A bounty hunter is a private agent working for a bail bondsman who captures fugitives or criminals for a commission or bounty. The occupation, officially known as a bail enforcement agent or fugitive recovery agent, has traditionally operated outside the legal constraints that govern police officers and other agents of the state. This is because a bail agreement between a defendant and a bail bondsman is essentially a civil contract that is incumbent upon the bondsman to enforce. Since they are not police officers, bounty hunters are exposed to legal liabilities from which agents of the state are protected as these immunities enable police to perform their functions effectively without fear of lawsuits. Everyday citizens approached by a bounty hunter are neither required to answer their questions nor allowed to be detained. Bounty hunters are typically independent contractors paid a commission of the total bail amount that is owed by the fugitive; they provide their own professional liability insurance and only get paid if they are able to find the "skip" and bring them in.
Adam Charles Kokesh is an American libertarian political activist, radio host, and author. He was a U.S. 2020 Libertarian presidential candidate running on the single-issue platform of an "orderly dissolution of the federal government."
Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones was a seven-year-old African American girl from Detroit's East Side who was shot in the neck and killed by police officer Joseph Weekley during a raid conducted by the Detroit Police Department's Special Response Team. The Team was targeting a suspect in the apartment a floor above Jones' on May 16, 2010. Her death drew national media attention and led U.S. Representative John Conyers to ask U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for a federal investigation into the incident.
Jose Guerena was a U.S. Marine veteran who served in the Iraq War and who was killed in his Tucson, Arizona, home on May 5, 2011, by the Pima County Sheriff's Department SWAT team. Deputies were executing a warrant to search Guerena's home while investigating a case involving marijuana being smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico.
The 2014 Bundy standoff was an armed confrontation between supporters of cattle rancher Cliven Bundy and law enforcement following a 21-year legal dispute in which the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) obtained court orders directing Bundy to pay over $1 million in withheld grazing fees for Bundy's use of federally owned land adjacent to Bundy's ranch in southeastern Nevada.
Cliven D. Bundy is an American cattle rancher known for his role in the 2014 Bundy standoff. Bundy has advocated a philosophy opposed to what he views as federal government overreach. He is the father of Ammon Bundy, who in 2016 also led another armed standoff against the government, the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.
Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that the warrantless search and seizure of the digital contents of a cell phone during an arrest is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.
The 2014 Las Vegas shootings occurred on June 8, 2014, when a married couple, Jerad and Amanda Miller, committed a shooting in northeastern Las Vegas, Nevada. Five people died, including the two shooters. The couple, who espoused extreme anti-government views, first killed two Las Vegas police officers at a restaurant before fleeing into a Walmart, where they killed an intervening armed civilian named Joseph Wilcox. The couple died after engaging responding officers in a shootout in Walmart; police shot and killed Jerad, while Amanda committed suicide after being wounded.
On January 2, 2016, an armed group of Right-wing militants seized and occupied the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, and continued to occupy it until law enforcement made a final arrest on February 11, 2016. Their leader was Ammon Bundy, who participated in the 2014 Bundy standoff at his father's Nevada ranch. Other members of the group were loosely affiliated with non-governmental militias and the sovereign citizen movement.
Jon Eric Ritzheimer is an American political activist. He is affiliated with the 3 Percenters and formerly associated with the Oath Keepers group, and has used social media to declare his opposition to Islam and the Bureau of Land Management.
Citizens for Constitutional Freedom (C4CF), later also known as People for Constitutional Freedom (P4CF), was the name taken on January 4, 2016, by an armed private U.S. militia that occupied the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in the U.S. state of Oregon from January 2 to February 11, 2016. The leader of the organization was Ammon Bundy, son of Cliven D. Bundy, who engaged in a standoff with the federal government over grazing rights on federal land.
Ammon Edward Bundy is an American anti-government militant and activist who led the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. He is the son of rancher Cliven Bundy, who was the central figure in the 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada regarding unpaid grazing fees on federally-owned public land.
Robert LaVoy Finicum was one of the American militants who staged an armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January 2016. After it began, the occupying force organized itself as the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, of which Finicum was a spokesman. He was the only fatality of the occupation.
This timeline of the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge describes the progression of events leading up to, during, and after the occupation. The 2016 event played out over several weeks of public statements, occupying activity, and rallies.
On July 5, 2016, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot and killed by two Baton Rouge Police Department officers, Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The officers, who were attempting to control Sterling's arms, shot Sterling to death, which was preceded by Salamoni threatening Sterling with his gun before Sterling was restrained, yelling that he would "shoot [Sterling] in the fucking head" if he moved. Police alleged that Sterling had reached for the loaded handgun in his pants pocket. Police were responding to a report that Sterling was selling CDs and that he had used a gun to threaten a man outside a convenience store. The owner of the store where the shooting occurred said that Sterling was "not the one causing trouble" during the situation that led to the police being called. The shooting was recorded by multiple bystanders.
Mike Bivins is alleged domestic terrorist and former multimedia journalist based out of Portland, Oregon, whose reporting about civil unrest in the United States has itself been the object of news coverage.
On July 26, 2017, Jeff Payne, a then detective with the Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD), arrested nurse Alex Wubbels at the University of Utah Hospital after she refused to illegally venipuncture an unconscious patient. Footage of the incident released on August 31, 2017, went viral online. The SLCPD announced policy changes which would affect how police should handle situations involving drawing blood, and the hospital announced it would also change its police protocol to avoid repeating the incident. Utah lawmakers made a bill to amend the blood draw policy of Utah law enforcement, which Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed into law on March 15, 2018.
Joseph Owan Gibson is an American right-wing activist and the founder of the far-right group Patriot Prayer, which is active in Portland, Oregon and other cities within the Pacific Northwest.
On August 12, 2017, DeAndre Harris, a Black man, was assaulted by six White men in an attack in a parking garage next to the police headquarters during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. Images and video of the assault captured by photojournalist Zach Roberts went viral and became a symbol of the enmity underlying the protest.
Law enforcement authorities fatally shot Winston Boogie Smith Jr., a 32-year-old black American man, in the Uptown area of Minneapolis at 2:08 p.m. CDT on June 3, 2021. Smith was being pursued by a U.S. Marshals Service task force that apprehends wanted fugitives. The arrest operation had the participation of undercover agents from several local police agencies in Minnesota. The officers did not use body cameras or dashcams when apprehending Smith. Controversy over the lack of law enforcement footage of the arrest operation led to local police agencies ceasing aid to the Marshals Service's fugitive task force, and to changes to body and dash camera policies by the Marshals and other federal law enforcement agencies.
