There is none so blind...

Got the call last Friday afternoon to head down to Vernon and arrest this guy on a B.O.B. No problem, thinks I, and jumps in his truck and heads to the guy's workplace in Vernon. A brief stop on the way to pick up another fugitive file, and there I was.

The management didn't want to take me to him, and the place was too big to go walking around searching, but they were helpful enough to show me the car he rode in, and I waited on that. Eventually he came out (not through the door they said he'd use) and approached the car.

The arrest went smoothly, no resistance, and his wife was right there to collect his property and save me a little paperwork and him a little hassle at the jail. OK, on to IRC.

Got all the paperwork done and in order and submitted it to the clerk. Then the trouble started.

A little background. There's a California law (Penal Code section 1299) that specifies who can surrender a fugitive. It includes several categories of people who can do this, one of which is Private Investigators. A later section requires that people in some of those categories (but not Private Investigators) must have certain certificates of certain required training. A Private Investigator's license covers all employees of the licensed PI. Thus, I was surrendering the fugitive under a valid CA PI license. Which means (if you care to read the law) that I am not required to have those certificates. None of that really matters, though, because the law expired January 1st 2010, and until they pass another one no-one needs any certificates whatsoever. Just authority from the bondsman to surrender on that bond. Which of course we had.

Well, there is indeed none so blind as he who will not see. The clerks at IRC know only that bounty hunters must have their certifications. Explaining the law to them didn't help. Explaining that the law no longer applied didn't help. Getting the Watch Commander to print out the law herself, see plainly what it said, and speak to the Head Clerk (who is apparently only one step from God Himself) didn't help, because the Watch Commander simply deferred to the Head Clerk's assertion that bounty hunters must have their certifications.

Never mind that I've turned fugitives in there before. "The Head Clerk Says" seems to be their mantra. So I called The Boss, who came down to see if he could resolve the situation. No dice, and they actually called a few deputies in as if to arrest me for making a "false arrest" of the fugitive. The Head Clerk Says. Never mind that The Boss has turned fugitives in there before. The Head Clerk Says. Never mind that the law was plainly written and easy to understand. The Head Clerk Says.

It almost got ugly.

Eventually they accepted the guy on his warrants, but not on the bonds. So the bondsman had to go down later and surrender him on the bonds. Now, we're probably going to have to go take a completely unnecessary class that covers insurance code stuff, just to continue to do what the (expired) law stated we could already do, which we've been doing for months!