2. It always makes a better impression on a judge and possibly jury should it go that far if a defendant is well dressed and relaxed in the appropriate attire rather than an orange jump suit and held in shackles while in court.

3. Being out on bail gives a defendant a better chance to fight his or her case. It puts less stress to “make a deal” and allows the defendant ample time to find suitable legal representation.

The store operators and their attorneys say they are legitimate businesses under California’s Prop. 215, passed in 1996 by approval of 56 percent of voters. It authorized legal use of medical marijuana.

Local governments that have taken action — in the courts or at city halls — against dispensaries include Riverside, Jurupa Valley, San Jacinto, San Bernardino County, San Bernardino, Lake Elsinore, Beaumont, Perris, Hesperia, Colton and Corona.

Cities are concerned that dispensaries are not adhering to medical marijuana guidelines, have questionable supply sources and attract crime.

“Cities have a problem because the stores are enabled by state law,” said attorney James DeAguilera of Redlands, who represents several dispensaries. “Cities have the right to regulate … but they do not have the right to ban what the voters said is legal.”

Store owners say they feel extraordinary pressure.

“When I went to a city meeting, it was like a criminal trial,” said Robert Hogan, who ran the now-closed Superior Healing Solutions in San Jacinto. He has since moved his store to Riverside.

Hogan, a former trucking company operator, said he spent $32,000 on legal bills trying to stay open in San Jacinto. His customers included a retired police officer with stage 3 cancer, he said. He left because his landlord was being threatened with a $150,000 fine, he added.

Lawyers for cities that want to ban the dispensaries say nothing in Prop. 215 authorized brick-and-mortar stores. The attorneys said they question the legitimacy of claims that the dispensaries are nonprofit collectives, serving only people who have a medical need for cannabis.

“State laws don’t even remotely contemplate storefront dispensaries,” said John D. Higginbotham, a Best Best & Krieger attorney who represents several cities in their fight to ban clinics. “This is not Grandma with cancer … these stores are facilitating recreational drug use.”

Further complicating the legal landscape: While California and other states have adopted legal use of medicinal marijuana, the federal government still classifies it as a dangerous drug with no legitimate purpose.

“What is often lost in the discussion is that marijuana use is still illegal under federal law,” said Jeff Dunn, another BB&K attorney who has litigated against dispensaries.

While states may create medical marijuana laws, “a state cannot legalize what the federal government has ruled illegal. This is about the complex interplay of federal law, state law and the city and county public safety authority,” Dunn said.

LEGAL TOOLS

The legal arsenal employed by municipalities include ordinances banning medical marijuana storefronts, imposing thousands of dollars in code violation fines on operators, and pressuring landlords to evict the stores.

That last tactic has been effective, DeAguilera said.

Cities send letters to landlords warning them of fines or other action because they are renting to a business that operates in violation of federal law, or without proper permits. The landlords take care of the problem by evicting tenants.

Two dispensaries in Colton recently shut down as landlords faced $1,000-a-day fines.

DeAguilera said the legal reasoning is flawed and will be fought in court. “The landlord is not responsible. The leases do not authorize the providing of medical marijuana, it does not condone it; it is silent on that,” said DeAguilera, who represents one of the most recently closed dispensaries.

Cities also have turned to Sacramento to define city and county regulatory powers regarding the stores.

Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed AB 1300, which specifically gave cities and counties the right to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries, although he believed they already had that right. He vetoed a bill that would have set state standards and, Brown said, would have preempted local governments from taking action.

“A fundamental part of being a city is to protect public safety,” said Dunn, who is chairman of the California League of Cities ad hoc committee on medical marijuana. He said the local control is “of critical importance for cities and counties, and extends beyond medical marijuana issues.”

PRICEY FINES

Fines can be severe.

As of late June, the city of San Jacinto had assessed $639,000 in penalties against the Nature’s Serenity dispensary, which eventually was evicted and closed. Beaumont fined a dispensary $600,000, until narcotics investigators shut it down.

Store operators have pushed back by asking courts to throw out the municipal codes banning dispensaries, or at least to put those laws on hold so they can do business while litigating. “The cities are not without remedy to handle bad operators,” said attorney Roger Jon Diamond, who represents G3 Holistic Inc. in its legal action against the city of Highland, a case now before the state Fourth District Court of Appeal. “Those facilities can be handled by a nuisance action or criminal prosecution if the establishment is not obeying all the rules and regulations.”

The Highland case has a tentative decision that favors the city, as does a case from Riverside. Arguments are still to be heard in both cases. Commenting only on his case, Diamond said he remained confident he will prevail.

He said he believes the question — whether local governments can ban dispensaries — will ultimately go before the California Supreme Court. But Higginbotham said if the appellate court rulings remain uniformly in favor of cities, there may be no reason for the state high court to take up the matter.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Law enforcement has mostly been in the background, but as the dispensaries proliferate and questions are raised about the sources of their marijuana supply and the legitimacy of customers, at least one official believes police may play a greater role.

Riverside County Assistant Sheriff Jerry Williams said about 105 dispensaries are in his county right now, compared with 35 last year. In addition, about 300 mobile dispensaries — vehicles — have been identified.

“Several of these dispensaries are owned by one person or the same group of people,” he said. “They sell to anybody with money. Basically these are just drug dealers.”

But it can take a lot of staff and about three months of investigation to gather enough evidence to seek charges alleging a clinic is violating the law, he said. Investigations are spurred by complaints over increased local crime and public marijuana smoking near a dispensary , he said.

Williams said some marijuana is raised locally, but “a great deal, literally tons of it, are coming from Mexico … and there is no question, if it is coming up from Mexico, it is cartel-driven.”

He said information is fostering a more skeptical view of the dispensaries. “We are seeing a change of attitude. … I think there is going to be a change. It won’t be happening overnight, but there will be a change.”

“State laws don’t even remotely contemplate storefront dispensaries. This is not Grandma with cancer … these stores are facilitating recreational drug use.” John D. Higginbotham, attorney who represents several cities in their fight to ban marijuana clinics

David Anthony Battle, 41, was arrested Saturday afternoon by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department Special Investigations Bureau, according to a release from the department.

Battle is accused of stealing the Ford Crown Victoria from the locked parking lot Thursday morning at the sheriff’s station off Acacia Avenue in the Valle Vista area east of Hemet, sheriff’s Sgt. Stephen Mike said Monday.

Deputies found the car about 5:30 p.m. the same day in a parking garage on North E Street in San Bernardino. The car was not damaged and nothing inside was stolen, Mike said.

Battle was found about 4:30 p.m. Saturday at a home in the 2400 block of Rosemary Lane in San Bernardino. He is a recent parolee on a burglary conviction and is unemployed, Mike said.

Detectives are still investigating how Battle gained access to the car. The keys were not inside when it was stolen, Mike said. The vehicle was a stealth unit, used in undercover operations, and outfitted with police equipment and weapons.

Records show a history of Battle’s attempts to impersonate law enforcement.

In 1994, San Bernardino police stopped Battle in a stolen rental car that was retrofitted to look like a San Bernardino police. Police said he had pulled over multiple drivers before he was arrested.

Police found Battle wearing a police helicopter pilot’s jumpsuit with Los Angeles County sheriff’s patches. The Ford Taurus was equipped with lights, sirens, a scanner and a police computer stolen from a Redlands detective’s unmarked patrol car.

In 2002, Battle was arrested again when he stole San Bernardino County sheriff’s badges, uniforms and materials from 1960s teen heartthrob Bobby Sherman, who was a reserve deputy. Police said Battle broke into Sherman’s car while the former crooner was working at the downtown San Bernardino courthouse.

Battle pleaded guilty to one charge of felony petty theft and six other charges were dismissed in a plea deal.

He was sentenced in 2004 to four years in prison for that crime.

BY JOHN ASBURY
PE STAFF WRITER

Christopher David Allen has pleaded not guilty to multiple sexual assault charges and had been out of jail on $325,000 bond since his July 2010 arrest.

He was apprehended Thursday night in Rosarito by U.S. marshals and Mexican authorities acting on information from Allen’s bail bondsman, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Riverside County district attorney’s office.

When Allen failed to appear for a July 15 court date at the Southwest Justice Center in French Valley, a judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest and increased his bail to $3 million, court records showed.

Allen had been staying with a friend in Mexico for about a week, Hall said.

Prosecutor Jason Stone said authorities were lucky to catch him when they did — Allen’s bags were packed and he was bound for Italy.

Stone said he received a confirmation July 11 that cold case investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had matched DNA evidence from an unsolved May 1999 rape to Allen. Detectives tracked down the woman and she picked Allen out of a photo lineup, court records state.

Stone said the woman had been working as a prostitute at the time and had engaged in consensual sex acts with Allen. She invited him to help her move one day and, when she declined to continue such acts, he pinned her down and raped her, Stone said.

Authorities have not decided whether charges will be filed in Riverside County or in Los Angeles County, he said.

Stone said Allen’s attorney was notified before the July 15 court date of the prosecution’s intent to seek a life sentence and developments in the Los Angeles County case.

Defense attorney Christopher Wagner could not be reached for comment Friday.

Allen was arrested after the Menifee teen reported she was sexually assaulted. According to court records, Allen had struck up a conversation with the girl at a Menifee fast-food restaurant and, over the next few weeks, traded messages with her.

On July 13, 2010, Allen picked the girl up on the pretense of taking her to get a tattoo, persuaded her to drink wine coolers and drove her to a secluded area near Lake Skinner, court records state. Despite her protests, he repeatedly sexually assaulted her, causing her to vomit, court records state.

At the time, there was already an outstanding warrant for Allen’s arrest in connection with a July 9, 2009, case in which he is accused of raping a woman he hired to clean a house in Menifee, court records state.

After the woman spent the day cleaning, Allen began to make sexual advances and the woman told him she wasn’t interested, according to court records. When he persisted, she struck him with a stick and headed for the door, but Allen grabbed her, court records said. The woman said Allen forced her to the floor, pulling off her clothes and raping her as she fought, kicked him in the groin and bit him.

By SARAH BURGE
The Press-Enterprise

The badge says, “Fugitive Recovery Agent” — better known as a bounty hunter. His job is tracking down bail jumpers.

In the business since the mid-’90s, Chiz and other experienced bounty hunters say most fugitives are captured without a fight. But across the country, bounty hunters have arrested the wrong people and injured or killed bystanders.

Recently in Wildomar, the mayor’s 46-year-old daughter, Jamie Scranton, was Tased and pepper-sprayed outside her home during a fight with a bail bondsman involving several family members, Riverside County sheriff’s officials said. The bondsman was taking a friend of Scranton’s 27-year-old son back to jail. The incident raised questions about what bail bondsmen and their bounty hunters can and can’t do.

When their colleagues run amok, some bounty hunters and bondsmen cite factors such as a lack of public or police understanding about their powers of arrest, as well as a “cowboy” mentality or lack of education on the part of the fugitive recovery agent.

According to a 2007 California Research Bureau report on bounty hunters, the state has never required licensing. A law ordering minimum training and other requirements for bounty hunters passed in 1999. They had to be 18, for instance, have no felony record and complete an eight-hour power of arrest course. They also had to notify police before making an arrest. But the law expired in 2010.

Now, Chiz said, anyone can be a bounty hunter.

“If you’ve got the nerve to go do the job, you can go do it,” said the former teacher and Hesperia resident.

On a national level, bail bondsmen and their bounty hunters have sweeping powers to make arrests under an 1872 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the state report says. Because they are enforcing a contract, courts have ruled that they are not bound by the same constitutional constraints as police. For instance, bounty hunters don’t need a warrant to enter private property.

In a 1996 paper in the Houston Law Review arguing for more limits on bounty hunters, lawyer Jonathan Drimmer wrote that courts view those on bail as having the limited rights of prisoners and have given bounty hunters the power to arrest them any time or place, to break into fugitives’ homes and to use force as needed to capture them.

bondsmen and the law

Bail bondsmen say they play an important role in the justice system, saving local government from the cost of housing defendants in already crowded jails while they await trial.

Jerry Gutierrez, chief deputy of corrections for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, said that bail bondsmen provide an affordable way for a defendant to be released.

“It does help out because that’s one less person in the jail,” Gutierrez said. “Any release helps. We are overcrowded.”

Those who cannot afford to pay their full bail amount often hire a bail bond agency that guarantees they will appear in court. The usual fee is 10 percent of the bail amount set by the court. Most defendants appear as ordered, bondsmen say. In California, if a defendant doesn’t show, the bondsman is on the hook for the full bail amount after 180 days.

Tony Suggs, a bondsman and director at large for the California Bail Agents Association, said most bondsmen hire bounty hunters to track down their wayward clients, or “skips.”

Suggs and Chiz both say efforts to regulate the fugitive recovery industry are a good idea.

When Chiz took up the trade in 1994, he said bounty hunters in California were a motley crew.

“There were bikers, people fresh out of jail, crazy guys that I would not even want to sit in the same living room with,” he said.

Some bail bondsmen and bounty hunters criticize what they regard as questionable tactics in the bounty hunting profession.

Suggs said some bounty hunters feel they can cross the line and get away with it because those on the receiving end don’t complain.

“We’ve got a bad enough image as it is. We don’t want you to act like Dog on the TV show. We don’t want to hire that person,” Suggs said, referring to Duane “Dog” Chapman, the star of the reality TV show “Dog the Bounty Hunter.” Chapman is known for his flowing blond mullet and rogue bounty-hunting tactics.

In April, a bounty hunter in a Canyon Lake shopping center parking lot shot himself in the leg. Deputies said it was an accident and the man was not arrested.

Last August, a Riverside bondsman was accused of kidnapping a client at gunpoint when the man failed to pay his $2,000 fee, court records say. The man said he was held captive until he and his girlfriend handed over cash, methamphetamine, marijuana and the title to a car. The bondsman, Damion Perkins, 37, of Bail Bonds United, was arrested in October and charged with kidnapping and assault, court records show. He has pleaded not guilty.

In the Wildomar incident, Fausto Atilano, owner of Fausto’s Bail Bonds in French Valley, barged onto the property March 28 with Bryan Stark, a bail recovery agent, sheriff’s officials said. Scranton said she, her husband and son were living at the house with her grandmother. The bondsmen were looking for a woman her son had befriended, who, according to court records, was out of jail on $5,000 bond for a theft charge and had not skipped court. But Atilano said she broke the terms of her bail bond agreement and was planning to flee to Texas.

Mayor Marsha Swanson, who lives nearby and witnessed part of the melee, said the men crossed the line. Atilano and Stark disagreed, saying the defendant they sought was in the house. Atilano said several family members attacked and injured him after he had handcuffed his client. He said he used his Taser and pepper-spray in self-defense.

Riverside County sheriff’s officials accused Atilano and Stark of battery and trespassing, but more than three months later, prosecutors have not filed charges.

Atilano, a veteran bail bondsman who often does his own fugitive recovery, said the situation in Wildomar was an anomaly.

“For the past 15 years, this has never happened to me,” he said. “Never, ever have I been detained or questioned for what I do.”

“We’re not cowboys,” he said. “We don’t just go and kick people’s door down.”

Scranton, the mayor’s daughter, said she finds it hard to believe Atilano’s behavior was lawful.

“I definitely know I had the right not to be Tased or Maced when I was not threatening anyone,” she said. “They think they can do whatever they want. So far, it looks like they can.”

Rules of the hunt

Zeke Unger, a Van Nuys-based bounty hunter who has served as an expert witness in court, said some bounty hunters are ill-trained “knuckle draggers” who abuse their power or create situations where innocent people might get hurt.

The law gives bounty hunters the power to arrest, he said, “but it does not give us the right to violate people’s civil rights.”

Unger said ethical bounty hunters follow a protocol, especially when they track a defendant to someone else’s home, where the resident might not know the defendant is on bail. If bounty hunters don’t want to wait for the defendant to come out, they should knock on the door and explain why they’re there. If the resident won’t cooperate, bounty hunters should call the police for assistance, he said.

“If you go into a stranger’s house and your bail skip is not in there, you’ve got big problems,” he said.

When other people’s homes come into play, said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles, “It is sort of a muddy area of the law.”

Bounty hunters can seize people, she said, but there are limits.

“They don’t have carte-blanche to do what they want,” Levenson said. “It’s not the Wild West.”

A head count of bounty hunters and statistics on the arrests they make are hard to come by.

Bob Burton, of the Santa Barbara-based U.S. Coalition of Bail Recovery Agents, estimates that, bounty hunters make upwards of 30,000 arrests a year nationwide.

Burton said bounty hunting is, by definition, a “maverick industry,” made up of adrenaline junkies drawn to the thrill of the hunt.

Even so, Burton said, bounty hunters make few false arrests and studies have shown they are very effective — the vast majority of fugitives pursued by bounty hunters are recaptured.

“If we were really messing up,” he said, “the bonding industry would have been bankrupt from lawsuits.”

By SARAH BURGE
The Press-Enterprise

“We’re pretty much on track, as these things go,” Sheriff Stan Sniff said, explaining that there have been six shootings by deputies so far this year, as compared to a total of 12 in 2010.

“These are hard to predict and they’re each kind of unique in their circumstances,” Sniff said. “Each one is reviewed on its own merits.”

Though the investigations of the shootings are still under way, there is nothing to suggest a systemic problem, he said.

Family members of the people who were shot are not so sure.

“There are so many shootings going on,” said Maria Munoz, 39, of Lake Elsinore, whose 20-year-old son, Arturo Fernandez, was fatally wounded by a deputy June 17. “There’s something wrong with these officers. They’re getting away with so much.”

A deputy shot Fernandez, who was driving a stolen pickup, during an early-morning traffic stop. Officials said he drove the pickup at the deputy and rammed his patrol car. Fernandez was shot in the head and died later at a hospital.

Munoz said she does not believe officials’ claims that her son intended to harm the deputy.

“I know my son,” she said. “My son wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

She said she doesn’t know where Fernandez got the pickup he was driving, but being in a stolen vehicle does not mean he deserved to die.

“My son had a good heart. He’s just not what they say he was,” Munoz said. “Our family is just heartbroken.”

Frederick Marhoun, of Lake Elsinore, whose 28-year-old son, Cole Marhoun, who was shot twice by a sheriff’s deputy Monday in a supermarket parking lot, questioned deputies’ training in dealing with the mentally ill. He said his son suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and the illness caused the verbal outburst that brought the deputy to the scene.

“I’m just grateful that Cole didn’t get killed,” he said.

Sheriff’s officials said a bystander flagged down the deputy, reporting that a man, later identified as Cole Marhoun, was involved in a domestic violence incident. When the deputy approached him, he became combative and tried to disarm her, sheriff’s officials said. A witness said he grabbed the deputy’s baton.

Frederick Marhoun said his wife was sitting in her car and his son was standing outside yelling. He said his son hears voices and hallucinates, a problem which worsened after a recent medication change. His son’s usual delusion, his father said, is that the police are trying to take him away.

“You can imagine what he thought when the cop car showed up,” Frederick Marhoun said.

He said several people in the parking lot ran to help the deputy.

“That just escalated it that much more. It was a horrific, horrific situation,” Frederick Marhoun said. “We have nothing against the police. … It became a life-threatening situation for the officer.”

He said his wife tried to explain that their son has a mental problem. But Cole Marhoun is a large person and his outbursts can be frightening, especially for those who don’t understand his disease, his father said.

Frederick Marhoun said his son lives with him and his wife and they can’t leave home alone.

“He’s a very frustrated young man,” Frederick Marhoun said. “He wants a life.”

He said he hopes prosecutors will understand his son did not understand what he was doing and will not pursue criminal charges.

Court records show Cole Marhoun, who was being held in the jail ward at Riverside County Regional Medical Center, was charged Friday with felony obstruction of an officer.

On June 19, deputies shot a 27-year-old they were trying to arrest in the Sun City area of Menifee. Sheriff’s officials said Jeremy Rodriguez ignored orders to get out of the stolen pickup he was sitting in, and instead drove the vehicle at them. He was shot, but is expected to recover.

Sniff said shootings by officers receive the highest level of scrutiny by the department and deputies are held accountable.

“If unjustified, severe sanctions can be applied in the criminal, administrative or civil arenas,” Sniff said in a written statement.

He said deputies receive thorough training on when to use deadly force. The key question, he said, is whether the deputies felt their lives or others’ lives were at risk.

“The bottom line is that we test, hire, train and equip the best to serve as deputy sheriffs in our communities,” Sniff wrote. “We cause them to frequently go in harm’s way … difficult decisions must be made with sometimes little information or warning.”

Assistant Sheriff Jerry Williams said when he heard about the shooting in Lake Elsinore parking lot, it brought back memories of Deputy Bruce Lee.

Lee was beaten to death with his own baton in 2003 while responding to a domestic violence report in La Quinta.

“That’s the main thing, that they go home safe at the end of the day,” he said.

Sniff said the kinds of situations that put deputies at risk might be on the rise. He said dispatchers have noticed an increase since last year in calls about suicidal people and domestic disturbances.

Though the reports are anecdotal, they are concerning, Sniff said.

“People are getting near the end of their rope,” he said. “There’s just an enormous amount of stress across all our communities right now.”

By SARAH BURGE
The Press-Enterprise

Jose Francisco Gonzalez was arrested around 5 p.m. Wednesday when La Quinta police responded to a report of a suspicious vehicle in the area of Sanita Drive and Arosa Way in La Quinta, said La Quinta police Sgt. David Adams.

The officers found Gonzalez walking toward a vehicle and detained him, Adams said.

The sergeant said that during questioning Gonzalez struck an officer in the face and ran to a nearby neighborhood, where he was captured.

The officer was treated at the scene for non-life threatening injuries.

Sheriff’s officials say Fausto Atilano, 48, and Bryan Stark, 46, of Fausto’s Bail Bonds in French Valley, went to the Wildomar home searching for a woman Swanson said is dating her grandson. The bondsmen had no legal authority to enter the property, sheriff’s officials said.

Atilano says they had a right to be there and insists he was the one assaulted.

“I was jumped and attacked by at least four people who were also at the residence, and a pit bull,” Atilano said in a written statement.

Swanson said her family didn’t provoke them. “They Tasered (my daughter) … in the stomach,” Swanson said. “No one was resisting, no one was doing anything.”

Lt. Mathieu Burden said sheriff’s officials are seeking battery and trespassing charges against Atilano and Stark. The Riverside County district attorney’s office was reviewing the case Wednesday, but neither man has been arrested.

According to court records and Burden, the woman the agents were pursuing, 23-year-old Erica Lynch, had been arrested in February on suspicion of receiving stolen property and released on $5,000 bond. She was not wanted by authorities and had missed no court dates, Burden said, but the bail bonds company revoked her bond.

LEGAL RIGHT

Because Lynch doesn’t live at the home and was not a fugitive, the bail bondsmen did not have the legal right to enter the property, Burden said. Likewise, the agents failed to notify the sheriff’s department that they planned to apprehend someone, as the law requires, Burden said.

Believing Lynch to be at the Shoemaker Drive home, Burden said, Atilano jumped a fence into the backyard and Stark knocked on the front door.

A fight broke out, during which a woman was pepper sprayed and shocked with a Taser and a man was “punched around,” Burden said.

Atilano says he, too, was injured, Burden said.

The bail bondsmen and residents called authorities about 7 p.m.

Lynch was in the home at the time and Swanson said she was taken away by the bail bondsmen. Lynch was in jail Wednesday.

According to the mayor, who answered the door, one of the bondsmen implied he was a Riverside County law enforcement officer serving a warrant. He forced his way into the home where her mother, daughter and other family members live, Swanson said.

One man pushed past Swanson, who said she refused to let him in, while the other jumped a six-foot fence and circled to the back of the home, she said.

They smashed her grandson’s face into the cement floor, breaking his nose, Swanson said.

‘Blood all over’

“There’s blood all over,” the mayor said.

Swanson did not name her grandson, who is in his 20s.

After Swanson’s daughter, 46-year-old Jamie Scranton, yelled at the men, one of them shocked her in the stomach with a Taser, Swanson said. One of the stun gun barbs was removed at a hospital, she said.

On their way out, one of the men pepper sprayed her daughter in the face when she told them they couldn’t leave before sheriff’s deputies arrived, the mayor said.

Swanson said her family was shaken. Scranton is having nightmares. Swanson’s mother, who is 84 and uses an oxygen tank, was home at the time.

On Wednesday morning, Atilano called the encounter “unbelievable,” said residents sicced a pit bull on him and suggested that the family got preferential treatment from sheriff’s because she is mayor.

Atilano wrote that Lynch had “failed to comply with the terms of her bail bond agreement” and “was determined to be a flight risk for her court appearance.”

“This attack included the brandishing of a knife, being charged at with a 2 x 6 piece of lumber, being punched and kicked in the head and body, while I was on the ground,” he wrote.

“Fearing for my life,” he wrote, “I defended myself and attempted to escape this attack.”

Atilano said he sought medical attention for head trauma and a dislocated finger.

Swanson could not be reached later to respond to Atilano’s account.

Burden dismissed accusations that sheriff’s officials showed favoritism.

“We just do our job,” he said.

Burden said investigators had to pursue criminal charges.

Bail bondsmen can’t be allowed to “run amok” without regard for the law, he said.

“They think that they have carte blanche because they’re in the manhunt mode,” Burden said.

“Sometimes when you’re in that mode, common sense goes out the window.”

By SARAH BURGE and JOHN F. HILL
The Press-Enterprise