It has been nine months since bounty hunter and cop-wannabe Wayne Lozier was sentenced to ten years in prison on federal kidnapping charges after barging into a woman’s home without a warrant and driving her across state lines over a missed court date from a misdemeanor charge.
And by now it should be sinking in that he will not receive the same favorable treatment from the courts usually provided to actual law enforcement officers.
After all, a federal judge denied his motion to be released pending appeal earlier this year — a courtesy normally extended to police officers arrested for violating people’s rights — and last month, another judge expressed skepticism over his argument that he was wrongly convicted because of improper jury instructions.
Lozier, who has a history of impersonating police, was licensed as a bails bondsman in Louisiana but not in Missouri where he and his partner seized the woman from the home she was staying at after leaving an abusive relationship in Louisiana.
During the ride after realizing they were not cops, she asked to use the restroom at a convenience store where she pleaded for someone to help her.
“Can you please help me?” she said. “Can you call the police? These are not police officers.”
But Lozier, who was wearing a body camera, tasered her while she was on the floor while his partner puller her by the hair.
“I don’t need to be a cop to arrest you,” he said as he tasered her.
Then after they dragged her outside and placed her in the back seat of the car, Lozier told her, “you have no rights.”
“I own you. No civil rights. You’re property,” he said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“They’re Killing Citizens”
Lozier’s case remained under the national radar for months until this week when a popular YouTuber and former cop posted a video decrying the use of bounty hunters who he said violate people’s rights on a regular basis.
“They’re killing citizens, they’re shooting at citizens and they’re going inside of the homes of citizens without warrants and this has become a big thing but we’re not really hearing a lot about it unless you’re kind of caught in the crossfire,” said Abiyah Israel, a Black man who runs the We the People University YouTube channel.
Israel, who spent years working as both a police officer and sheriff’s deputy, last year published a book exposing the corruption within law enforcement titled “Living in the World of Tyranny: What I Saw and Why I Left.”
As critical as Israel has been about law enforcement officers, he is even more critical about bounty hunters.
“What if I told you that an everyday Joe, a normal citizen, can just go to the gun store, buy a gun and become a bounty hunter and what if I told you that these guys get it wrong more than the cops,” he said.
Israel went on to discuss other incidents where bounty hunters acted as if they were above the law.
Police Impersonator
Lozier was arrested in 2017 while working as a bouncer in a Bourbon Street bar in New Orleans after police saw him chase another man before tasering him.
Lozier was wearing tactical pants, a gun belt with a handgun, and a tactical ballistic vest with the words “State Agent” on it, according to the Times-Picayune.
Despite the arrest, he was allowed to continue working as a licensed bondsman in Louisiana.
Had he paid a $150 fee, he would have been licensed in Missouri as well, which would have saved him being arrested and imprisoned.
On May 9, 2019, Lozier and another bounty hunter, Jody L. Sullivan, drove from Louisiana to Missouri to arrest a woman who had missed a court date over misdemeanor counts of domestic abuse battery and violating a protective order, according to The Times-Picayune.
Lozier called the woman impersonating a St. Tammany sheriff’s deputy and coaxed her into providing her address, telling her he needed to send her some documents.
They then drove to the home where she was staying with a friend and entered without a warrant, seizing her from the basement.
The homeowner called police and a St. Peters police officer told Lozier on the phone that he was breaking the law but Lozier ignored him.
As they were driving to Louisiana, they pulled into the convenience store in Sullivan, Missouri where the confrontation inside the store led to witnesses calling police. But the cops did nothing.
“When police arrived, Lozier told them that he was a surety recovery agent and was licensed by the state of Louisiana,” according to the press release from the United States Department of Justice.
“The officers were unaware that Lozier and Sullivan had unlawfully taken the victim from the St. Peters residence earlier that day.”
But at some point during the drive back, Lozier realized he had made a mistake and dropped the woman off at a detention center in Mississippi where she remained a week.
Lozier and Sullivan were indicted in June 2021 and were released on an unsecured bond. But he was arrested again in March 2022 for violating conditions of his release, including leaving Louisiana, continuing to work as a bondsman and possessing a firearm.
All the judges he has faced since then have refused to approve his motions for release. According to the judge’s ruling from April 2024:
The Court finds that Defendant poses a serious risk of danger to any person or community if he were to be released. Defendant has pending charges in Calcasieu Parish for Aggravated Battery with a dangerous weapon, which are unrelated to the present offense but consist of similar conduct.
Defendant’s criminal history reflects a pattern of similar activity and shows Defendant’s propensity toward violence with arrests for aggravated battery with a dangerous weapon, several simple battery offenses, illegal carrying of a weapon, and harassing communication. Defendant’s criminal history also reflects an arrest for impersonating a police officer. In addition, Defendant has a criminal associate in the instant offense with whom he resides.
Defendant’s actions on pretrial release that constitute violations of his release conditions are relevant to the danger he poses to the community. Defendant’s actions in engaging in fugitive apprehension are the same kinds of activities and conduct that underlie the charges he is facing in this case.
A jury convicted Lozier in September 2023 and he was sentenced to ten years in prison in January 2024. Sullivan was sentenced in December to five years probation.
Israel, the former cop turned advocate, pointed out that the actions of the bounty hunters that day were not much different than the everyday behavior we see from police officers.
“I’m wondering why it was so easy to sentence these guys but we see it being so difficult to sentence a cop when they are doing the same exact thing.”
