Editorial
Front Page - Friday, September 24, 2010
U.S. Marshals Service working hard to do its part
David Laprad
John Bieber is the supervisory deputy U.S. marshal for the eastern district of Tennessee. Working out of Chattanooga, the local branch of the U.S. Marshals Service performs several functions, including protecting the judiciary, apprehending federal fugitives, seizing property and housing criminals.
- David Laprad
When Jason Andrews saw the men who would be arresting him enter the Chattanooga Billiards Club, where he was working, he must have thought, “Who are those guys?”
The answer probably came a few moments later, as “those guys” were handcuffing him.
Together with the Chatta-nooga Police Department, a team of locally based U.S. marshals working out of the Federal Building on Georgia Avenue had worked to identify and apprehend Andrews, who was trying to make a new life for himself after allegedly killing a man in Florida and stealing $6,000 from his home.
John Bieber, supervisory
deputy U.S. marshal in Chatta-nooga, calls the Andrews arrest “a good snag.” One of his deputies, Paul Salayko, says it was a “once in a lifetime case.”
“You can’t make this stuff up: A gay porn star beats a guy to death with a sledgehammer, runs from the law and takes a job as the manager of a pool hall using his real social security number. The staff there said he dressed well, was good with people and seemed well educated,” Salayko says.
Although the U.S. Marshals Service has been around since 1789, the general public has only a vague notion of where the men and women with the gold and silver badges fit into the scheme of law enforcement in the country.
Thanks to movies like “The Fugitive” and nationally publicized stories like the one involving Andrews, people know U.S. marshals catch felons on the run, but when it comes to their other duties, many citizens are in the dark.
Bieber says a U.S. marshal is best thought of as a sheriff, only without patrol duty. In other words, the U.S. has 94 “sheriffs,” each of which watches over a particular “town.” President Obama recently appointed Bieber’s boss, James Fowler, to handle the eastern district of Tennessee.
Contrary to the old saying, however, there’s plenty of room in these towns for the sheriff and a host of criminals. Nationwide, the U.S. Marshals Service arrested more than 36,400 fugitives in 2009, clearing more than 39,400 federal warrants, and more than 90,000 state and local fugitives, clearing more than 117,000 state and local federal warrants.
Few arrests are as dramatic as the pursuit depicted in “The Fugitive,” in which a U.S. Marshal tracks down a doctor accused of killing his wife. Rather, Salayko says detaining a criminal is sometimes as easy as walking into the U.S. Probation and Parole Office, also located in the Federal Building, and slapping cuffs on him.
Some lawbreakers do make the process more challenging.
“I’m hunting down someone right now who’s violated his probation and is lying low. It’s going to take more work than going upstairs and putting him in cuffs,” Salayko says.
Criminals in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service usually spend time in a local jail while awaiting their trial or sentencing. The eastern district of Tennessee has about 800 prisoners in confinement. Bieber’s office has custody of about 350 of those detainees, largely due to the proliferation of methamphetamine.
“About half of the cases that come through here have something to do with meth,” the supervisory deputy says.
The local U.S. Marshals Service houses inmates in one of four area jails with which the agency has contracts. Once a prisoner has been sentenced, the marshals hand him or her over to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
While the U.S. Marshals Service catches a lot of criminals, Bieber says job one for the agency is the security of the judiciary. Down the hall outside his office is the courtroom in which the government tried Jimmy Hoffa. Bieber’s deputies spend a lot of time in the room, protecting the judges and keeping the accused under control.
“Every time a federal prisoner goes to court, a marshal goes with him,” Bieber says.
The U.S. Marshals Service also handles the seizure and forfeiture of assets. For example, the agency put the illegally gained assets of former stockbroker Bernard Madoff under lock and key. Locally, Salayko has taken possession of a house.
“I put up big stickers to warn everyone away, since no one was allowed on that property,” he says.
Bieber says the U.S. Marshals office is currently managing 18,000 assets valued at $2 billion.
To perform these diverse duties, deputies must be able to adapt to a variety of situations, “maintain their cool” and get along well with different kinds of people, Bieber says.
“We’re in a unique position with the inmates because we have to relate to them in our role as investigators and then deal with them as we take them to court.”
Salayko says being a good communicator is another key characteristic of an effective deputy.
“We deal with a broad spectrum of people, so we have to be able to change our attitude and thinking from one person to the next. I can’t talk with a judge the same way I’d talk with someone I’ve taken into custody.”
Working for the U.S. Mar-shals Service was a lifelong dream for Bieber. He interned at the Memphis office while in college, and then biding his time, he worked as a fireman until an offer to work as a deputy U.S. marshal in Chattanooga came through. Over the course of the next 13 years, he climbed the ranks to supervisory deputy.
The most common path to working for the U.S. Marshals Service, however, is the military, Salayko says. Of the ten deputies in the Chattanooga branch, Salayko served with the Marines, another, the U.S. Army and a third, the Coast Guard. A Vietnam veteran who served in the Navy during the fall of Saigon in 1975 recently retired from the office.
“It’s the next logical step after the military,” Salayko says.
While movies like “The Fugitive” play off the idea that federal officers of the law have little regard for local officials, and are prone to swoop into a situation and take over, Bieber says his deputies would not be able to do their jobs without the local, state and federal agencies with which they work daily.
“We’re as successful as we are because of our strong relationships with the other agencies in this area. We’d spin our wheels if it weren’t for the local guys. They’re the ones on the street, and that makes them an integral part of what we do,” Bieber says.
One of the many ways in which that cooperation has benefitted the residents of eastern Tennessee is in the branch’s apprehension of sex offenders. Following the enactment of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act in 2006, which requires sex offenders to update their location every three months, the local U.S. Marshals Service had a hand in prosecuting eight cases in 2009. Nationwide, the service apprehended 10,019 sex offenders last year.
“We’ve devoted a lot of resources to that issue. In the coming years, people are going to know us for our work in that area,” Bieber says.
If Bieber’s prediction is correct, the day could come when his deputies show up to arrest someone and, unlike Andrews, their target will know who they are. “It’s those guys!” they’ll say as they realize their days of lying low are over.
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