tells cops where the warrants are valid and if the responsible agency will travel to pick up the offender.
Examples:
In county only.
Adjoining counties
Statewide
Adjoining states
Nationwide.
It was not unusual for me to stop someone, run him through the system and discover a warrant had been issued. But the person was outside the "pickup radius". So, unless you had a jail able charge, you kicked the guy loose.

Bailbondsmen serve a valuable function in our criminal justice system. Without them our jails would be a disaster, and a lot of people who are arrested would be doing time for crimes they did not commit. (And yes, as a 42 year veteran law enforcement officer, I can tell you many people are wrongly arrested). We are guaranteed reasonable bond by the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. Bailbondsmen fill the need for people who do not have the means to post a surety.

A US Supreme Court decision in 1872 gives US bailbondsmen and their agents, bounty hunters, extraordinary powers to pursue and retake a person on bail into custody. There may, or may not be, a warrant for the person's arrest-the bailbondsman may simply revoke the bond. The bailbondsman has a string on the person on bail that he can reel in at any time. That's what you agree to when you accept the bond. Bounty hunters of the day are the stuff of legend and a staple of Westerns.

The Court likened the authority of bailbondsmen and their agents to a sheriff in fresh pursuit of a criminal. It specifically mentions crossing state lines, and breaking into a place to take him. That is the "federal" authority bounty hunters often refer to. They can truly go get him wherever he is. The obvious intent of the Supreme Court was that there be no refuge for an absconder. In a narrow scope, the bounty hunter, or bailbondsman, has more authority than law enforcement officers in this area. It may be in conflict with state law and other legal procedure, and disagreements and confusion will arise, but in essence you cannot stand in the way of a bailbondsman taking a prisoner no matter where he is. It may be prudent for a bounty hunter to tread lightly and to be more subtle but the Supreme Court didn't mention any of that in the 1872 decision.

The problem is, there are few standards for employment and training of bounty hunters so bad stuff happens, and here is a case in point. A lot of confusion has resulted over the years and the various states have imposed some controls on bounty hunters but the Supreme Court decision still stands. It's a quirk for law enforcement and it may be time for the Supreme Court to revisit the earlier decision. Perhaps this incident will bring a case forward.

Police will certainly arrest someone with a warrant for nonappearance if they discover it during an encounter, but they’re not going to run all over the country looking for such people. Not only do they not have the time and resources to do that, most police have authority for arrests only in limited jurisdictions. Suggesting that the police could do the job of fugitive recovery agents in finding bail jumpers demonstrates ignorance of our criminal justice system. There’s nothing wrong with the basic idea of bondsmen having agents find the people who skip on them, it’s the abuse of agents’ powers that causes the problems. Like anything else it’s the bad ones we hear about.

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Originally posted by BBMW:
Bounty hunters exist because of the bail bond industry. As I'm sure you know, the bondsmen front the accused the money to to pay bail, and if the accused skips, they lose the money if they bondsman doesn't find and return the skip. I don't know why this industry needs to exist, including the bounty hunters.

Sooo, if they Bounty Hunter returns the skip in a body bag, do they get paid? Does the Bail Bondsman lose the bond, or does he get his money back?

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Originally posted by nhracecraft:

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Originally posted by BBMW:
Bounty hunters exist because of the bail bond industry. As I'm sure you know, the bondsmen front the accused the money to to pay bail, and if the accused skips, they lose the money if they bondsman doesn't find and return the skip. I don't know why this industry needs to exist, including the bounty hunters.

Sooo, if they Bounty Hunter returns the skip in a body bag, do they get paid? Does the Bail Bondsman lose the bond, or does he get his money back?

You get what is called a "body receipt." You get this when the person is taken to jail, or in this case, from the coroner. Dead or alive, albeit an old phrase, still does apply, although, dead is highly frowned upon . And yes, the bounty hunters will get paid.

The bondsman, once he has a body receipt, will then get his money back from the courts.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bigpond73,

On the local D/FW news last night (this incident happened in the North Texas area) they said that the bail bondsman hesitated in shooting the perp. This gave the perp time to get a few shots off. The reason for the hesitation (they said) was due to the fact that they had to take custody of the perp alive, and that the bondsman would get no money if he was dead.