Friday, March 11, 2011

Why, oh why...

... do bondsmen insist on calling everything a B.O.B??????

Gotta blow off some steam here. A B.O.B. should be simple. One address, maybe 2, and we get the guy. The bondsmen always say it's that simple, anyway. In my opinion, if it isn't that simple it ain't really a B.O.B.

We're after a guy now that got arrested back in December and bonded out. That bondsman B.O.B.'d him and our client bailed him again. (Hello?) I don't know how they conduct business, but apparently his girlfriend did all the paperwork and he never so much as went into the office. He was supposed to go in and do his part later, and never did. He also never made his payments, nor did his girlfriend. So the bondsman waited three weeks before calling us. We got the file Wednesday, and it turns out the last time anyone saw him was Tuesday. Funny how that works.

Now we've put in 30 man-hours or so on this guy trying to track him down and he's a ghost. We've been in his house, and there's no sign that he's ever been there. We've been to his workplace and he's called in sick since Wednesday.

If the damn bondsman had just called us sooner it woulda been a simple pickup. Now they're going to have to pay forfeiture rates on what is still, technically, a B.O.B. Which has brought in no money at all.

Cretins.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Butt Neckid!

Out to Canyon Lake the other night (The whole crew: The Boss, Miss M, Master P, Jester, Elvis, and I) to pick up another wife-beater. At his first address he'd moved and the people there knew nothing about him. The neighbor, though, when he got over his fright ("Who's there, honey?" "Some very intimidating law enforcement people."), knew a bit and had heard the guy was living with his parents in Sun City.

Well, we had that address too, so we headed out there. It was a gated community and none of the codes we tried worked. So we left the vehicles parked at the gate, climbed over, and hoofed it across their "recreation area" to the house.

Mom answered the door, and played sick. Man, she was really selling it, too. Leaning on the wall, falling into a chair, it was ridiculous. Told us he wasn't there, she didn't know where he was living, she'd seen him the day before, etc etc etc. All BS. Her husband was a white-trash SOB himself, and the guy's girlfriend (the one he originally went to jail for beating), who claimed to be their daughter.  We didn't buy Mama's story, so we told her we were going to search the house.

Well, she didn't like that very much. She damn near swooned at the idea that we were going to walk through her house, and weren't even going to ask her permission. Then, as I was walking down the hall, Daddy actually called out, "Don't open that door on the left!" Yeah. Really. So what door did I open first? That door on the left, of course. And what did I find there? A dumpy little man (5'11 and 225, but somehow still weak looking), buck naked, sitting on the toilet in the dark.

If he wasn't really utilizing the facilities when he sat down, I guarantee he did when that .45-inch muzzle was in his face!

Then he compounded the embarrassment  (em bare-ass-ment?) by standing around nude trying to change our minds rather than put some damn clothes on. We were about to just cuff him nude and take him in that way when he finally realized he wasn't talking his way out of it.

That turn-in was another pleasant surprise compared to IRC in L.A. Those of y'all who've been around or read old posts will recall our one-minute surrender in Nashville. Well, this one wasn't quite that good; it took about 20 minutes and two forms to fill out.

Then we headed back to L.A.for another guy. I'd been to court on him the week before trying to do an in-court surrender, and he didn't show. He'd been there often enough that the bailiff knew what he looked like, advised me he wouldn't be there, and tipped me that when he was on his meds he was fairly normal, and when off them he was downright nutty.


So we arrived at his address and ended up waking up the whole area, because it was apartments with no numbers on them. When we finally found the one he lived in and were searching it, I opened the bathroom door and out came the biggest damn pit bull I've ever seen. And if he were a big mean pit bull, he'd have been a big mean dead pit bull, because my muzzle was inches from his face and I was beginning to squeeze when it became apparent he wasn't actually attacking, but trying to scare me. Then The Boss pepper-sprayed him and that was pretty much the end of that.


The fugitive, we were told, had gone to New Orleans. That's strange, because the very next day he turned himself in in Los Angeles.


It was a fun night.