By the time we arrived, the cops were already searching the trailer we suspected our fugitive to be hiding in. We waited outside until they finished up and came out empty-handed.
“Now let Dog look for him,” Beth said to one of the cops.
When the cops said they couldn’t find the fugitive, something inside me knew he was hiding inside the trailer. This was where he was at when his last phone call came in less than an hour earlier. Plus, it had been raining for two days and nights. There were twenty-five yards of pure mud surrounding the trailer. I took a flashlight and began circling the perimeter. I was looking for fresh footprints or some other clue that would lead me to him. There wasn’t a single footprint, so I knew he had to be in there.
“He’s in there. I know he is,” I told the commanding officer. Beth and I went back inside the trailer with a couple of the cops on the scene. Most trailers are long and narrow. There’s usually a bathroom in the center, a living room and kitchen on one side, and a bedroom on the other. When we walked through, I opened every door possible until I got to one that was locked.
“Why is this door locked?” I asked the girl who was living there. I didn’t know if she was our fugitive’s old lady, a relative, or a friend. It didn’t matter to me. I was positive she was hiding our guy.
“I know he’s in here, honey. Tell me why this door is locked.”
“It’s not locked, Dog. It’s just stuck,” she said. “I can’t get it to open.”
“Look. I know he’s here. So let me tell you how this is going to go down. If I find him behind this door and he shoots at me or he’s with one of your babies, I’m calling Social Services and they’ll come take them away, got it?” I threatened the woman right in front of the cops.
“C’mon, Dog. Let’s go. He’s not here,” one of the cops said as they all stepped out of the trailer.
And then the girl turned to Beth and asked, “Can I get my baby out of the room before you search it?”
“Absolutely, of course you can,” Beth sweetly replied. If a mother asks if she can get her baby before we search a place, we know our guy’s in there. Beth and I gave each other “the look,” which is a particular exchange of glances that we call our “Bonnie and Clyde” look. Our eyes grow wide and we don’t have to speak a word—we just know what’s coming next.
No sooner did the girl have the baby in her arms than I was right there behind her searching the room. As I knelt down to look under the bed, I saw the seam of an old pair of jeans through the slat of the closet door.
“Either those are really dirty jeans and they’re standing up all by themselves or we’ve got a real mofo hiding in the closet! FREEZE!” I yelled.
When they heard the commotion, the cops came rushing back into the room. I looked up at the three stooges standing there and said, “We got him.”
Beth walked over to the sheriff, pointed her forefinger right at me, and said, “He got him!”
In the meantime, our guy refused to come out of the trailer. He began whining like a girl. “You can’t let him take me. I don’t want to be caught by Dog. He’s going to kill me! Help! Somebody, anybody!” He was swinging his arms and kicking his feet, doing everything he could to avoid being taken by the Dog. I finally put him in a headlock and carried him out under my arm like a football.
The cops were embarrassed by their inability to find the guy. There was no way they’d ever tell the truth in their report. I handed the cuffed prisoner over to the local deputy, who put him in the back of a patrol car. One of the cops told me the guy we caught was a member of the Aryan Nations. Beth and I were stunned, because he was being such a sissy. Being stuffed into the back of a cruiser made the guy even more irate than he already was. He began calling me names, saying I was a half-breed mofo and that the Brotherhood was out to kill me. I didn’t pay much attention.
When you’re cuffed with your hands behind your back, the only thing you can do is move your upper body around. Suddenly, the guy started banging his head against the Plexiglas shield between the front and back seats of the police car. He hit his head so hard that he busted it open. No one did a thing except let the poor bastard bleed in the backseat.
Every now and again, I caught a glimpse of Beth, who was standing next to the patrol car and had balanced her flashlight in her cleavage, shining the bright light right in his eyes. “You’re a punk-ass jerk!” she’d hiss, and then whenever the cops strolled by, she’d quickly turn her flashlight in the opposite direction, and look around, whistling. When they’d turn around again, she’d shine that light right back in his face. Eventually, an officer caught her in the act.
“Ma’am,” he said. “You have your light in the prisoner’s eyes. Would you kindly turn it off?”
Beth acted as though she didn’t realize what she had been doing. “Oh really?” she asked innocently. She removed the flashlight and began spinning it like a baton between her fingers.
The prisoner kept yelling at Beth, “At least Dog didn’t get me! Ha ha!”
“Whatever,” Beth fired back. “Dog got you. He’s just not taking you in. Either way you’re going to jail right now in care of the Dog—signed, sealed, and delivered!”
After that capture, I went through about a year or so of guys on the run getting caught by the cops and telling them, “Thank God you got me, because I didn’t want to get brought in by Dog.” For whatever reason, they feared being caught by me more than the police. I never understood it because I’m the guy who will buy you a Coke, give you a smoke, and let you call your old lady or momma before taking you in. Their logic never made any sense to me.
A lot of criminals like to brag they’re the one that got away from the Dog. Let me tell you something about that. No one gets away from me. Not now—not ever. In an ironic twist, a few years ago my brother Mike was in jail. He called to tell me about a guy I put in the joint who loaned him a couple of cigarettes.
“Is he mad at you because I popped him?” I asked.
Mike quickly shot back, “No! He really likes me. And everyone in here loves this guy.”
“Why is that?” I was curious to know the reason.
“Because you put him in here,” Mike answered. “The guys you capture, Dog, they’re the coolest cats in jail. They’ve got bragging rights no one else has. It took the Dog to capture and put him in this hellhole and not some cop.”
That was the first time it had ever occurred to me that it was prestigious to be caught by the Dog.
Our conversation got me thinking about what it would be like if I someday ran for sheriff. I’d like to find some small town that has criminals running amok. I’d be just like Sheriff Buford Pusser in Walking Tall, doing whatever was needed to whip that town back into shape. I’d be incorruptible and intolerant of crime, while cleaning up the streets and making the town a safer place to live.
Whenever I go to small towns or big cities, I go without fear. Whether it’s Medicine Hat, Canada, with a population of fifty thousand; south central Los Angeles; or Harlem, New York—I’m not afraid to get in the trenches and meet the people in troubled places and try to help them see there’s a better way.
While I was up in Canada in 2008 doing an appearance in Medicine Hat, some of the local police officers began telling me of a particularly bad area of town they named the “needle district.” The officers said they didn’t like to go into that area of town because the hookers and junkies were known to stick you with their dirty old needles. They asked my opinion on how to clean up the district.
“You want my thoughts, fellas? All right. Here’s what I think you need to do. First, you’ve got to start driving through the streets. Then, you’ve got to get out of your patrol cars. If someone tries to stab you with a needle, break their arm. Take your billy club out of the holster, walk down the street, and use it if you have to. It’s as simple as that.” When you go to dangerous areas with no fear of law enforcement, you have to believe you’re Superman. That fearless attitude is how I face every risky situa
tion I’m in on a daily basis.
Bounty hunting has led me to some of the most dangerous places in the country. Although I may be unsure of my surroundings from time to time, as I search a violent neighborhood, crowded street, or dark back alley, I can never let doubt or fear creep into my mind. If I do, I know I’m a goner. I have to have supreme confidence in my ability to track a fugitive down no matter where I am. That’s not to say I take any environment for granted. On the contrary, my head has to be on a swivel at all times, no matter what. But I never limit any hunt simply because a fugitive has run off and hidden in a bad area. As everyone already knows, I will go to the far ends of the earth to catch my man.
When I was twenty-five years old, I found myself hunting for a fugitive named Lupe in Compton, California. Back in the day, this was an area white boys didn’t hang around if they wanted to live. I took a cab from Los Angeles International Airport to the ’hood, armed with forty copies of Lupe’s mug shot. I started passing out the papers like I was the Pied Piper. Within twenty minutes I had fifteen kids behind me walking around looking for Lupe. I caught a glimpse of my guy just as he was climbing out the second-story window of his apartment building.
I cupped my hands around the sides of my mouth and screamed up, “Freeze! Don’t you move! This whole place is surrounded. Come out the side door right now or I’m coming up there to get you.” I looked around as if I motioned to someone and shouted, “It’s OK, Lieutenant. Stand down. Don’t shoot.” Of course, there were no cops, but Lupe didn’t know that. Within minutes, he surrendered and I got my man.
The police actually pulled up just as I was leaving.
“Hey, buddy, do you have any paperwork to take this man into custody?” one of the officers asked.
“I sure do. It’s right here,” I answered, handing over all of the documentation they needed to let us go. The officer looked at the papers and then glanced at me over the top of his silver aviator glasses. “Do you know where you’re at?” he asked.
“Yes, of course. I’m in Compton.” I wasn’t sure if it was a trick question or not, so I decided to be straight in my answer and not mouth off.
“If you were smart, you would get your ass out of here…NOW!”
I turned to the officer to make sure it was safe for me to leave with the prisoner and said, “Can I go?”
“Go? You ought to run. Do you know how lucky you are to be alive? Take your guy and don’t ever come back to this neighborhood again.” The officer handed my paperwork back to me and pointed for me to beat it.
As I was driving away, a carload of Crips stopped me. I got out of my car and asked if they knew the guy I was bringing in. Most of them did.
“Do you know what this bastard is wanted for? He’s a damned child molester. I hate anyone who commits crimes against babies!”
All of the guys started in on Lupe in the backseat of the car, taunting and making fun of him.
“Hey, Lupe, looks like you’re going away for a while, homie,” one of them said.
“And he’s worth ten thousand to me for bringing him in,” I told them.
Woops. I quickly realized I probably shouldn’t have said that to a bunch of gangbangers. I fumbled for a moment and said, “I don’t have the money on me. I need to turn him in first, so don’t get any ideas, boys.”
I flashed them a smile and we all had a good laugh. From the moment I started my career as a bounty hunter, I quickly realized I had more friends in the criminal realm than anywhere else. There are more people who love me there than hate me. That’s a good place to be in my line of work.
Throughout the years, I’ve routinely found myself in neighborhoods I probably don’t “belong in,” at least not without chasing a fugitive. When I was in New York City for the Martin Luther King CORE dinner, in early 2008, I decided I wanted to take a ride up to Harlem one afternoon to check it out. I had never been there before, but I felt a pull to make a visit on that particular trip. My usual driver in New York hesitantly asked if I was sure I wanted to take the drive to that part of Manhattan. Considering we were still dealing with the fallout from the National Enquirer tapes, he thought it wouldn’t be such a good idea to travel through a predominately black neighborhood. Despite his concern, I emphatically said, “Yes!”
On our way up to Harlem, I asked the driver, “Have I ever told you about my rodeo days?”
“No, Dog,” he said.
When I was twenty-two years old, I rode bucking broncos at a farm in Pampa, Texas. I’d never ridden wild horses before, but I knew I could do it. The trainer told me he’d give me seventy dollars for every horse I could tame. It took me two or three days to break the horses I rode, but I did it with ease and comfort. I got so good at it I decided to enter a local rodeo and try my hat at being a real cowboy.
I showed up with my long hair and biker boots on while the other rodeo riders had their hair cut short and wore traditional gear. I thought that my extra tall cowboy hat would help me fit in, but it didn’t. It mostly made me stand out. One of the guys turned to me and said, “What are you doing here, man? You don’t belong here. This is not your world, biker boy. You’re not one of us. Why don’t you get the hell out of here?”
I knew I had the talent to be one of the best rodeo cowboys in the world. I didn’t understand why this guy was telling me to get out before I even had the chance to prove myself. I’ve never been the type of guy to back down from a situation just because someone else tells me I can’t do it. Telling me I shouldn’t do it is the best way to get me to do something.
My driver understood what I was telling him as we made our way up the West Side Highway along the Hudson River toward 125th Street, the heart of Harlem. I wasn’t afraid to go someplace just because someone might not think I belonged. I knew in my heart that the only way to make peace with the people I’d hurt was to be among them. We drove through the historic neighborhood with the darkened windows of our shiny black SUV rolled down so people could see Dog was in the ’hood. That’s when our experience began.
“Dog, Dog! Hey, brother. Don’t worry. We love you!” A young black man chased after the car as we slowly moved up the street. He began shouting to his friends that Dog was in the car. People began walking over and circling the vehicle as we stopped for a red light. I shook as many hands as I could while several people snapped pictures of Beth and me on their cell phones. Our driver was nervous, suggesting we get out of there as soon as we could, but I never felt threatened for one single second. As the light turned green, I heard a woman shout out, “He’s a fricken racist.” I never saw her, but I heard her loud and clear. It broke my heart. Beth could see I was upset.
“It’s OK, Big Daddy. They loved you. They all knew you didn’t mean to use that word…” She did her best to console me, but at the time, I still felt like that woman spoke for so many others. I thought about the experience the whole way back to our hotel. It felt good to see my many brothers and sisters reach out their hands, as if they had accepted my olive branch of peace by being there and loving me that day. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Beth was right. They knew I’m not a racist. One woman’s voice couldn’t drown out the sound of everyone else’s love and forgiveness. Mercy was alive and well and, apparently, living in Harlem!
END OF INTERMISSION TWO
CHAPTER 17
(credit: Chaz)
One of the greatest benefits of being on television is having the chance to give back to the community. One of the ways I do that is by participating in local outreach programs where I can meet and mingle with people who are searching for a reason to change their lives, and need guidance to take those steps and encouragement to get there. A&E started a program called the A&E Recovery Project. Its mission is to reach out to the more than 22 million Americans who suffer from addictions, as well as their family members, friends, and colleagues, who are all touched by the disease. The Recovery Project was “created to break the stigma of addiction, raise awareness that addiction is a treata
ble disease and prove that recovery is possible.”
In the spring of 2009, I took part in a rally held in Honolulu to help spread the word for A&E, the network that had shown me that I was worthy of a second chance and was now telling thousands of people in my hometown that they were worthy of a second chance too. The atmosphere of this event was exceptionally different from most of my personal appearances. It wasn’t quite the somber feeling of a funeral, but no one was there to celebrate. It was something in between—a situation I’ll never forget. Not one fan asked for an autograph or to take a picture with me. They were there for help. For a few people, it was pretty obvious this was a last chance stop.
Some of the people who came to the event were looking for a helping hand themselves, while many others were there to plead for their children’s well-being. They were all looking to me to wave some magic wand and make their pain disappear. I wish it were that easy, but it’s not. Lord knows, I’ve seen it happen in my life over and over again. I’ve never been one for tough love, but I’m not a roll-over-me type of guy, either. There’s always a solution—the trick is finding the right one for you.
I always tell people that God will give you answers to all of life’s problems and worries. Here’s the thing—He won’t always give you answers that you will like. Sometimes the solution appears worse than the problem, like jail, illness, and such. If a couple of months behind bars is what it takes to get clean, then ultimately, that’s the right solution. I don’t want to help someone after they’ve been brought to their knees unless that’s the only time I get the chance to. I’d rather help people fix themselves before they bottom out. I know how hard that is firsthand from my own experience getting off drugs.
Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given (2010) Page 20
