A large, dark sport-utility vehicle
pulled up alongside Cyndi White's car, trapping her inside. A man,
dressed in baggy jeans, approached the car. He demanded to see her
ID.
"I'm being carjacked," was White's first
thought. She frantically dialed 911 on her cell phone.
"There's somebody standing in front of my car
asking me for ID with something that says 'fugitive recovery
agent,'" she told the dispatcher in a wavering voice. "He's standing
right outside my car. ... He's got a gun -- or I don't know what."
The man told her he was from Metro Bail Bonds.
She matched the description of a woman wanted for skipping bail.
"We are under the impression that you have
warrants out for your arrest," he said.
When Vancouver police arrived, officers
established that Cyndi White really was Cyndi White. A 31-year-old
department manager at Nordstrom in Beaverton, Ore. The daughter of
Clark County's juvenile court administrator. An upstanding citizen.
Not a bail skip.
Officers also established that the men who had
trapped White in her car were bail recovery agents, more popularly
known as bounty hunters. And they weren't doing anything wrong.
Bounty hunters track down and arrest people
who have skipped bail. They have broad authority -- in some
situations, more than police. They carry guns. They can freely enter
the homes of so-called bail skips to make arrests. But no government
agency oversees them.
A bill in the Legislature would require state
licensing of bounty hunters. Similar efforts have failed in past
years, and the bill is unlikely to pass during this crammed special
session, said one of the bill's sponsors.
That means bounty hunters likely will continue
to "operate in their own little world," as Vancouver Police Sgt.
Dave King put it.
"We operate under the Constitution," King
said. "They operate under a contract."
Call for reform
White's March 18 encounter with bounty hunters
was frightening but uneventful. For a Brush Prairie man last year,
the encounter was fatal.
David Trammell was gunned down at his Brush
Prairie apartment by a bounty hunter who was trying to arrest him
for skipping bail posted by Allwest Bail Bonds.
As far as the Clark County prosecutor's and
sheriff's offices are concerned, the case is closed: The bounty
hunter shot in self-defense.
Trammell's sister, Kathy Lutz, thinks it's
more complicated than that. The 46-year-old Camas resident still
loses sleep over her older brother's death. She stays up nights
writing letters to officials and updating her Web site that
declares, "My brother was killed by a bounty hunter Oct. 2, 2000, at
3:01 a.m. over a misdemeanor."
Though sheriff's detectives found that Timothy
Smallidge fired in self-defense after Trammell stabbed him with a
knife, Lutz believes her brother was startled and thought he was
defending his home.
Trammell, 48, had missed a District Court
appearance. The court had issued arrest warrants against him for
fourth-degree domestic violence assault, driving while his license
suspended, and other misdemeanors, with bail amounts ranging from
$100 to $500.
"Who goes after someone for such a small
amount of money in the middle of the night?" Lutz asks herself over
and over.
Things would have turned out differently for
her brother if the state required that bounty hunters obtain
licenses, undergo training and wear identifying garments, Lutz
believes.
"I receive training as a school bus driver on
how to de-escalate a situation, and these guys don't even have to
get that much training," Lutz said.
Since her brother's death, she's compiled a
notebook of pictures of him and information she's gathered from
police reports. She's written letters to the county prosecutor and
the Department of Licensing. But she's found that, as bounty
hunters, Smallidge and his partner had a right to enter Trammell's
apartment. And though the Department of Licensing oversees bail
agents and audits their financial records, it does not have
jurisdiction over those who chase down people who skip bail.
Bailing out
When people who are arrested get out of jail
by posting bail through a bondsman, they sign a contract that gives
the bail agent the right to take them to jail if they don't show up
for court appearances.
The defendants, usually with the help of
family, post 10 percent to 15 percent of the bail amount, as well as
collateral, with the bonding company.
The bonding company then gives the court a
post-dated voucher to cover the amount of bail. The court returns
the check if the defendant show up, but cashes the check if the
defendant fails to appear in court.
If the bail agency can track down the
defendant, it gets the money back.
That's where bounty hunters come in.
Almost 100 bail agents in Clark County have
current state licenses. Some track down and arrest bail skips for
themselves. Some hire independent bounty hunters, but the county has
only a handful of those, according to one bail bondsman. Because no
agency tracks or regulates bounty hunters, there's no way to say for
sure.
Nationally, about 1,500 to 2,000 people act as
bounty hunters and arrest about 21,000 people a year, said Bob
Burton, director of the National Institute of Bail Enforcement in
Tucson, Ariz.
He said they provide a service by rounding up
criminals at no cost to taxpayers. Even so, he concedes bounty
hunters have "an image problem."
"It's there with used-car salesman,
politicians and pit bulls," Burton said.
No rules
Even the bail agents who hire and sometimes
act as bounty hunters would like state oversight, said Shirley
Williams, an Everett bail bondswoman and president of the Washington
State Bail Agents Association.
During the current special legislative
session, Reps. Marc Boldt, R.- Hockinson, and John Pennington, R.-
Carrolls, along with several others, have re-introduced a bill that
would require bounty hunters to receive training on use of force and
legal issues, and possess a concealed weapons license.
"It's a no-brainer concept," Pennington said.
Even so, he doesn't expect the bill to pass this session, as in past
sessions, simply because other issues take priority.
Without some kind of law, the state has little
say-so when it comes to bounty hunters. Bail bondsmen or their
agents may pursue a defendant across state lines, arrest him, "and
if necessary may break and enter his house for that purpose,"
according to a 1856 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Complaints against bounty hunters have cropped
up in Clark County over the years, said Jim David, a Clark County
deputy prosecutor who outlined relevant laws in a 1995 memo. Case
law has established that bounty hunters can act with near impunity
against bail skips, but they can be held liable for breaking into
the wrong house or laying a hand on the wrong person.
"In the bail bond contract, the defendant
waives constitutional rights, gives us permission to enter their
home and take them across state lines. If we in any way side step,
we can be sued and arrested," Burton said.
The National Institute of Bail Enforcement has
established a code of ethics, Burton said. It calls on people going
after skips to "work entirely with the framework of the law,"
"verify paperwork, warrants and documents which might lead to a
wrongful arrest," and "to arrest the bail fugitive in the most
humane, legal and responsible manner possible."
That voluntary code is not enough to hold
bounty hunters accountable, said Lutz. Both she and White said
agents should have standard and readily recognizable identification.
White said when she was confronted by Metro
agents, their badges simply didn't look legitimate to her. When she
didn't show her ID, the agents thought White surely must be the
woman they were trying to find, said Regan, the bail agency's owner.
What White thought was a gun was actually a tazer, which administers
a nonlethal electrical shock, and she was never in danger, he said.
White, however, said she felt her life was
threatened. With her fiance's 14-year-old brother in the car with
her, White didn't want to take any risks.
"I'm thinking this is fake, and these guys are
are thugs, and they don't want people to know what they're doing,"
White said. "If it had been police, I would have been able to calmly
say, 'OK, I'm not this person.'"
Late-night tactics
White was very upset by the incident, but
Metro agents were actually doing everything right, Regan said. They
watched the house until they believed they had the right person,
approached her outside in daylight, and called 911 themselves when
things didn't go as planned, he said.
In the case of the fatal shooting last
October, Smallidge and his partner, William Crause, arrived at
Trammell's house in the middle of the night. According to the
sheriff's office report, the agents first stopped at Trammell's
parents' house because they had cosigned his bond.
When the agents arrived at the Prairie View
Apartments, Trammell's wife, Marilyn "Micky" Trammell, let them
inside. She thought her husband had already left for an early job
working on a dam near Eugene, Ore., she said.
Micky Trammell said she ducked into her
bedroom to put on some clothes when she heard a struggle and a
"pop." She saw her husband had been shot.
"There's blood everywhere," Micky Trammell
said. "What a waste of human life."
She said the vision of her husband lying in a
pool of blood still haunts her. Micky Trammell was already losing
her husband to bladder cancer. She said their last months together
were stolen.
Micky Trammell said she recognized the agents,
who had arrested her several months before for missing a court
appearance for a driving-while-intoxicated charge. But she believes
her husband was caught off guard.
"It's pitiful that someone could come into our
home, and we don't have the right to protect ourselves," she said.
According to the sheriff's office
investigative report, Smallidge had amphetamines in his system. He
later said he had taken cold medicine, something he didn't mention
when detectives asked him during an interview if he had taken any
medication.
Smallidge could not be reached for comment.
The phone number he gave detectives has been disconnected. Allwest
Bail Bonds, where he worked as a bail agent, has since fired him.
Allwest's new manager, Brandon Svoboda, would not say why and did
not know how to contact Smallidge. The Department of Licensing shows
Smallidge's bail agent license is inactive.
Crause still works at Allwest, but as an
underwriter and doesn't do bail recovery any longer, Svoboda said.
David Trammell never had a chance to set
things straight with Allwest, Lutz said. Her parents, who were
cosigners on Trammell's bond, received a letter from Allwest on
Saturday, Sept. 30, saying he had missed a court date. Her brother
was shot at 3 a.m. the following Monday.
"If they would have called my brother on the
phone, he would have said, 'Oh man, I screwed up. Come and get me.'"
ON THE WEB
For a list of bail bond agents in Clark
County, consult the Washington Department of Licensing:
www.wa.gov/dol /lists
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