Bail Bond Agent Blog

My partner and I bailed out a kid for drug possession. The bail amount was $15,000. He failed to appear and had a warrant for his arrest. I called the defendant’s house and he answered. He said he’d been busy with work and couldn’t get to court, but he promised to go to court the following week and to check in with me by phone afterward.

Two weeks later he still hadn’t called. When I checked with the court, they told me he failed to show. I called his home and spoke with him again, and listened to more excuses.

After four months of this charade, I decided it was time for us to pick him up ourselves. I knew his school and work schedule, so I knew when he would be home. I drove to his neighborhood and called him, and he answered the phone.

“Why haven’t you shown up to court yet?”

He replied with the same old excuses.

“I’m going to stop by your house so we can talk about it.”

“No! Don’t worry, I’ll go to court, I promise.” He went on with the usual speech.

“I’m just going to come over, okay?”

“No, not right now, I have to leave for school.”

“That’s great,” I said, “because I’m right in front of your house. We can talk about it now.”

I saw the blinds open and he quickly hung up. I yelled through the security screen door that I had other agents with me, that were watching the back of the house and he had nowhere to go.

His brother came to the door and through the security screen he said, “We’re calling the cops.”

“Go right ahead.” I gave him the number of a particular sergeant and added, “He knows we’re here.” Then, because he was underage and I didn’t want to scare him and get him involved in a conversation, I asked him to call his parents at work so they would know what was going on.

He called and handed me the phone through an open window. I explained to his mom what was happening. She told me she was going to send her attorney to the house. Sure enough, within 10 minutes her attorney arrived and said he wasn’t going to let us in the house. I handed him a copy of the laws on bail in California and informed him that if I wanted to, I could break down the door and go get the fugitive.

He glanced through the laws and said, “If you can break that security screen, go ahead.”

After arguing with him for a while, I figured we had scared the defendant enough to realize he needed to go to court.

Finally my partner and I left. We went to get some food and waited until we knew it was time for the kid to leave for school. We figured we’d sit down the street and wait for his car to leave. So we parked about 10 houses down, facing his house. A few minutes later his mom pulled up in front of the house with her minivan. When she got out, she looked in our direction and seemed to recognize my truck. She went into the house.

After about 30 minutes, several people came out of the house with her and walked toward her minivan. She drove toward us, so we put our seats back and lay down, hoping she wouldn’t see us inside. Too late. She pulled up to the driver’s side door, opened her door and started yelling at us.

We could see past her minivan to the house, and watched as her son, the defendant was getting into his car. When she realized we saw him, she got out of her van and stepped in front of my truck. I started the engine and had to drive over the curb to keep from hitting her and her minivan.

“You can visit your son in jail in a few hours,” I called out. “I’ll let you know where he is going to be.”

The chase began, with the defendant in a 90s muscle car and my partner and I in my truck. He had about a quarter mile head start, but we knew which way he was going, and I didn’t want to get into trouble for reckless driving or speeding.

By the second light, he was an entire block ahead of us but with a lot of traffic ahead of him he decided to go into the right turn lane while traffic was stopped. As he was passing the line of traffic, he apparently decided to run the red light and he hit someone. We could see it from a distance. Rather than stop, he sped on.

As we approached the intersection, we saw a lady sitting in her car with a flat tire and badly dented bumper, hood and driver’s side door. Luckily she wasn’t hurt. I pulled up next to her and told her to wait there, that I knew who hit her and would be right back.

I drove back to the defendant’s house, thinking maybe he had swung back around. As I pulled into the driveway, his entire family was standing there. I rolled down my window and called out, “Now your son will be charged with a hit and run. He just left the scene of an accident.”

As I headed back toward the accident site, I spotted the defendant’s car, but it was clear he didn’t see us. I turned and followed him into a housing development. Apparently he noticed us then, because he sped up and then pulled up in front of a house. He got out of his car and ran inside.

We jumped out of the truck and ran in after him, with no idea whose house it was, and we couldn’t find him anywhere. When the owners saw us in their house, they had some choice words for us. The defendant apparently had jumped the back wall and run off. We decided to go back to the truck and drive around the neighborhood to look for him, but when we went back out the front door of the house, we were stopped by three police cars.

After we explained the situation and gave the police copies of the defendant’s warrant, they decided to go look for him. At that point, we decided we’d had enough of an eventful day and it was time to go home. As we were leaving, the defendant’s father drove up and apologized for his son’s behavior. He assured us his son would be dealt with. The defendant’s mother just glared at us.

Before going home, we stopped back by the accident site where the lady who was hit was waiting. Her sons had shown up to help her. We told her who had hit her so she could take the necessary action against him.

A few weeks went by and the defendant still had an active warrant. I decided to go back to the defendant’s house and take with me a 25-year bail industry veteran to assist in catching him. After we sat for a while down the street from the defendant’s house, with no sign of the defendant coming or going at his usual hours, the experienced agent asked me if I had checked the jail that day to see if the defendant was in custody.

“No, I haven’t, but I’ll check now.” I pulled out my cell phone. Sure enough, the defendant had been arrested four hours before we drove up to his place.

Tags: Bail Bond Stories //