It was a typical late-summer afternoon last Tuesday at North Seattle’s Sandel Park when the cheerful playground scene split into chaos.
The cacophony of weapons firing, screams, honking and crunching metal exploded from the west edge of the Greenwood neighborhood park, as up to nine unidentified agents in bulletproof vests fired what turned out to be projectile launchers and stun guns at a moving RV. Some neighbors called 911 to report a shooting, while others used their cellphones to film as the RV smashed into vehicles parked nearby.
The chaos quickly spread into the surrounding neighborhood, as a man and woman fled the RV on foot and the agents — later identified as bail bond recovery agents, or bounty hunters — chased them. Two agents detained the woman in nearby resident Allison Blevin’s yard, leaving the woman on the ground with her hands zip-tied behind her back. Agents then detained their target, a 42-year-old man wanted on drug and theft charges, after finding him in another neighbor’s yard one block away.
Days later, residents like Blevins are still struggling with questions and anger.
Blevins said she isn’t sure why the agents are not facing criminal charges for their “unprofessional and reckless” conduct that day, including firing weapons near a busy playground and threatening to shoot a woman in Blevins’ backyard while her adult daughter and grandchildren were home.
Blevins said Seattle police had for months ignored neighbors' concerns about RVs around the park and the people living in them, who appeared to be using or dealing drugs.
“We’re so lucky nobody got hurt,” said Blevins, 44, on Friday. “It breaks my heart. I love all my neighbors and it makes me so sad that the city is allowing this.”
Seattle Police Department spokesperson Det. Shane Weatherford said the state licensing department, not Seattle police, is responsible for overseeing and regulating bail bond recovery agents.
According to Weatherford, the lead agent in last week's arrest called 911 at 4:18 p.m. to notify Seattle police that agents were going to serve a warrant near Sandel Park that day, as required by state law. But because of the way Seattle police prioritizes such calls, the information was never broadcast over police radio or relayed to officers in the North Precinct. The first neighbor called 911 at 4:29 p.m. to report what they believed was gunfire, Weatherford said.
“We’re trying to be aware and try our best to make (residents) feel safe while also conveying these are agents that are governed by Washington Department of Licensing,” he said in a phone call Friday. “They’re not SPD officers. They’re not deputies. And we just kind of went to assist them.”
In an email Monday, licensing department spokesperson Christine Anthony said the agency would look into the incident, including whether they were investigating any complaints about the agents' conduct. Answers may take a couple of days to provide, Anthony wrote in the email.
Representatives for Washington Fugitive Investigations, the bounty hunters' California-based employer, did not respond to inquiries. Herbert Mutter, one of three people listed in state records as an officer of the company, declined to answer questions before hanging up during a phone call Friday.
The man arrested last Tuesday remains in custody at Pierce County Jail, where he was booked on previous charges of second-degree organized retail theft, second-degree theft and possession of a controlled substance. Those charges stem from incidents between 2019 and 2020, when police arrested the man for allegedly stealing merchandise from a Walmart in Puyallup and two Lowe's stores in Lakewoood.
A warrant was issued after he failed to appear at an Aug. 5 hearing in the Walmart theft case, according to records filed in Pierce County Superior Court. A new attorney has not yet been appointed for the defendant, whose prior attorney withdrew from his case in 2025.
'Not the way you use a gun'
In the year since moving into Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood, Blevins said she has often worried about RVs parked on streets surrounding Sandel Park. She said she repeatedly complained to Seattle police and city officials about the vehicles, where people appeared to buy drugs, then use those drugs in the park.
But she said she never expected one of the vehicles to attract the kind of chaos she and other neighbors witnessed last week — nor for bounty hunters to behave that way without facing repercussions.
“I’m familiar with guns, and watching the way they handled their guns — holding it like you’re in a video game, sideways — it’s not the way you use a gun,” she said. “Then tying someone up and leaving them in my yard. It was so clear they weren’t well trained.”
Blevins said she plans to file a complaint with the licensing department about the agents’ conduct and has a meeting scheduled Tuesday with a Seattle police representative.
To be licensed, state law requires bail bond recovery agents to receive 32 hours of training, pass an exam and have a firearms certification from the state’s police training academy.
Under state law, agents are also required to wear gear that identifies them as bail bond recovery agents in 2-inch, reflective letters. The agents captured in footage of last Tuesday’s arrest do not appear to be wearing such garments.
According to Weatherford, the agents were armed with handguns, Tasers, a handgun-style device that fires pepper balls and a projectile launcher that fires 40 mm munitions containing tear gas powder. Seattle police are limited from using less lethal weapons like tear gas and pepper except under specific circumstances.
On Monday morning, one of Blevins’ neighbors shared a photo of a pepper ball she found in her yard, near where the agents had fired at the RV last week.
“It was found 95 feet away from the curb where it (was fired),” Blevins wrote in a message Monday. “If the projectiles were fired in the direction of the playground, they most certainly would have reached it.”
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