Keep Bailing

By now the Heather Locklear arrest is no longer hot news. Locklear was arrested on Saturday under suspicion of Driving Under the Influence and take to the Santa Barbara County Jail. TMZ has a photo gallery of the CHP officers giving her the roadside sobriety check, her arrest and, apparently, post release.

Of course, these celebrity arrests play out before our eyes online and on TV. Like other aspects of life, we become quite numb to the idea. But that’s TV, right? We’re “regular people” and it would look much different if we were in those shoes. Maybe you think like briana on who posted a comment on TMZ: Read more »

Tom Rice, Field Investigator, and Kimberly Morgan, Supervising Investigator, with the California Department of Insurance (DOI), Investigations Division, addressed the September monthly meeting of the Orange County Bail Agent’s Association (OCBAA). The Department of Insurance is the state regulatory agency for the California bail industry.

Mr. Rice reviewed the division’s main objectives to protect consumers and to promote a healthy bail industry. He noted that the agency is complaint driven and complaints can be originated via an online complaint form or a call to the local office. He recommended that Orange County bail agents assist in policing their industry by filing such complaints because the DOI has no other way of knowing that there are problems. “We don’t know what’s going on in the bail industry without you guys,” said Rice.

As a whole, the bail industry is concerned with bondsman who are perpetrating bail scams and breaking the law. Not only is this a nuisance to our business, it is fraudulent to the consumer. At the Orange County Central Jail Complex, soliciting outside the jail by unlicensed agents and by agents offering illegally low rates is a real problem. Read more »

The Trial of the Centrury Touched It All:
Sex, Celebrity, Murder, Race… and Bail

Top 5 Questions About Bail Bonds

Last week I was at a seminar unrelated to bail bonds and I really took notice of how many questions people ask about the business when they find out that I’m a bondsman. Sometimes I think people are just making small talk. Certainly, “what do you do?” is a common cocktail party or first introduction question. Perhaps people ask me questions about “bail bonding” because most everyone is at least vaguely familiar with the Dale Carnegie principles about taking a genuine interest in others. Plus, we all know that if we ask about the next guy, we won’t have to carry the conversation.

For whatever reason, I do think people tend to ask more questions when they hear that I’m in bail bonds. So, I compiled a top five list of most asked bail bond questions from this recent seminar… Read more »

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, another nut comes out of the woodwork… Whatever your profession, if you’re visiting a blog, you probably have various feeds and alerts that you check out daily on your industry. You have to keep up with what’s going on and, of course, you hope you’re not the last to hear the latest about your competition.

Now, all industries have their share of distressing news, and some certainly are more serious than others. But, when you’re a bail bondsman, the morning news alerts can be particularly interesting. Take this morning, Read more »

If it’s not the first question people ask, it’s the second; “You’re a bail bondsman - like Dog the Bounty Hunter?” No, actually, my job is nothing like what Beth and Duane Chapman (aka “The Dog”) do on television. A day in the life for me entails talking with mostly nice people who know someone who has made a mistake or who the authorities think has broken the law.

Quite honestly, I had never seen the Dog the Bounty Hunter show start to finish. I’d probably caught 5 or 10 minutes here or there while surfing. Still, when I cruised by A&E the other night, the show was just starting; I thought I’d give it a shot and watch the whole episode.

Dog was in Colorado (possibly why I decided to watch; I have a long-standing love affair with the Rocky Mountain State, dating back to John Denver, but I digress…). As I watched, I was a lot more interested in the “how” of The Dog’s operation than the two fugitives they were chasing down. Read more »