Bonds, Bail Bonds.
Bounty hunting a shaking and stirring business
By Dominic Desmond, news editor
Posted on February 9, 2007

HARRISONBURG — Doug Dunkle works a lot.

“I’ve got one of the worst jobs in the U.S., as far as I go,” Dunkle said.

Dunkle is the owner of 1-800-FOR-BAIL — a bonds business on Liberty Street, which operates 24 hours a day, and it’s not unusual for Dunkle to drive 200 miles a day on a case, looking for someone who might be delinquent on a bail payment. Currently, he’s been working on a case for three weeks, driving about 1,500 miles from Rockingham County, to Fairfax, to Winchester and out of state.

Dunkle said most people don’t realize bondsmen are licensed insurance agents first and foremost — they assess risk. However, bonds agents don’t assess the risk of the criminal, they instead determine the risk of the co-signer of the bond.

Different people present varying degrees of risk, and Dunkle said someone who has no ties to the community poses a higher risk of skipping town and dodging court than someone who does.

“College girls like to shoplift,” Dunkle said hypothetically. “When they get busted, they don’t run off and not show up for court.”
Dunkle said a bond is akin to a loan, with an interest rate of 10 percent, which is the amount set by the state. He said if a judge sets the bond of a particular person at $10,000, his company will put up that amount and will charge $1,000 for that person to get out of jail until the time of his or her trial. Then that individual must show up for all court proceedings.

But, sometimes a person runs, and in that case, Dunkle goes hunting. He’ll go to family, girlfriends or boyfriends — anyone who might have information on the whereabouts of the fugitive. Dunkle, however, might have a considerable workload and would therefore hire a recovery agent and that’s where Brian Baker comes in.

Baker has been a bounty hunter for six months and started bounty hunting because work on his farm had been slow.

“You’re not going to get rich doing this job,” Baker said, “but it’s something I like to do.”

Baker is a former Navy S.E.A.L. and said he hunted people when he was in Vietnam.

“It’s just flat dangerous,” Baker said.

All bounty hunters in Virginia must be licensed by the Department of Criminal Justice, so for three weeks Baker trained at the Criminal Justice and Security Institute of Virginia in Newport News. There he completed weapons training, field training and also did classwork, which he said consisted of state laws dealing with fugitive recovery.

Dunkle said bounty hunters have arrest power for the specific case on which the agent is working. The arrest, however, as Baker and Dunkle both agree, is only a small part of the job. Baker said a lot of his work is sitting, waiting and watching.

“It’s hard to find him if he doesn’t want to be found,” Baker said.

To find a fugitive, Baker uses pressure in the community, putting up wanted posters and maybe even paying an ex-girlfriend for a piece of information. For every fugitive, Baker receives a dossier.

“[You’ll] find his uncles, brothers… even down to the cigars he smokes,” Baker said.

Bounty hunters are allowed to travel anywhere in the United States, but cannot cross borders. This, Dunkle and Baker said, is what got Duane “Dog” Chapman of A&E’s “Dog the Bounty Hunter” into trouble. Dog was arrested by Mexican officials for crossing the border while attempting to arrest Andrew Luster, heir to the Max Factor cosmetics company, in 2003. But Baker won’t go just anywhere, though.

“I don’t want to go to far if the money’s not good,” Baker said.

And sometimes the money can be good. Baker said some bonds go up to $250,000. From that, he is entitled to 10 percent of the bail — $2,500. Recently, Baker traveled as far as West Virginia.

Also, Baker always has to stay alert when he’s on the hunt, or else.

“If you mess up for a split second,” he said, “they’ve got the advantage.”

With the popularity of “Dog”, which Dunkle and Baker watch from time to time, both men said the public only sees a small part of the bail-enforcement job.

“All you see on TV is the arrest,” Baker said. “You see just the ‘glory section’ is what I call it.”

Dunkle said some people think what Dog and his staff do on every show is what he does.

“‘Dog’ is a show,” he said. “The capture is just on small part of the job.”

Both Dunkle and Baker said bounty hunters actually save taxpayers money. According to Baker, bounty hunters brought in more than 30,000 prisoners last year nationwide.

“The public did not have to pay a cent for [it],” Baker said.