You know what’s Crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Bounty Hunters.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The mother of 3 small children, ages 4,3 and 1, jumps up and looks out the peep-hole.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Her heart is racing. She is scared.
She tells me that she sees no one at the door, only a hand coming from the periphery, out of the darkness, banging angrily on the door.
The woman gathers her crying children, and hides behind the counter on the kitchen floor.
She is petrified. Who is banging on my door like this? she will ask me. They are banging like police, but they won’t identify herself, she will say.
The bounty hunters scream “we can hear you in there.”
The mother tells me that she has no idea who is at the door. She is afraid.
“What do they want?,” she says recapping her story. “Will they hut me and my children,” she adds.
From the kitchen floor, huddled, weeping, breathing hard, hushing her kids, suddenly the mother hears the door knob turn .
The bounty hunters are now entering through an unlocked back door without permission.
The mother’s heart races faster. The children are scared.
Suddenly a man and woman are inside the apartment. They are bounty hunters, but they do not identify themselves.
According to the mother they are loud and frightening and the man wearing a gun says, ” come out so we can see you or it will get violent.”
The woman asks the man who he is.
The man asks her who she is.
She is shaking, asking him again who he is.
The bounty hunter says he has papers for a man.
The mother demands to see the papers.
The bounty hunter says he will show her when he is good and ready.
“Where’s the man?” the bounty hunter demands.
The mother knows the man. It is her former brother-in-law. But she tells the bounty hunter that he doesn’t live here.
“you’ve got the wrong house,” she pleads.
The bounty hunter is defiant saying they are going to search.
And with that, the woman says the bounty hunters search the bedrooms, rifling through drawers and touching her possessions.
They are in her home without permission and now turning over items in her bedroom.
With the children shaking and crying, the mother moves her family outside. The bounty hunters, momentarily satisfied their suspect is not there, also move outside.
“I just wanted to get my children somewhere calm,” she will tell me.
She says she begins to lock the apartment door, when the angry man says “Don’t lock the door, or we’ll kick it in.”
“So the bounty hunters who have all ready entered your home illegally and searched your home illegally and have terrorized your family are now at your house telling you can’t lock the door to your own apartment?”
The woman nods affirmatively.
“they said they’d kick it in.”
The woman shows me the door frame which is in splinters. The lock is shattered.
The woman says the bounty hunters kick in her door as promised. They re-enter the apartment and take her i.d. and some of her mail.
I am holding a police report that indicates the bounty hunters will be charged with Aggravated burglary and vandalism and theft.
Bounty hunters have a lot of latitude to chase skip jacks as they’re known in the trade. But they have no more right to break into a 3rd party homes than you or I do.
I call the bail bonds company and ask the woman on the phone if she knows about this story?
She denies knowing anything and says they don’t kick in doors as a rule.
As I leave, the mother is packing up her belongings, her children’s toys, her clothes.
She is moving to another apartment.
“My kids are afraid to stay here,” she tells me.
I look at the broken door jamb and the mess on the floor.
I understand.
I wave goodbye.
Bounty Hunters. It’s a wild west mentality in a new millennium time.
It’s one thing to catch bad guys. It’s quite another to terrorize a mother and her children.
Life’s Crazy™