Judelson Ira - The fixer: the notorious life of a front-page bail bondsman

So lets see what a day in these murky waters looks likeone day in particular.

I got a call from a lawyer I hadnt worked with before: Mr. Judelson, I have a fifty-thousand-dollar bond I need to get done. Wondering if youre available.

Sure, I said. Im always available. Whats the case?

Not your usual. A young man who warranted. Meaning, a kid whod already jumped a bondnot the best quality in a potential client.

I cut the lawyer off right there: Im not doing the bail. The last thing I need is to get involved with a kid whos a proven flight risk. Learned this the hard waylike, a couple times over.

But the lawyer kept at it. Please. All due respect. Just hear me out.

So I heard him out. A young man, lets call him Peterfor Peter Parker, natchwas at a club a couple years back with his girlfriend. They were in a mosh-pit-type setting, together with a group of friends and a whole bunch of people they didnt know. Someone said something or did something disrespectful to Peters girlfriend, so Peter and another friend roughed the guy up a bit.

That would have been the end of it except for a couple details. One, the guy they roughed up was the son of a New York City detective. And two, a fight like this, two versus one, was no longer considered a simple assault in New York State. Now it went down as a gang assault, which was a whole other ball game.

The cops arrested Peter and his buddy. Worked them over pretty good. Told them theyd get fucked in the ass and hurt in every which way on the insidenot just by the cons but by the corrections officers. Scared the crap out of these kids, which is what happens when you mess with the son of a New York City detective. Peter got out on a $10,000 cash bail and immediately bolted to Seattle. His buddy went to trial and was acquitted. Eventually, Peter was picked up for running a red light and was sent back to New York by the State of Washington on a warrant, and now they were charging him with bail jumping on top of the gang assault.

All of this was problem enough, but there was an even bigger problemPeter was a serious Spider-Man fan. He had webs tattooed on his chest and arms, the name Peter Parker tattooed across his chest. He was like one of these fanatics you see at comic book conventions, caught between fantasy and reality, only here the kids fascination put him in deep, deep shit. The reason? In prison, web tattoos put it out there that youre a white supremacistnot the kind of calling card you want if youre looking to do your time unnoticed. Since he was brought back to New York, Peter had been beaten daily by the Latin Kings, the Bloods, the Crips... and all but left for dead, so the lawyer was pushing for a plea and a six-week stay to give the kid time to have the tattoos removed.

The kid wouldnt last if he was sent upstate. Not looking like that .

Hes a simple kid in a bad spot, the lawyer said. Got almost a childlike mentality. He didnt get the webs because hes a supremacist. He got the webs because he likes Spider-Man.

I took the case.

Wasnt a lot of money. The mother was a single mom. An older brother would put up collateral for the bond, but most of that had come from a settlement in a car accident. Once I looked at the whole deal, I didnt think Peter was any kind of flight risk, so I wasnt too concerned about the numbersbut that was just me. The judge, though, he wanted some assurances that this kid would stick around all six weeks.

As part of the agreement, Peter would have to wear a monitoring device on his ankle, which hed have to pay for, so I prevailed on the ankle-bracelet company to go easy on the feesaid, Do the right thing here. Hell only be on it six weeks. Familys got no money. Kids already had it rougher than rough.

The day we got him out, the kids eyes were swollen shut. He looked like hed been run overtwice.

I knew this kid was going through hell. It made me sick to my stomach. All hed done was pop this cops kid in the face. His running buddy that night at the club had already been acquitted, but because Peter had jumped, he was now looking at one to three years on the gang-assault charge, with another one to three years on the bail-jumping charge, to run consecutively. All told, he could have been looking at four or five yearsan insane stretch for what should have been a nothing violation.