State backs off plan to offer bail bonds after visit from "Dog"

Rep. Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, backed off a plan to enable the state to offer bail bonds at a hearing Wednesday highlighted by a visit from bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman.

Duane "Dog" ChapmanFTS Staff Photo

Carroll's House Bill 1382, co-sponsored by Sen. Brandon Shaffer, D-Boulder, would have allowed the courts' pretrial services offices to offer bail bonds similar to those currently peddled by private bondsmen and underwritten by large insurance firms.

Bail bonds are essentially short-term extensions of credit to front the fees that allow those accused of crimes to stay out of jail before trial. Bail bond agencies employ bounty hunters such as Chapman to track down clients who fail to appear. Bondsmen forfeit the total amount of the accused's bail should they not be produced before the court. Under HB 1382, the state would offer similar services, with public employees charged with tracking down deadbeat clients.

Chapman, a part-time Colorado resident and star of a popular reality television show, was on Capitol Hill to argue against the bill, which he said would create a safe-haven for criminals who recognize an over-stressed government bureaucracy when they see one. Private-sector bail bondsmen are on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars when clients split town, and bounty hunters provide a public service in tracking them down, Chapman argued.

Sean Duffy, a lobbyist with Denver's Kenney Group and representative for the bail bond industry, told Face The State Carroll "was trying to put the government in direct competition with a private sector program that works and costs the taxpayers zero."

"The system is not broken, so why are they trying to fix it?" he asked.

But not everyone at the Capitol was happy to see Chapman holding court with the media. According to one lobbyist in the hearing room, Rep. Rosemary Marshall, D-Denver, was overheard criticizing the mullet-haired bounty hunter's past incarceration and brushes with Mexican law enforcement.

Now, "Dog" chases the bad guys and lectures them on their seedy ways. Who says a man can't change his ways?