Kathryn Cramer

The Missouri Breaks in the 21st Century: "All bounty hunters push the limits and break the rules - that's how you get the job done,"

This AP article sums up just about everything that is wrong with the crazy US system of using bounty hunters as an adjunct to law enforcement. The bounty hunter system is a hangover from 19th-century Wild West days.

You get nutcases running around thinking that they are the Feds or the CIA or something: Calif. Man Accused of Impersonating Feds

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - A bounty hunter charged with impersonating federal agents says he was only doing the government's work - arresting fugitives wanted for immigration violations.

Federal agents say Jeremy Christian Brickner went too far, identifying himself as a U.S. immigration agent when he captured three people earlier this year.

Brickner, 30, now faces up to six years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty and was released Friday from jail after posting a $100,000 bond, federal authorities said on Monday.

``All bounty hunters push the limits and break the rules - that's how you get the job done,'' Brickner said Monday in a telephone interview.

Brickner operates ICE Warrant Detail from his Sacramento home, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in Sacramento by an agent with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Francisco.

Brickner is charged with falsely identifying himself while detaining one immigrant overnight Oct. 23 and while holding a mother and her 10-year-old daughter on May 11. The woman's estranged husband was trying to have her deported so he could keep custody of their son, according to the affidavit.

Brickner is charged with carrying a gun, handcuffs, a badge and business cards identifying him as a ``deportation agent.''

Brickner said he has worked cooperatively with federal immigration authorities for three years, turning over 188 fugitives in at least eight states. He said, ``We're serving them up on a silver platter.''

Brickner has been in trouble previously. Twice last year, he pleaded guilty to carrying weapons illegally, the affidavit said. In one instance, he was carrying a loaded gun and a Taser while using an illegal red flashing light to pull over a motorist in California.

On the two occasions last year, he flashed identification saying he was a fugitive-recovery agent, the affidavit said.

The use of bounty hunters by law enforcement should be banned. Anyone who thinks the use of bounty hunters is still a good idea should see Marlon Brandon in The Missouri Breaks, again.

The Missouri Breaks [DVD] (1976)
Violent, offbeat western with Marlon Brando as a bizarre hired gunslinger who employs any means necessary to quash a band of horse thieves terrorizing a rancher. Along the way he tangles with the rustlers' former leader (Jack Nicholson), who has given up his life of crime for the rancher's daughter. Co-stars Randy Quaid, Frederic Forrest, Harry Dean Stanton; Arthur Penn directs. 126 min. Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital mono; Subtitles: English, French.
Category: Westerns    Director: Arthur Penn
Cast: Luana Anders, Richard Bradford, Marlon Brando, Frederic Forrest, Sam Gilman, James Greene, Kathleen Lloyd, Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, John P. Ryan, Harry Dean Stanton

A Week's Worth of Blogging in One Post

A few entertaining items:

1. Alex Harrowell on a large quantity of disappeared guns:

   99 Tonnes of Guns

   Were purchased from leftover Bosnian war stocks for the Iraqi security forces by U.S. agents in BiH, and flown out of the country by Aerocom in four runs with the Ilyushin 76 ER-IBV, serial no. 3423699. But where they were delivered remains a mystery, and it is feared that the weapons actually went to the insurgents.

2. An American named Michael Chemidlin, was arrested in Sierra Leone for photographing the place where Charles Taylor's war crimes trial is scheduled to be. Hard to tell what's going on from the news coverage, but the implication is that he is suspected of some plot to free Taylor. See Sierra Leone: Suspected Special Court Spy, Three Others Charged and US man held for war crimes pics.
3. Further to the subject of fascist sexuality, Alex Harrowell emailed me a couple of hilarious links: BNP's council leader made film labelled as 'Marxist gay cinema'

   A BNP leader has produced and directed a "gay pornographic film", despite his party's criticism of indecency and hatred of gays.

   . . . and Video harms chances of BNP candidate

   Forty eight hours ago, few people had heard of the film HMS Discovery, a production in the "gay Marxist genre" for which Mr Barnbrook was producer, director and co-writer.

   But news spread quickly after activists from the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight leaked details to the area's two local newspapers, both of which put the story on the front page.

   Ah, the sexualizing gaze of the fetistish! Ban what you yourself find exciting!
4. Nick Bicanic sends in a link to a show available on Google Video about Shadow Company, his forthcoming documentary on private military companies and security contractors.
5. A really nice AP story (with an unreasonably menacing headline), which discusses how the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency helped with disaster relief following last fall's hurricanes: Spy Agency Watching Americans From Space:

   In an era when other intelligence agencies try to hide those operations, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, is proud of that domestic mission.

   He said the work the agency did after hurricanes Rita and Katrina was the best he'd seen an intelligence agency do in his 42 years in the spy business.

   "This was kind of a direct payback to the taxpayers for the investment made in this agency over the years, even though in its original design it was intended for foreign intelligence purposes," Clapper said in a Thursday interview with The Associated Press.

6. And finally, Robert F. Kane's trial for illegal possession of rocket launchers, in connection with Security Aviation's mysterious private military build-up, starts the 15th. I will be blogging it. As preparation for this entertainment, I suggest you read up on The Story So Far. For your convenience, I have posted a complete list of links to related news stories in my left-hand side-bar. For your convenience and for ease of reading, I'll also toss them in below the cut. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! (Especially the stories from adn.com, The Anchorage Daily News, which are quite excellent.)