Starting the evening of January 10th, 2021 and continuing into the next morning, Buffalo Police accompanied bounty hunters in a raid of a duplex. The bounty hunters were there to search for Jake Reinhardt's brother, who jumped a $5,000 bail bond for misdemeanors in Pennsylvania. But his brother was not there, and he has never lived there.

Reinhardt, the owner of the duplex on Oakdale Place off Seneca Street, constantly asked the police officers and bounty hunters for a search warrant. At least one officer and bounty hunter told Reinhardt that a search warrant existed, but one was never presented to him. Reinhardt pleaded with one of the bounty hunters to drop his gun because his fiancé and 3-year-old child were awake and inside, but he refused.

With long guns drawn, the bounty hunters barreled through the front door and into Reinhardt’s first-floor home as he continued to demand that they show him a search warrant. The armed bounty hunters searched Reinhardt’s house, and pointed their guns at his then-pregnant fiancé while she held their three-year-old child. The toddler can be heard wailing in fear in body cam footage.

Reinhardt asked an officer for his name, to which the officer replied, “We don’t give our names anymore.”

Neither the bounty hunters nor the police department ever produced a search warrant. Instead, a bounty hunter handed Reinhardt a bail slip. It was at that time that Reinhardt realized the two armed men were not police officers, but bounty hunters.

Outcome

The raid resulted in an investigation by the Erie County District Attorney’s Office. The Buffalo Police Department also opened an internal investigation.

Buffalo Common Council President Darius Pridgen asked the city attorney’s office to provide council members with the police department’s policies and procedures that govern how officers should interact with bounty hunters. However, the city does not have any such policies, despite the 1998 death of a city police officer who was struck by a vehicle while assisting bounty hunters apprehend a suspect. Six months later the city adopted a policy with the intention of ensuring that armed, unlicensed bounty hunters never force their way into a home in the same way as the pair did in with the support of Buffalo Police.

Buffalo Police Capt. Jeff Rinaldo said that although he had not seen the body cam footage or spoken with any of the officers involved, a detective told him that none of the officers entered the house or conducted any kind of search. “They stepped into the front of the hallway there, but my understanding is that they never went into the upstairs or downstairs apartments,” Rinaldo said at the time.

A civil lawsuit against the city, Buffalo Police Officers, the Bail Bond company is still being litigated. The attorney for both families and Reinhardt’s mother, whose home was also searched by the bounty hunters earlier, said the body cam footage “clearly” shows two different officers crossing a Fourth Amendment threshold by entering hallways connected to the front and back doors and flashing their flashlights inside.

“Buffalo police were absolutely illegally in the house, unconstitutionally in the house without a search warrant,” the attorney for the family said. The attorney waited months for the city to release the body cam footage and eventually filed an Article 78 lawsuit to compel the city to release the footage.

“They had no search warrant,” the attorney said. “They had no warrant whatsoever and the police were backing [the bounty hunters] up.”

Bounty hunters are private citizens granted special privileges from an 1872 Supreme Court decision. Those privileges can exceed what law enforcement officers are legally allowed to do, such as extraditions across state lines and entering a fugitive’s home without a search warrant.

“And the police were backing them up and speaking up for them and telling the homeowner when he was begging for their help that these guys had a search warrant for the premises, which couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s a complete lie,” the attorney for the family said.

Dennis J. White, one of the bounty hunters, pled guilty to 10 misdemeanor charges. The judge sentenced White to 60 days in jail, and two years and 10 months on probation upon his release. In addition to that, White cannot have any contact with the victims for five years.