Bobby Brown’s gritty business: loaning liberty

Whether or not he has an interest in being a movie star, Bobby Brown definitely looks the part. Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses, gold chains on his wrist and a large diamond ring on his finger help to accentuate his words. He gets around town in a Mercedes Benz C-class. When he starts his car engine with the slight touch of a finger, the “Country – Willie” station gears up to play on the satellite radio. 

This is Bobby Brown’s town. He will be 60 years old in July and has lived in Colorado Springs his entire life. Bobby has been a part of the law enforcement and justice world for almost as long.

At age 21 he was the youngest police officer ever hired by the El Paso County Sheriff’s department. At 24 he became their youngest homicide detective. Ever since, his feet have been squarely planted in the Colorado Springs justice scene, working on various crimes like solving cold cases and helping out on homicides. However, for the last 20 years, Bobby has been a bail bondsman.

“It was an interesting transition, going from law enforcement and putting people in jail, then going to the other side and getting people out of jail,” Bobby said. 

His business, Bobby Brown Bail Bonding Inc., handles an average of over 13 of the 60 people that are put in El Paso County jails every day – quite a high number to be bailing out. Although 60 people are theoretically eligible for bail bonds, the actual number is much less because many cannot afford bail or are not allowed it.

The maximum amount a bail bondsman can charge in Colorado is 15% of the set bail, but due to the competitive nature of the business, a rate of 6% is more normal. 

“For bonds $1000 and below, it’s real cutthroat,” said Carl Brown, Bobby’s father and partner. “Even if we charge $100, the jail charges a $10 processing fee, and another $10 for a bracelet. It ends up being $40 more anyway.” 

Bobby is most widely known for his central role in the A&E series “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” where he teams up with Dog to help track and arrest fugitives. The show has had eight seasons so far, and, according to Brown, has a pretty good track record.

“They come in here, they fire up the cameras. We have never once put a file back. Never once not caught the person,” Bobby said. Pictures of Dog and other celebrities litter his desk, cluttered between walkie-talkies and photos of grandchildren.

Because Bobby is a local television hero and because he has 20 years of experience as a Colorado Springs cop, he seems to know just about everybody who associates themselves with the law in this town.

Such a strong foundation has its advantages to a bail bondsman. He recounted a $75,000 bond that was graciously delayed by the judge until Bobby was able to find the guy and put him in jail. 

“She loves me, she loves the show. I never had to pay the $75,000,” he said. “She knew I would catch him.”

Bobby was also confident he would catch the man. He did.

Though he no longer wears a police badge, his 20 years of experience on the force enable him to think like a cop. Doing so involves being able to think like a crook. Thus, Bobby is an exceptional tracker and bounty hunter when people skip out on his bonds.

In his office, Bobby gazed at a police record on the computer screen in front of him. “She’s definitely got money problems,” he murmured. “2006, child abuse, 2007, money. She got kicked out again.”

The record was for a woman Bobby had bailed out in November on a $500 bond. He scanned the almost 30 charges she had accumulated over the past few years for clues as to why she had skipped her court date in December. 

Bobby bailed her out for a case of domestic violence. After he looked at her records for a minute, it became apparent why she had skipped court. 

“You can fast-track the thing and take about 24 courses at about $75 a pop, but do you think she can pay for that?” He waved his hand at the numerous incidents on screen that suggested that she struggled with money. The answer was “probably not.” 

“This bond never should have been issued in the first place,” he said with a frown. Even though she skipped her court date, Bobby did not have pay her $500 bail. Bobby always asks for someone to cosign the bond, so there is another person that takes the fall in case a convicted person decides to jump bail and skip court.

“It’s hard to write a good bond,” Bobby explained. “We use a cosigner, because people in jail, they always know what to say. Everyone that goes to jail finds God, they’re never going to screw over their mom again, never steal again, they’ll offer to come water your lawn.”

Sure enough, a $500 check from the cosigner of the bond sat neatly on his desk, waiting to be paid to the courts. Still, having a cosigner is not a foolproof assurance that a bail bondsman won’t pay out of his pocket. If a situation arises where the offender is unaccounted for, the other half of Bobby’s profession comes into play: bounty hunting. 

He might not admit the full extent of his skill as a bounty hunter and tracker, humbly attributing his success to his tip lines and luck more than his talent, but he has a track record that would make any bail bondsman envious. 

When asked how many people out there still owed him money for bonds, he thought for a moment before slowly raising one finger.

“Right now? One. His bond was $75,000,” Bobby recollected as he filtered through his collection binders, each stuffed with papers containing vast amounts of information about clients. As he pulled out an especially fat file, he spoke about the subject of its contents as if describing an old friend.

“He’s been caught four times, but has always gotten away,” Bobby said. “He’s a very connected drug dealer. He put up a house. I thought it was a good bond, but being a big drug dealer, he doesn’t give a shit about the house, and he burned me for $75,000.” 

After knowing how Bobby tracks people down, one should have no doubt in his methods. He has his own way of doing things. In cold murder cases, he likes to start from scratch instead of relying on police reports and crime scene photos. Much of the base work can be done entirely over the Internet. 

“Without ever having to leave the office, without driving to every address, you can get a driver’s license, the family’s phone numbers, addresses, criminal records,” Bobby told his bounty hunting class. “I guarantee, within 30 seconds, I can tell you your social security number.”

In the office, a group of middle-aged trainees sat listening intently to his wisdom. Bobby’s capture stories seemed more and more like campfire stories as time went on. They were just as captivating, and each one contained a lesson: you can’t catch a car thief with a priest, drug dealers might have lookalike brothers, and you should never underestimate the power of Myspace, Pizza Hut, or Blockbuster as tracking tools.

One of the reasons that Bobby Brown is so successful is that his company runs on sound personal philosophies. When one employee made a big mistake, Bobby dismissed it instead of getting angry. He takes excellent care of his staff, something that can be taken for granted in the bail bonding industry.

“Everybody in 20 years that has worked for me, if a $20,000 bond goes bad and they should have to pay it, they don’t,” he said with the slightest tone of fatherly pride. “Having good relationships with your staff and clients is key in any business…even if half of them wear suits that are orange, and you sport gold chains on your wrists while your clients have cast-iron on theirs.”

“My business is a family business. My dad and my daughter work for me,” Bobby said. “The people that have come to work for me, the only way that they leave is that they’ll they think they could make better money elsewhere. They look at my car and ask how Bobby’s doing so well. There’s an old saying: ‘You pay peanuts and you get monkeys,’ so I don’t pay peanuts. I employ people that are loyal and honest to me.”

Say what you want about his Mercedes, but money is just as much a side product of Bobby Brown’s job as it is a motivator for it. He recounted one of his highest bonds ever: a $1,000,000 bond for a man who was entangled with the high drug trade and ended up getting his face horribly disfigured in a gang dispute, somehow ending up in a steep bail. Bobby did the bond for $80,000 against the will of his insurance company.

“They were calling every three seconds. I wasn’t picking up. They knew I only had a $165,000 house as collateral, which, if anything happened, I could probably only get about $35,000 for anyway.” 

“I have known this guy,” Bobby continued. “He couldn’t go anywhere in the world that I couldn’t find him, because he’s a freak. God bless him.”

The court approved the bond, releasing the man with an extensive list of restrictions: no drinking and no driving a car, among others. As it turned out, the first thing he did was go to the payphone outside, call his brother, and tell him to drop his Cadillac off at the jail. As might be expected when someone is just released under a $1,000,000 bail, undercover police were waiting in the parking lot to follow him. They observed him as he drove off to the liquor store to buy cigarettes and vodka. 

“So I’m happy, I’m driving back down after making $80,000 in about an hour and a half, and I give the court a call to ask if [the man] had been released,” Bobby recalled contentedly. The court said: 

‘He’s in custody.’ 

“I said, ‘What? He’s back in custody?”” Bobby cried. “And they set his new bond at $5,000,000! His account at Western National is right down the street. I took $40,000 and put it in his account, told him I couldn’t do his $5,000,000 bond, but I told him I didn’t feel comfortable taking all $80,000 and I was giving half back. He had one eye, and God help me, he started crying.”

Bobby Brown has little sympathy for those who burn him, but he treats all of his clients with respect. His courtesy and refinement are perhaps the result of being a police officer for so long, but they might have been qualities he inherited. His father shared similar sentiments towards the people that must be bailed out of jail.

“A lot of times it’s a mistake. It’s so, so, easy to miss a court date months down,” Carl said with a sense of understanding and experience. “They’re nice people. Some are just trying to beat the system.”

Though it may come as a surprise, Carl noted that one can meet a lot of good people while bail bonding. Bail bondsmen deal with down-to-earth individuals: drivers who had one too many cocktails, renters who have trouble with their landlords, couples that get a little too heated. Not to suggest that one doesn’t experience the rapists, murderers, and child molesters along with them, but such is the nature of the business.

“Ninety percent of people who go to jail are not criminals,” he explained. “In this business, having a heart doesn’t get you very far. But being an asshole doesn’t get you very far, either. When you start playing God and start treating them poorly just because they got caught up in the system, well…” 

When asked what makes Bobby such a good bail bondsman, Carl replied:

“His devotion. He cannot sleep when someone’s running. When he’s working on a case, he’s got his adrenaline working. He’s out to prove what an investigator he is. One time, he was after a guy and he was almost positive that the old boy was in the house. He was searchin’, searchin’, finally he saw the dryer was a bit open. The guy was hiding in the damn dryer!” 

It wouldn’t be the first time that Bobby Brown’s persistence and innovation has helped him catch someone. Not only can Bobby find someone who is hiding out in a house, but in an entire neighborhood. There are plenty of “open dryers” that leave clues. 

One guy he recently caught had been on the run for five years. Bobby had traveled to Chicago in search of him twice already. Illinois does not permit bounty hunting, which makes things extremely difficult for a bail bondsman…unless, like Bobby, you star in a TV show.

“I called them up [in Chicago] and explained the situation, and they started asking for autographs, all this stuff,” he said. 

Bobby was driving past a Walgreens in his target’s neighborhood when he had a wild thought: it had been Father’s Day just yesterday, and his target had a child who had recently turned one. Would he want a few pictures on his first Father’s Day?

“I asked if the guy had come in to develop any pictures, and [the employee] said she couldn’t give me that information. Next thing you know, there was $100 on the table, and I gave her my business card and said, ‘Now if you find any and feel the need to call me, that’s my number.’ I had just passed through the electric doors, not even to my car, and my phone started ringing, saying: ‘You should come take a look at this.’”

Bobby eventually got the guy, like always, and had quite a story to tell about the arrest. He is a damn good bounty hunter, and subsequently, a very effective bail bondsman. 

However, Bobby allows very few people to get close with him. This comes as no surprise, considering his local celebrity status.

“The thing is, I don’t know any of these people,” Bobby said. 

A man in the office explained to Bobby that he had cleaned up and found God, and would be willing to do good work for Bobby if a position ever opened up. Though the gentleman was a stranger, Bobby did not turn the man away or reject his card. He said farewell with a soft, “God bless you.”

Bobby rattled off plenty of old sayings throughout the day, but a particularly striking phrase surfaced as we were leaving the Justice Center.

“Someone much wiser than myself once said: to have class, one must be able to have tea with the queen, and then lunch with the garbage man,” said Bobby.

As Bobby Brown exited the building and the handshaking was winding down, he gave a final wave to the woman selling hot dogs.

“Hi Bobby!” she exclaimed with a smile. He treated her with the same kindness that he gave to every familiar face in the building, whether they wore a suit and tie or had a face full of tattoos and piercings. 

He’s still the same down-to-earth guy that he’s always been, and he’ll be glad to tell you so. If you see him around town, stop him to chat or ask him for an autograph. You’re sure to be greeted warmly. When asked if anyone has ever keyed his car, he responded: 

“Not yet.”

It’s doubtful anyone will though. It would be a surprise if the majority of Colorado Springs couldn’t recognize the car. And if that’s not enough, one would surely be deterred from marking the jet-black finish after seeing his license plate, which reads:

“ILFINDU”

Don’t do it. He will.