Hunters of men - Bail bondsmen know how to track 'em down

Bryce H. Brown, owner of A-Bail Bonds in China Grove, has experience as a wrestler and a bar bouncer.

‘My gift is finding someone who doesn’t want to be found, says bail bondsman Phillip Bradshaw, shown working in his office.

By Peggy Judd

For the Salisbury Post

Broken fingers, dressed in camouflage, lying on the frozen ground for hours.

This isn't a hunting accident. It's a couple of Rowan County bail bondsmen describing a day's work.

"God grants people different gifts, and my gift is finding someone who doesn't want to be found," says Phillip Bradshaw, 50, of Bradshaw Bail Bond Co. in downtown Salisbury.

Bradshaw has been licensed since 1995 and works with his wife and another couple, all of whom are licensed bond agents. His father, a deputy sheriff, died when Bradshaw was 11, and family friend Marshall Swaringen became his mentor. Bradshaw later took over Swaringen's bail bond business. "You can run but you can't hide" is emblazoned on Bradshaw's company T-shirts.

Bradshaw admits his favorite part of the job is the chase. He's tracked and captured "bond skips" (a defendant who fails to show up to court after being bailed out of jail) in more than 26 states, the farthest away being northern Washington.

Bradshaw has only been involved in half a dozen real fights, and operates on the general principle that "if you treat a person with respect, they will treat you with respect," but he's learned a few lessons the hard way.

Bradshaw recounts how he captured a bond skip and, to be nice, handcuffed his hands in front of his body instead of behind. He took hold of the handcuffs to take him into custody, at which point the man twisted the chain in an attempt to get away, breaking three of Bradshaw's fingers.

He describes sitting in the woods for hours near a house, waiting for a boy and his teenage girlfriend. They had been arrested for drug possession and had run after Bradshaw had posted the girl's bail. His patience didn't pay off that time. The young lovers escaped to Mexico. It was months before they returned to the states, and Bradshaw was able to bring the girl in.

When tracking bond skips, Bradshaw sometimes gets assistance and reinforcement from other bond agents.

He's worked several bond skip cases with Bryce H. Brown, 58, owner of A Bail Bonds, based in China Grove. Licensed since July 1, 1997, Brown works with his wife, who is also a bond agent.

When Bradshaw and Brown work together to track a defendant, one might interview a contact while the other watches the people in the room, looking for gestures or facial expressions that could give away clues as to the defendant's whereabouts. After the interview, the two compare notes.

Brown has had 13 years of his own adventures. He has experience as a wrestler and a bar bouncer, and has never been injured during a confrontation with a bond skip.

Brown has tracked and captured defendants who have skipped town after he posted $75,000 and $100,000 bond fees. For bond fees this size, Brown works as surety bond agent — a bail bondsman that uses a state insurance company to underwrite the bail fee. If Brown can't return the bond skip within three years, the bond fee is forfeit and Brown is on the hook to repay the insurance company the full amount of the bond.

Fortunately for Brown, he's never been unable to return a bond skip with that large a bond fee. In fact, Brown generally only has to repay 1 percent of the bond fees that he posts.

Brown has his own strategy for returning defendants who run. When one of his clients turns fugitive, he allows a month to pass, giving the local law enforcement time to bring the defendant in with the arrest warrant that is automatically filed after a failure to appear in court.

After that time has passed, Brown begins his investigation and tracking. He has traveled as far as Wisconsin to seize a fugitive, but says the most common hiding places he has found are in Florida and Myrtle Beach.

Brown said that the key to finding a bond skip is to take away any hiding places the defendant may use, and any safe places. Brown investigates the parent's house, the girlfriend's apartment or the convenience store where a bond skip buys cigarettes. The circuit gets smaller and smaller until the fugitive has nowhere left to hide. Offering a reward encourages a contact to turn in the bond skip, further exposing him.

When chasing a bond skip, Brown and Bradshaw try to put as many factors in their favor as possible. Bradshaw is also a licensed private investigator. They share information with the local police and sheriff's departments, and both may even offer a reward for information leading to a capture.

When it comes to the physical seizure of a fugitive, they are reinforced with other bond agents, the element of surprise and protection: pepper spray, steel batons and Tasers ("as a last resort," says Brown). They both also have concealed weapon permits.

The bond skips most likely to get away? Brown says they are the middle-aged men who have an alcohol problem, grown kids and are not married. They have no roots that they acknowledge; their alcohol problems make it difficult to maintain steady jobs or relationships. They have no responsibilities, no bills, no car and no permanent address. In short, they are hard to find if they run.

Bradshaw's office currently has 14 bond skips.

Brown says he consistently has 12 bond skips of his own. "We clean some up and then we get new ones," he said.

Bradshaw is an equal opportunity bondsman with one exception: He won't post bail for someone who has previously broken a bond fee contract.

Brown will not issue a bail bond to a person who has had previous DWI citations. "DWI and other habitual criminals won't take responsibility for their own actions," Brown said.

Bradshaw and Brown both said they have good relationships with local law enforcement. "We are part of the court system. We are all on the same side," said Bradshaw.

Brown jokingly said that the "public opinion of bail bondsmen falls somewhere between prostitute and used car salesman." He continued, very seriously, saying, "We provide a valuable service to the courts and community by ensuring our clients are available or returned to court for trial. A lot of people think that bail bonding is free money because they only see the best part — that's when they hand me a bond fee. What they don't see is waiting in the woods in the rain all day for someone to come home. Or lying on the frozen ground in the dead of winter, your body heat melting out a place in the ground, working to return a person to justice."