The essential job function of a bounty hunter is to find a fugitive from justice and bring that person back into the criminal justice system within an allotted amount of time. Bounty hunters are always on the move to find and apprehend bail jumpers as quickly as possible. As such, bounty hunters must make use of extensive tracking skills in order to get their man, and often travel across state lines in pursuit of the suspect.
Recently, when tracking fugitive David Flores, bounty hunter Kenny Nulph demonstrated the well-developed tracking skills that fugitive apprehension professionals need to have in the line of duty.
After being released from a 15 year prison stint, Flores was arrested three times and wound up skipping bail. Nulph and other bounty hunters were tasked with bringing Flores back into the criminal justice system. The job was not easy, and according to Nulph he spent long hours looking for Flores, even waiting outside the fugitive’s parents’ house for several hours on Christmas Eve – waiting for him to show up.
The team finally got its big break after tracking Flores to Los Angeles and then to Phoenix. In Phoenix the fugitive put a water bill and an apartment lease under the name of one of his aliases, which allowed the bounty hunters to track him down. After contacting the apartment’s landlord, and getting assurance that Flores was in fact the occupant of the apartment, the bounty hunters moved in to catch their prey.
The case of David Flores is not at all uncommon as it relates to how bounty hunters go about finding fugitives from justice. They often use the same kinds of techniques detectives use when searching for a suspect, including conducting stakeouts, obtaining information from informants, and using information gleaned from family and friends.
Additionally, the Flores case shows why bounty hunters, despite often requiring state licenses to operate, often find themselves traveling from state to state across the country. Suspects rarely respect interstate borders, forcing bounty hunters to go into various jurisdictions across the country in the pursuit of fleeing fugitives.