by Patrick S. Pemberton, Knight Ridder Newspapers
Before reform, felons were hunting felonsSAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. - If he has to, Rick Dunbar figures, he’ll kick the door in, splintering the frame with a forceful foot. But after stealthfully approaching the house, Dunbar decides to knock.
“Hello?” he calls out, rapping the door nine times.
No one replies.
Dunbar turns the knob, and the door slowly swings open.
“Jim,” he says, scanning the empty living room. “Hello?”
The place appears empty, but when he sees a black cowboy hat perched on the back of a kitchen chair, Dunbar knows: He’s here.
One thing he has learned about Jimmy Senac is that he always wears a black cowboy hat when he goes out.
Near the kitchen, Dunbar approaches a closed bedroom door. He tries the knob, but this one is locked.
“Dunbar!” he yells, announcing himself to the other side. “Open it right now!”
Rick Dunbar used to be called a bounty hunter. He now prefers to be called a bail-enforcement agent, a title adopted after recent reforms in the profession.
While measures have been adopted to curtail abuses, enforcement agents remain less restricted than police in apprehending fugitives. They can conduct searches without warrants, pursue fugitives beyond state lines, and use reasonable force in arresting “skips,” those who fail to show up for court hearings.
The San Luis Obispo County’s only full-time bail-enforcement officer, Dunbar says he hopes to avoid using force, but he never knows which bail skippers are going to struggle.
Inside the bedroom, startled, but still half asleep, Senac scrambles to open the door, then raises his hands.
Senac is led to a faucet for a drink of water, and Dunbar allows him a final smoke before applying the handcuffs.
Senac had paid a bondsman 10 percent of his bail in July, allowing him to be released from custody while awaiting trial on drug charges. When his court date arrived, however, he was a no-show.
He missed his court date, he says, because he overslept. When he heard Dunbar’s name, he knew it was time to pay for his mistake.
Reputation pays off
Roughly one of every 10 defendants who post bond nationwide fails to appear in court. When that happens, an enforcement agent is contracted by the bail-bonds office to apprehend the skip. According to the National Association of Bail Enforcement Agents, the agent generally takes the job for 10 percent of the overall bail. But Dunbar usually receives 20 percent, he says, because of his reputation.
The 42-year-old San Luis Obispo County resident doesn’t want to reveal exactly what he earns, but he says his yearly income is a six-digit figure.
While bail-enforcement agents generally receive about $500 per skip, Senac’s case alone is worth $40,000 due to his high bail amount.
An Army Special Forces veteran, Dunbar briefly was a repossession man, reclaiming unpaid automobiles, before his mother introduced him to a private detective.
Dunbar liked the idea of investigating, so he chose a similar career: bounty hunting. Since he began 21 years ago, he estimates, he’s apprehended 6,000 fugitives.
Some of those fugitives have shot at him, wrestled with him and jumped through windows to avoid him. While he’s always concerned about the possibility of getting hurt, Dunbar says he’s not afraid to tangle.
But 85 percent of Dunbar’s skips are apprehended without incident, he says. And much of his time is spent on a computer or telephone, looking up information about his target, or hounding friends, relatives and employers who might have information about the fugitives.
Friends and family members might be especially motivated to help if they agreed to co-sign the bail agreement, making them financially responsible.
Police appreciate the help
Relations between Dunbar and local law enforcement have been good, said Capt. Gary Hoving, at the Sheriff’s Department.
Like most police agencies, the Sheriff’s Department does not have the staff to pursue every defendant who fails to appear in court. So the enforcement agent helps ease the workload.
“Mr. Dunbar has provided a very good service over the years,” Hoving said, “and we hope to continue working with him.”
While bounty hunters have committed illegal acts of violence in some areas, San Luis Obispo County has not experienced such problems, Hoving said. Still, he added, he’d like to stiffen regulations.
Sheriff’s deputies, he said, need 780 hours of training in search and seizure - roughly 10 times more training than bail-enforcement agents are required to have - before they can even put on a badge.
Dunbar said he goes beyond what’s required of him, taking an additional 108 hours of training each year. To help spread the word of professionalism, he speaks to students at local high schools and at Cal Poly.
Despite some negative publicity over the years, Dunbar said, bail-enforcement agents like him provide a tax-free service to the community.
“Someone needs to track down the bad guys,” he said, “and I’m good at it.”
Dunbar has a gun, but rarely carries it. To protect himself, he wears a bulletproof vest, knife-proof gloves and a walkie-talkie to communicate with a partner, if he feels he needs one.
The key, though, is to take charge of the situation immediately so no one wants to fight. Dunbar calls it maintaining a command presence.
“I’m pretty forceful in my vocabulary and my actions until I get the situation under control,” he says.
Rapport with good, bad guys
In Paso Robles, Dunbar is looking for Jonathan Wittmann, a 31-year-old facing misdemeanor charges for bad checks. Thanks to a tip, he knows Wittmann is in the room closest to the garage at his girlfriend’s place.
Dunbar walks up to a door, while Luis Perez - a student training to be a bail-enforcement officer - waits a short distance behind.
When Dunbar opens the door, he sees Wittmann to his left.
“Jonathan! How ya doin’?” Dunbar approaches a bed where Wittmann is sleeping. “Let me see your hands. Slide on out. To the ground!”
Wearing only a pair of shorts, Wittmann heads for the floor at the end of the bed. Meanwhile, Dunbar looks to the other side of the room, where a young woman and a little boy are sitting on a couch, frightened and confused.
“Hello,” Dunbar says, suddenly soft-spoken. “How are you?”
“I was fine until y’all came here,” the woman replies.
Dunbar turns back to Wittmann, who’s on the ground, face first.
“You don’t respond to messages, dude?”
“I’ve been trying to call.”
“Twenty-four hours, seven days a week,” Dunbar says more firmly. “You don’t make one attempt to call us.”
“I was gonna call you today.”
Wittmann moves, and Dunbar shoves his head to the ground, bouncing it off the floor. “If I tell you to move, you move! If I tell you to breathe, you breathe.”
On the floor, Wittmann complains that he was arrested on minor charges.
“If you raise your voice to me one more time,” Dunbar says, “you’re gonna wind up in a stretcher.”
Dunbar remains stern with Wittmann as he places him in his Durango. But later, as they head toward the jail, his mood lightens.
Every case can be volatile, Dunbar says. So once a bail skipper is apprehended, he tries to defuse the potentially violent situation with humor and courtesy.
“I have a good rapport with both the good guys and the bad guys,” he said. “That’s what makes me good.”
He tries to separate his work life from his home life, said his fiancee, Sherry, but he sometimes brings his work home with him.
“He has a very strong sense of right and wrong,” said Sherry, who asked that her last name not be published for fear of retaliation. “And he feels good when he can get criminals off the street.”
At home, Dunbar prefers to focus on his hobbies: camping, working out at the gym, cruising on his Harley, racing his speedboat and spending time with his two teenage daughters.
Dunbar keeps his daughters apprised of potentially dangerous cases, and he regularly checks in with them - sometimes with a skip in his back seat.
“There’s only a couple of things in the world that scare me,” he joked. “Not hearing from my kids and a woman scorned.”