Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs Part 32

And confession's everything. Because, you know, most of the time, murders are isolated crimes. Murderers try not to have a lot of witnesses! [Laughs] Okay? So maybe with evidence, testimony from witnesses, whatever, we may be fifty-one percent sure this is the person, or even eighty-five percent sure. But a lot of times we still need the suspect to say somethin'. We need them to put themselves there at the scene of the crime, doin' something. It's got to come from them, the murderer, and we have to get it in writing.

Like I got one now, this guy Lowe. And I'm sorry, but, see, he is the killer. Lowe did kill Gloria Pickett. But there are a few little problems with the story that need to be tightened up. [Laughs] Each time he tells the story he gets a little closer. The first time he was on the street where it happened, earlier that day. The next time he told it, he was on the block where it happened, later on that day. Now I got him on the block just a hour before it happened. But I gotta get him to the house. I've gotta have him puttin' himself there. The time isn't as important. If he just puts himself in the house, there, okay, I'm done. I ain't too worried about Lowe. [Laughs]

You just gotta learn to listen to what they say, how they say it. It's a art form. All I have to do is let them talk. Once they start talkin', the person, the individual, will tell me how to come at him. I got the psychological edge. Because you know you did it. If you're the killer and you're in custody, you have to wonder, "Well, d.a.m.n. They got something on me or they wouldn'ta locked me up. I wonder what they know?" So they're operating in a blind.

When I walk in there, I'm calm. I never curse 'em out. Never get angry with 'em. And I'm honest with them. I say, "Listen. Make no mistake about it. I am trying to send you to prison for the rest of your life. I want you to die there. That's where I'm comin' from. But I want you to know I don't dislike you. I don't know you. It's not personal. Okay?"

I don't start out by talkin' about the murder. I never talk about the murder to them. Absolutely never. Because they're bubbling. Their anxiety level is goin' crazy. They got this little story they made up in case they got caught. And I know they're anxious to tell that story. Well, I don't let 'em tell it. I keep puttin' them off. You know, when they initially begin to talk about it, I'll go, "No, no, no. Hey, if you're not comfortable discussing this, I understand. What we're asking you to do is not easy. I know that. Come on. Tell me more about when you played football in high school. [Laughs] Just get yourself relaxed."

Finally, we're at that point where they can't hold it anymore. They may start out talkin' about the murder and tell just a total and complete lie. And I listen to the story, you know, and I go, "Well, that was entertaining. Now, start all over and tell me all the parts you left out." And we'll do like that just as long as it takes.

You would not believe these m.u.t.h.af.u.c.kas. A lot of them have no idea. They just have no idea. I mean, they goin' in for murder, and these stupid oblivious mothaf.u.c.kers'll say stuff like, "Hey, Officer Childs. You cool. If I get outta this, would you let me come back and take you to lunch?" And [laughs] I'm like, "Nahh. Nah, I don't-that's all right. I got a man." Which I don't. [Laughs] "Very tempting offer. But you're not my type of guy. I've seen your work." [Laughs]

This happens all the time. The kind of person who kills somebody is not usually like the most aware type of individual. You know what I'm saying? Killers are funny. They're not takin' this serious. This one kid told me, he says, "When I get outta this I want to be a architect." And I can't believe it. I say, "You're goin' to be a architect when you get outta this? Do you realize you're going to prison for the rest of your life? Do you know what a life sentence is? It means you in until you die. You come out in a pine box." Then they'll go, "Well, I don't want to go like that!" I just shake my head. "I tell you what. When the dead man get up and go home, we'll let you go home. Okay?"

I had this old guy one time. This guy was old, but he was a old hit man. [Laughs] Lived in a house with black velvet nailed all over the place, all over the windows, so the sunlight didn't come in. You didn't know if it was day or night in that house. Okay? He had a shotgun in a rack over his bedroom door. He had a five-hundred-dollara-day heroin habit and a five-hundred-dollar-a-day lottery habit. And to support that, besides murderin' people, he ran this business making phony college degrees and high school diplomas! And you know what was funny? He would actually screen you for one of these. Like, if you didn't talk and sound like you were educated, he'd tell you, "Well, I'm gonna make one for a community college or give you an a.s.sociate's degree. You come see me in a year and I'll give you a master's." [Laughs]

Anyway, his son was a drug dealer, but his son was gay. And people used to beat the son up and take his drugs from him and dog him out. So he'd go and tell his daddy, and lure 'em over to his daddy's house, and his daddy would get 'em.

So we got down there to the house with a search warrant. And Daddy-he's sixty-six-he had the old man walk and everything all down pat. [Laughs] You know? The old man walk, the old man talk goin' on. "Well, y'all can come on in. You got a search warrant. You mind if I lay down? I have back problems."

And I kept lookin' at the shotgun over the rack in his bedroom. And I said, "Umm, Mr. Boyce? You mind if I take the shotgun down?" "No, y'all got a search warrant. Go ahead. Help yourself, baby."

I get the shotgun. Look in the barrel. And there's all this blowback from someone's skull in the barrel [laughs] of the gun. I said, "Mr. Boyce, who else uses this gun?" "Why, that's my gun. Don't n.o.body else touch it but me." Oh, man. "You think you want to get up now and maybe go with us, Mr. Boyce?"

Then we're all over the house. We have evidence techs, everything. He has a trapdoor in his floor. And we open the trapdoor, and it's a coal bin. We go down in the coal bin. Hmm. Are those [laughs] bullet holes? He's been killin' people in the coal bin! [Laughs] I'm like, oh s.h.i.+t! We found so many bullet holes and spent cases in that coal bin. d.a.m.n!

So when he get down here to the precinct, he's walkin', struttin' around. [Laughs] And this is what I mean about these m.u.t.h.af.u.c.kas. He's struttin' around. And he looks at me and he says, "You know what, Officer Childs?" He say, "I'm not angry or upset with you. Because I just love the way you got me." And then he smiles and he says, "You know? In another place and time you coulda been my woman."

Aggggghh! You know? This job makes it hard on relations.h.i.+ps, and whatever-I ain't even gonna go into that-but that hurt. Like, how do I always get chose by killers? Men who have absolutely nothin' goin' for themselves? Aggggh! [Laughs] You know? "In another place and time you coulda been my woman!" I just don't believe this. A heroin addict killer old man. That's who's comin' on to me. [Laughs] I just say, "Okay, Mr. Boyce. All right." [Laughs]

I love this job. I do. This is where I wanted to end up in the police. And, you know, a lot of the people I'm surrounded by do a really, really good job. We're fair. We're professionals. The people who brought me here? Best homicide investigators in the country. We'll put them up against anybody. Okay? I like some of the people I work with. Our chief, Benny Napoleon, he's a fabulous person. Beautiful. He's a preacher's son. He's an attorney. He has such a strong sense of fair play, it's unbelievable.

And ever since when I started out I knew this is what I wanted to do. You know? I wanted to end up at homicide and retire from the homicide section. And-but, well, it's not working out that way.

The system-it has problems. People are good, you know? But the system-you know, police say things like how we're putting our life on the line and the public don't appreciate a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing we do for 'em. And it's true that there's a lot of unfair pressure on us. People vent. They get mad at the police and I think that makes the police band together a little bit. And there's nothing wrong with banding together. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's not the problem. The problem is when you band together and you all act in concert to lie, to perpetuate scenarios that didn't happen. That's where the problem lies.

And it happens because of the way police-because of the police's tendency to go into cover-up mode. You know, "Excuse me? We don't make mistakes. We're the police! We're superpeople!" But we're not. We make mistakes. We're human beings. We do wrong things. Okay? And my feeling is, if a person's wrong, and they messed up, just admit they messed the f.u.c.k up!

But that's not the police. We don't talk outside the house. That's a phrase. "Talkin' outside the house." And we don't talk outside the house. We don't admit nothin' to n.o.body. It's us against them. Us against Them. But that's not me. And I always told everyone I worked with, I says, "You do what you want, but whatever you do, if it's wrong and I'm asked about it, I will tell." Because I don't want you to lie for me, and I don't want you to cover up for me either. Okay? Don't do that for me, and I won't put you in that position either. 'Cause we could get indicted, and I'll lose my job and embarra.s.s my family. And-but see, you know, they always play with people. And now it's like, it's-I'm in this mess. Everything is messed up now.

This started about a year and a half ago. What happened was, we had two suspects who were involved in the murder of James White, an eleven-year-old black male. And we had a inspector who ran the homicide section, and she violated the rights of these two men. See, we have something called const.i.tutional rights of advice forms. If you can't read, we will read them to you. Neither of these two men could read, but this inspector didn't read 'em their rights. Then she ordered me to take their statements. And I wasn't there for the whole thing, but something seemed wrong, because she'd asked other people in the squad to do it, and n.o.body else would. They was like, "f.u.c.k that b.i.t.c.h." [Laughs] But in the end, I took the statements, 'cause I didn't wanna make a problem.

But then she starts hara.s.sing me to find out if I'm gonna tell anyone. We had to prepare to go to court for the Walker hearing, which is a preliminary examination for the defense to challenge the voluntariness of a confession. They come up with things like, "Was my client beaten or promised anything? Did he ask for an attorney?" Blah, blah, blah. And they try to get the confession throwed out. And the week before the Walker hearing, this inspector, she came in this office and she says, "I need to know what you're going to say at the Walker hearing." I said, "I'm going to tell the truth."

Now there were three other people from the squad who were in the room with us. And two of my partners got up and slinked out. 'Cause there it is again: "Don't go talkin' outside the house." But the other guy who was in this room-he just sat there. Because he knew it was gonna end up being a problem and being her word against mine. And she says, "f.u.c.k the truth. I need to know what you're gonna say." I say, "Well, the truth of it is what I'm gonna say."

So then the next day, she comes in. The same hara.s.sing. Gets me alone and starts talkin' about how we gotta get our stories together. I told her, "I'm not lying for you. I told you I wasn't gonna lie for you. I'm going to tell the truth." Finally, the day of the hearing I had to call the prosecutor and let him know what was goin' on. All right?

So the statements were thrown out. But when the statements was thrown out, everything that went with 'em was thrown out too, which is called "fruits from a poisonous tree." Okay? You can't have that. But this meant they threw out evidence that would have exonerated one of the two men. And what happened then was one defendant was released. The guilty one. He got off. And the other guy, the one that wasn't even there at the crime-he got convicted. The trial was a joke. Every single witness for the prosecution was a felon. He got convicted. He's doin' seventy years, and he wasn't even there at the crime scene. He wasn't there. I know that for a fact. He wasn't there. And to know-I know a man. Who is in prison. Doing seventy years. When he did not kill anybody. It bothers me, and it will probably bother me till I die.

The whole thing just got me. And then-then on top of all this, they kicked me out of homicide for ten and a half months. I did nothin' wrong, but they suspended me and they said I had to work in the commander's office. So I sued. I sued the Detroit Police Department under the Whistle-Blowers Act, which is a Federal law. It's supposed to protect you against retaliation if you speak out like I did.

My lawsuit was just resolved recently. This spring. Settled out of court. And I can't disclose the terms of the settlement, but I can tell you I'm back in homicide.

But now, people have stopped speakin' to me. People I had worked here with for years. People I had broken into homicide, they're afraid to talk to me. This case caused a lot of controversy. And so they'll say, "Monica, wait till we get outside." [Whispers] "I'll talk to you outside. Because I don't want to get in the middle of this. I don't want to be seen talkin' to you."

I just wish I could have gotten the National Enquirer to come, because I never knew people could walk without a spine. But I never got mad with them, because that was a lesson I had to learn. I had to go through that. To learn some people are your friends, and some people are just coworkers. They're not your friends-they're coworkers. So it's okay. All right? Okay. It's all good, baby.

I've suffered for it. And I guess I just don't want to work anywhere where I have to fight and struggle all the time with people. Which is what it's turned into.

I don't regret doin' what I did. I don't apologize for bein' me. You know? To regret doin' it, I would have to apologize for bein' me. And I don't apologize for bein' me. I'm havin' fun bein' me. I wouldn'ta been anybody else. I'm pretty happy with who I am. I don't have enough money. But that's most of us. I feel like I'm not loved enough. That's most of us. Overall, I think I'm pretty emotionally, spiritually, and mentally healthy.

I was the second daughter of ten children and of six girls. And if somethin' was goin' on, everybody else had sense enough not to say anything, because my mother couldn't stand att.i.tude. But not me-I'd speak out. So she'd throw whatever she could get her hands on, she'd throw it at me. When she got p.i.s.sed off, she started lookin' for a belt or somethin'. My sisters and brothers-I would be defendin' them. And after a while it dawned on me-I figured it out. The rest of 'em wasn't sayin' anything, so after a while I figured out, well, they're not sayin' anything. This is their battle. Why am I fightin' it? Huh? Oh, I'm the only one gettin' my a.s.s kicked? Okay. So I stopped foolin' around with my mother. [Laughs] It's like, "Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am." But I couldn't never really stop. 'Cause then next minute I'd say something under my breath and still get hit with a shoe or something walking off. "What did you say?" "I didn't say anything." "I heard you say something."

It was like always me, I was always the one. "Are you the devil's child?" [Laughs] I wasn't a bad kid. I just would say anything to anybody. And, well, look at what happened to me. [Laughs]

It's cash on delivery, C.O.D. on the body.

BOUNTY HUNTER.

Charles Robinson.

My whole life, I always had this kind of cloak-and-dagger way, sneaking around. I didn't go to college, I just started doing the private investigator thing, insurance fraud and industrial undercover a.s.signments. I worked for a big agency. Companies would hire us if they thought they were getting ripped off by their employees. I'd go into the place undercover, work there for a while, and I'd tell you this guy steals, this guy takes bribes, you know what I mean? The money they spend on the investigation is like half of what they're losing, so it's well worth it.

While I was doing these investigations, I heard about bounty hunting. I heard the money was good. Bounty hunting is basically this: let's say you get arrested, your trial date is set for a month from now, and the bail is set at ten grand. Well, you can sit in jail for a month or you can give the court ten thousand cash and go home and then when you show up to trial, you get your money back. Or, if you don't have that kind of money, you go to a bail bondsman. You give him a percentage in cash, which is usually ten percent-like a thousand bucks in this case-and then you give him the deed to your house as collateral for the rest and he'll put up your bail-the ten grand, a bond-promising that you will be in court when you're supposed to be. When you show up, he gets his bond back and he keeps his percentage, so he made a thousand dollars. But if you don't show up to court, the marshals don't come after you, they go right to the bail bondsman. "You said he'd be here. He's not. So give us the ten grand!" Which would be a considerable loss for a bondsman-but fortunately for him, by law he doesn't have to pay up right away. It's different in every state, but most states, he has one hundred and eighty days to pay-or to bring the guy back in. So he hires a bounty hunter. That's me.

I operate under a law written in 1872. It's a Supreme Court ruling called Taintor v. Taylor, which basically says that if a guy skips his bail, the bondsman has the power to cross state lines, carry weapons, you know, break and enter a home, get him at work, arrest him on the Sabbath day, whatever it takes to bring that fugitive back to justice. It supersedes any local law. And if the bondsman can't do so in person, Taintor says he can empower someone-a bounty hunter-to do it for him.

So, anyway, I heard a lot about this business doing the investigative work and I tried to break in, but it wasn't so easy. I mean, what do you do? You walk up to a bail bondsman and say, "I want to go hunt men down, give me a job?" It's a big liability issue with a bondsman. If he empowers somebody who goes out and shoots somebody, his a.s.s is on the line-he can get sued-because the bounty hunter's in direct employment of the bondsman. So it's not like a bondsman will hire just anybody-you've got to wait until you got some bragging rights. So I did that. I worked at this part-time for several years, keeping the investigative firm as like my day job. I apprenticed under a bunch of different bounty hunters and I just made a lot of contacts, met a lot of different people, from judges to attorneys to D.A.s to bondsmen. I really put my nose to the grindstone, went to different bondsmen's organizations, just like plumber's organizations, trying to solicit myself. And I learned to do good work-to get my guys into custody quickly and without incident, to keep my expenses reasonable.

Now I'm a full-time bounty hunter. I work for about eight different bail bondsmen in California, Oregon, Was.h.i.+ngton, and Nevada. My fee is right at industry standard. I make ten percent of the bail amount. So for a ten-thousand-dollar bond, I want a thousand bucks plus expenses. You figure, that's the bondsman's commission, their profit. So they didn't really lose any money.

Some of these cases last two to three weeks. If you think about it, you can make a thousand bucks painting houses in a week. So I've always got about four going on at once. I jump from this investigation to that, and I've got guys that I work with, other bounty hunters, and I'll go fifty-fifty with them. I've got so much stuff going on all the time. And then I sometimes get into negotiations. Like if it gets down to the hundred-and-seventy-ninth day and the bondsman has a hundred and eighty days-I'm like, "Give me fifty percent. I'm cutting your losses in half." You can't hardball it that hard when you got a lot of time left or they'll go to another bounty hunter, but you can make great money sometimes. Although, ultimately, the proof is in the pudding-your work product. It's cash on delivery, C.O.D. on the body, you know what I mean? That's the bottom line.

To track a man down, you have to be really creative. First thing is getting information. I deal with a lot of information brokers, guys you can buy s.h.i.+t from. Many of them are online. There's a guy online where you can go and he runs Social Security numbers for thirty bucks a whack. I got another guy who can give you addresses to phone numbers for thirty bucks. And I got another source where I give a phone number, and he'll give me every call made by that number. These guys provide information for investigators and credit companies and like when you read People magazine or see Hard Copy, and it says, "O.J.'s girlfriend from the fourth grade's neighbor says-" and you're like, where do they get s.h.i.+t like that? Well, it's guys like this! I've never met any of mine. I have a phone relations.h.i.+p and we've got a billing cycle. It's kind of a "don't ask, don't tell" kind of thing.

I've also got great law enforcement sources. I come from a family of law enforcement, I have cousins and a couple uncles in two federal agencies. There's not too much I can't get my hands on if need be.

So let me give you a situation. Let's say Acme Bail Bonds calls me up and they got a guy who's skipped his bail. Well, what do they know about the guy? Maybe there was a cosigner on his bond. A cosigner is a guy who put up the collateral for him-usually his parents or his boss. Let's say it's his boss-and this happens a lot-he put up some collateral to get the bail because he really needed the guy to come to work the next day. Now he's on the hook too because the bondsman's going to lean on his collateral. "I'm going to take your house." s.h.i.+t rolls downhill. So, first thing I do, I go and interview this cosigner. "What can you tell me about him? I'm trying to save you money here." If it's someone's dad or mom, well, it's pretty hard to dime out your own kid, but there are other ways of getting through to a parent-you know, the "this is for his own good" kind of thing. I mean, parents can get soft, and even if they don't, you know the kid's probably gonna try to contact them or something. If you sit on the parents, you usually get the kid. So I'm going to give you the worstcase scenario, which is the parents are out of the picture and the boss posted the bail and he's like, "I don't even really know the kid. He worked for me a month, he was a carpenter, he does great work, and I needed him the next day, so I was in a bad position. I had to post the bond. But he left without a trace, I don't know anything about him." That's the hardest situation.

Where do you go, where do you start? The boss paid him under the table, he doesn't file for taxes, so when you run a Social Security, there's going to be no address. He probably lives with a friend anyway. No paper trail. Something like that is frustrating.

But let's say I get one tidbit of information-his boss tells me he's really into western music, and he runs around Hollywood a lot. Boom! I've got a starting point. I start going to Lucky Stars and Big Sandy shows, just hitting them like crazy, asking around. You find real discreet ways to talk to people without being obtrusive, without looking or acting or sounding like a cop. Then all it is is you just wait for breaks in the case. You just wait. It can be pretty frustrating. So many guys I know-and I've done it too in the beginning-call the bondsman up and say, "Find yourself someone else, I can't do this." It sucks. It's hard to sleep, it's consuming.

But if you're relentless, you get a break. "Oh, yeah, I know that guy, he's going out with this girl Laura and she works over at Watson's." It's, like, great. Boom! Go sit on Laura for a while. Because the guy's got to get some tail, and a lot of times, guys hide under the skirts of their girlfriends, you know what I mean? So now I got something and I just follow Laura for a while.

But let's say she's in on it, because that's really common, and they're really discreet about it because he's hinkey-an investigative term-really suspicious, always looking over his shoulder, really elusive. So I follow her, but I don't find him. So finally, what I might do is exercise my right to gain entrance. That's one thing about Taintor- it's broad-bounty hunters have a lot of power to do a lot of things. The rationale is that the minute a guy doesn't show up for court, he's admitting his guilt. You skip your bail, that's an admission of guilt. So Taintor gives me a lot of powers and something like this-I follow her around a week, and she never leads me to the guy, well, I might exercise my right to gain entrance to her house. Because I can break and enter his home, and his home is defined as any place he chooses to be-even if it's not his physical address. If he's in your house, I can legally kick your door down-not that I make it a habit-but that's his home, that's the four walls he's choosing right now.

But I don't want to kick down the door. That puts me in a bad position, you know? I mean, this guy doesn't seem to be around, so kicking in the door may not accomplish much. It may, in fact, scare her away and blow the one lead I've got. So what I might do instead is go and interview her. Knock on her door and identify myself. She might be cooperative, usually they are-if you present yourself professionally and point out that they could easily be guilty of withholding information on a fugitive, harboring a fugitive-and this is a felony.

So I talk her into giving an interview. Maybe I learn something, maybe I don't. Usually, she's going to lie to me. "Oh, I don't know where he is-I haven't talked to him in a week-he's probably at his grandmother's in Indiana." Or something like that, trying to lead me away. I'm being stroked. But that's fine-I can work with that. I see she's lying, I can tell, so I finish up the interview because now I just want to make her sweat a little bit, try to get her a little nervous about the whole thing, and then I leave. "All right, thanks for all your help." And I note the time I left, like five in the afternoon.

Then I go call one of my brokers. "Here's her address, give me her phone number." And I take that phone number and call another guy. "This is a phone number, I want every call she made after five today." Because you know after I left, the first call she made is, "Dude, he's on to you!" So I'll get a list of all the calls she made, the numbers she dialed. That might be a long list and if I got the address to every one of those numbers-at thirty bucks a whack, my expense factor is going to be up there. So I look at the area codes. Local, local, local. Then there's an area code that goes back to Fresno. Then I look through his file a little bit or maybe get on my information brokers. "Yeah, he's got a brother in Fresno." Bingo! And then I'll get the brother's address. Nine times out of ten, boom, there you are. From nothing, you've tracked an elusive guy down with no paper trail. Remember-we got all this from he liked western music.

It's really, really creative manhunting and creative investigating. And until you've done it, it's hard to explain the addiction. I mean, it's just like, when it comes down to the catch, the takedown, you've been looking at this guy's picture forever, you know all about him-his favorite food, his favorite kind of music, what kind of car he's driving, his girlfriend. You know? And like I've had to chase a guy from here and caught up with him in Kentucky, you know? So when you finally make eye contact with the guy, it's like, all right, man, it's time!

But the thing is, it's tough work. It's dangerous. I'm making good money, better every year, but I'm putting myself out there. The majority of my arrests right now are felonies-drugs and violent crimes. And those are big bail bonds-like forty grand and up-but these guys carry risks, you know? They're combative. You get the misdemeanors, like DUI or something, and they're not violent, they're just like, "Aww, you've got me. Screw it." They're on the phone the next minute, "Dad, can you come get me out again?" But then you get these guys with the drugs and a.s.saults and a lot of them are third strikers. You know the "three strikes and you're out" law? That's them. So they've got nothing to lose by trying to kick your a.s.s. They're going for twenty-five to life anyway. So they get down. They get really combative.

Your general objective is just to subdue them. Get them to submit, get them restrained and into custody. But a lot of times, it's easier said than done. And if a guy doesn't engage you lethally, you can't go sticking a gun in his face no matter how effective it would be-it's kind of illegal. It's just like a police officer-if you shoot somebody, they'll investigate it, so you've got to be justified. If you're going to engage somebody lethally, they have to engage you lethally. You can't shoot an unarmed guy. So you've got to use your nonlethal measures. You've got your pepper spray, your stun guns, things like that. Little toys that are out there. I usually just carry a .45 and a flashlight so I can light up a situation, but I've got my toys too, and then a lot of it's manipulation, diplomacy, and confident bulls.h.i.+tting.

You don't even know how hard I bluff. I'm not an intimidating guy, but I know I know how to handle myself. And that confidence goes a long way. A good example, I just had to go arrest this guy-a big, scary, intimidating-looking Afro-American bodybuilder. Bald head, goatee, a weight consultant at a Sportmart. Just a bada.s.s bodybuilder guy. And he was a wife beater. So that tells you.

I figure I need an intimidation factor. So I get this friend of mine- he's like six foot eight, three hundred pounds, solid burly-looking boy, just bigger than a brick s.h.i.+thouse. He's not bada.s.s at all, he's just real intimidating-looking, but it serves its purpose, just a deterrent. I offer him a hundred bucks. He's worth it to me, I'm getting paid two grand.

Then I roll up on this bodybuilder at Sportmart. There he is, working-he's got a muscle on a muscle on a muscle. I tell my friend, "Just stay within ten feet of me." And I go up to the guy. I already know what he looks like, I got his mug shots. So I'm like, "Are you Reggie?" He's like, "Yeah?" So I'm just like, "Here's the deal. We're in a public place, I'm a fugitive agent"-that's what they tag us with now. "Bounty hunter" is kind of an obtrusive name, kind of sounds a little barbaric. So, "I'm a fugitive agent for the court. I've got a warrant for your arrest. I'm here to take you in."

Right away, his brain starts going. He's looking at me and probably thinking, you know, "This guy's half my size, I s.h.i.+t bigger than him." You know? But I stay calm. I'm like, "Before you do anything, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, but either way you're going to go. Your a.s.s is my paycheck. And it's nothing personal, you've got a little spousal abuse charge you need to go to court and settle up. So why don't we go tell your boss I'm your neighbor and your kid got hit by a car and I'm here to give you a ride, okay? That way you've got a job waiting for you-because you can rebail tomorrow. You've just got to get off this bail bond and get a new one. This one's kind of expired."

So he's looking at me. And then he goes, "And if I don't?" So I go, "Well, if you don't, number one, this big guy right in back here"- and I'm hoping to G.o.d my buddy's still back there-"he's with me. Number two, I've got a cell phone. I hit SEND, sheriffs rush in here, take you down. Not only will you still go to jail, you can pretty much kiss your job good-bye, they're not going to want you after this. So what do you want to do?"

Of course, I'm s.h.i.+tting my pants. I'm bluffing hard. I've got two deuces and he's got a king showing. I can't even turn around to see if my buddy's there because that might tip him off. But eventually, he goes, "All right, let's do it. I'll be right back." Now he's halfway mine. I'm like, "No, I've got to go with you. How do I know you're not going out the f.u.c.king back door?" So we go into Sportmart and he tells his boss this story about his kid. I go along with him, "Yeah, I just need to get him over to his wife and kid." I try to sugarcoat it, make it easy for him. Then once we get outside, I'm all over him like that. "All right, you're under arrest." Whoosh-whoosh. Hook him up, restrain him right away before he even knows what hit him. The next thing he says, "Where's all the cops?" [Laughs] "I was bluffing. Totally bluffing. There's my little car over there, get in."

Sometimes it doesn't go so smoothly. A lot of these drug dealers are very tough, especially the illegal aliens. They're going to get deported, so they really don't want to come with me. I just finished one, did surveillance for days, waiting for an opportune moment, finally found the dude congregating with a bunch of guys at a donut shop. I walked right up to him-and that's something where you don't want to be diplomatic or anything-you just want to show him who's boss. Just like training a dog. "Here, motherf.u.c.ker, I'm in charge, you're under arrest." But this dude just gave me an elbow and boom, football-style, just took off on me.

So we had a foot chase and I'm running and running and he runs out in the middle of a major intersection. Cars stopping, I roll over the f.u.c.king hood of a car. I finally tackled the guy and did everything right in the middle of the street. When it was all over, my pants are torn, I got st.i.tches in one leg, really beat to h.e.l.l. This guy, he's pretty banged up, too. I put his chin in the pavement. That's not super common, but it does happen a lot. I've been shot at too, that's happened.

Six years now, I've been shot at, come at with everything from a bottle to a knife, came up from behind, you name it. Had a wife come at me when I'm arresting her husband. It's endless. A month ago, I was working with a snitch source over in South Central. One of your best sources for information when you're doing an investigation is a snitch. You won't believe what the shoes.h.i.+ne guy knows or the b.u.m on the street. And you won't believe what people will do for a dollar. It's good to have a lot of snitches. And this guy, I showed him a picture. He's like, "Oh, I've seen that girl. Total crackhead, buys her dope from this house over here." So great, she's got to get her dope. So I'm waiting and waiting outside this crackhouse, and then the snitch calls my cell phone and says, "I've got to talk to you." I'm like, "All right, I'll meet you over in the corner." I walk down, I'm discreet about it, but that's one thing about a snitch, especially a little gang banger, territorial gang bangers around the streets of L.A. If you're at that level, you don't want to have a friend like me or a cop friend, you know what I mean? You just don't want to. And I'm talking to this guy, he gives me some more info. I slip him some cash. As soon as he walks away from me, a car pulls up and just blasts him. And I'm standing on the sidewalk and I literally had bullet holes all around me and he was dead.

s.h.i.+t like that f.u.c.ks with your head. Those are the days you say, "Man, I'm getting too old for this s.h.i.+t." I had to have a couple of beers after that day, thought about switching jobs. But I don't want to do anything else, really, except retire. [Laughs] And I haven't made enough to do that yet.

This is my livelihood, you know? I like it. Basically, I like it. I mean, there's a lot of gray area-moral issues-that I have to ethically feel okay about to do this job. But I do feel okay about them. This is a merciless trade. Sympathy might get you hurt. Being sympathetic toward a guy you're bringing back-there's just no place for it. It's nothing personal, I don't personally hate them, but I don't want to think about these people, you know, their lives and so forth, except to think about how I'm gonna bring them in. They got a wife, they got kids-that's great-now, how's it gonna help me track them down? You just focus on the manhunt-the dollar. The ends kind of justify the means. These guys are criminals. A lot of them are dangerous. So I don't really worry about them. I worry about myself and I have my own philosophy on the job and on life-the minute you lose fear, you're in trouble. Fear will make you a.n.a.lyze, plan your routes. Out of fear. A guy with no fear just goes for it and stuff goes down. I'll never ever say I'm not afraid. Fear is a good thing. Prepare for combat, go with fear, that's my life. Day to day. I don't know how else to explain it, you know? I guess it's just kind of a rare breed of person that does this.

There are guys in here who've done

just horrible things.

PRISON GUARD.

Franklin Roberts.

I've been a guard-or as the union calls it, a Corrections Officer-for the last three years at Sullivan Corrections Facility, a maximum-security prison in upstate New York.

I have different responsibilities on different days, but most of the time I run a cell block. My s.h.i.+ft starts at three P.M. When I arrive, the prisoners are locked into their cells. First thing I do is make rounds. I check every cell, make sure n.o.body's dead, that they didn't hang up. Then I start running showers for everybody who's on the shower list. I don't administer the showers myself. We have a control room that opens and closes the cells for us and I just tell the guy in the control room who's on the list. Then he opens their cell and I escort them to the shower.

When I've run through the showers, another officer comes and escorts one of the pantry inmates to go get the food cart. Then they bring it down and they serve chow. The inmates do all the serving. We don't do any work. I mean, this is not manual labor. Inmates do everything. We just supervise.

After they eat, the inmates get locked back in their cells and you make a "go around list," which means you just go around to each cell and find out what the inmates are doing for the night. They can go to the law library, their school programs, the yard, or the rec room and watch television. You make the list, so if someone's looking for them, they can be found.

We also do some random cell searches. If the inmate's there, they have to get out of their cell. Realistically, you should have two officers: one to watch the inmate, one to search. But with the state cutbacks it's only one, so the guy in the control room will kind of watch for you, even though he's also watching the whole block as well.

Inmates get alcohol and drugs. It's illegal, but they get them- usually through their visitors. They'll put contraband in babies' diapers, babies' cavities, women's cavities, and sneak it into the visiting room. There's only two guards watching the room so it's not hard. Then they leave it in the bathroom, or someplace where the inmate can pick it up. He'll go to the bathroom and hide it you-know-where. Then he'll bring it back to his cell and stash it, often inside the toilet. They have a lot of stuff taped under there. If you're going to do a real search-which we really don't do all the time-you get a rubber glove on and you go into that toilet. You also check vents in their cells. You'll see things tied and slipped down in the vent. Or taped underneath their beds. You gotta be industrious, but you'll find a lot of s.h.i.+t in these cells.

Other than that, you basically just hang out. You don't really work, you just enforce rules and make sure they don't fight and aren't killing each other.

There are so many rules. More than you can imagine. Like they can't have items worth over fifty dollars. And that's for the sake of someone not getting killed for like a pair of sneakers. I mean, if some guy's got a two-hundred-dollar pair of Air Jordans, somebody's going to knock him off for those sneakers. They'll fight over a lot less than that.

The young guys-the kids, they're a.s.sholes. Eighteen, nineteen years old-you know how it was when you were young? You didn't really know s.h.i.+t, ya know? You didn't realize there were consequences. These kids have no problem going at it with you, fighting everyone. The older guys, they don't go beating people up because they know that they're stuck here.

Two kids were fighting earlier today. I have no idea why. As soon as they got done eating, they just went at it. Another officer was trying to break it up so I ran over there to help. Not being very strong, I took the smaller guy. I got one hand under his knees and my shoulder under his b.u.t.t, yanked up, and he hit the ground. We got him down and twisted his arm up so we could get some cuffs on him. Then we took him over to his cell.

n.o.body's tried to attack me yet, but I suppose it's bound to happen. I mean, when you run a block, you're pretty much the only person in there with like sixty-eight inmates. And there are guys in here who've done just horrible things. There's a fellow who killed thirteen women. I've been physically scared on occasions. But the way I look at it is, if you spend all your time worrying, well, what's the sense of going to work? If they decide to go after you, you just try to hold your own-hopefully you have time to pull your pin and help will get there. We carry a radio with an alarm pin on it. You pull that pin and a response team will come for you. And they'll come fast because they know you're in deep, deep c.r.a.p, that you don't have time to radio for help or anything.

My biggest challenge hasn't been physical-it's been more psychological. At first the inmates weren't respectful toward me at all. They knew I was new. My belt was still all black, my uniform was crisp and ironed, and they could tell I didn't know what I was doing. They'd try to pester me and stuff. Try to get away with stupid things. Like they're not allowed to have like sheets hanging over their cells or blast their radios, but they'd play these games: "Oh, we're allowed to do this, we always do this." And I got stressed because you don't really know how to deal with that kind of stuff right away. And you're already stressing because you're all by yourself.

But now I got it down. They don't pull any s.h.i.+t on me anymore. Like the other night, there's this one stairwell on the block next to the control room and there's this one guy that keeps using it-just to walk up and down-but he's still not supposed to do it. He's a bad guy, but I talked to him quietly. I was very respectful, pulled him to the side away from the inmates, away from the other officer that I was training that night, and I'm like, "Monroe, man, you do me a favor-don't use the center stair, it's disrespecting me-the other inmates see it and stuff." And he's just like, "I gotcha, F.R., I understand what you're saying." And that was it.

I've learned that most of the time you can solve the problems easy by just talking to the inmate. I never yell at them. They get mad at me and they'll yell their heads off. Like if their cell doesn't open for break, they get ticked. It's just an accident, but they don't care. They go wild. But you don't yell at them. You never want to lose face in front of these guys. If they start yelling, you start whispering. You just don't play their game. They're like little kids. [Laughs]

This job is all right with me. I mostly just took it so I could get married someday and have a house and live decently. Not rich, but decently. And that's gonna happen. This is one of the better jobs you can get without a college education, so I'm happy.

I never feel like I'm in prison myself. The physical confinement here doesn't bother me. I know I'm leaving at the end of every day. G.o.d willing, I'm leaving. But I've gotten depressed a couple of times lately. There's a block we've got for people with mental disabilities, low IQs and so on, and there's this guy there who's locked in his cell for twenty-three hours a day. That's called being "keep locked." It means someone wrote a ticket on him because he was doing something wrong. So he's in there all day, and every time I walk past his cell, he's writing a letter to his mom, and he'll show me the letter and ask me how to spell a word. And I honestly-I feel really sad. It's not what the letters say, it's that some of the words he can't spell are like, "what" or "because." Really simple words. And it's sad how hard he's trying to spell them. It's like, oh man, you know? No wonder this guy's in here. Probably couldn't get a job. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed. Didn't graduate high school, obviously. He just did something, you know? And that's been depressing me.

But a lot of the other inmates are very smart. Smart and funny. And we certainly aren't friends, but we're kind of friendly sometimes. They ask me a lot of questions. They use the guards for entertainment-ask you whether you had some beers last night, ask you about your s.e.x life-that kind of stuff. Sometimes I answer. Depends who's asking. I don't get too personal. I won't mention names. They don't need to know my friends' names. They don't even know my first name, just the first initial. That's the way it should be.

A lot of guys have tried to rape me and

paid for it.