This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” June 15, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DUANE “DOG” CHAPMAN, BOUNTY HUNTER: Is he up there?
BETH CHAPMAN, WIFE OF DUANE: Yes. Yes. Yes.
D. CHAPMAN: They’re leaving. Come here. Just hold the house. Come here. Stand down.
He’s got a gun. Dial 911 now from this residence.
B. CHAPMAN: Dial 911. He’s climbing out the window. He’s climbing out the window! Watch the glass!
D. CHAPMAN: He climbed out the window!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: That was a scene from “Dog the Bounty Hunter.” And Dog’s got a big miniseries coming up called “Rocky Mountain Roundup,” in which he and his team are on the hunt for a well-connected fugitive in Colorado. It’s on A&E.
And here with us now is a preview of all the action, the man himself, Duane “Dog” Chapman and his wife, Beth.
• Video: Watch Sean’s interview
Good to see you guys. Welcome back to the show. How are you?
B. CHAPMAN: How are you?
D. CHAPMAN: I’m great. Thank you.
HANNITY: Welcome back.
D. CHAPMAN: Thank you very much.
HANNITY: All right. So this is a three-hour extravaganza. And in the middle of this, you catch what, I believe five people?
D. CHAPMAN: I believe seven, wasn’t it?
B. CHAPMAN: Yes, seven.
HANNITY: She keeps track. You’re the mathematician.
B. CHAPMAN: Seven.
D. CHAPMAN: And I think it’s not a — it’s a miniseries but that’s not a Dog-a-thon. It’s three hours, but each week is an hour. So it’s not — you know, you don’t have to sit for three hours.
B. CHAPMAN: All at once.
HANNITY: OK. Right.
B. CHAPMAN: Good thing about this show is that we break up a huge check-writing ring, an identity theft ring in the first episode. You don’t really realize how many people are robbing you, how much identity theft is being done. Huge.
We got, like, 300 — what was it, 3,000 checks, 16 different I.D.s. There was four people inside the first apartment. All of them had, you know, four or five I.D.s apiece.
HANNITY: Yes.
B. CHAPMAN: You know, these people are robbing our community, our society. I mean, these are the things that are the real drain on our cities.
HANNITY: Identity theft is now becoming a big thing.
I was watching your show one night, and by the way, it’s the longest- running reality…
D. CHAPMAN: … reality show in history. Yes, sir.
HANNITY: Wow, and anyway, so I’m watching you. You are constantly putting yourselves in the middle of really one dangerous situation after another. Do you even think twice about it anymore? It’s just a day in the life of both of you?
D. CHAPMAN: Well, thank you but I watch your show and so are you.
(LAUGHTER)
HANNITY: There are a lot of people that don’t like me. Can you imagine that?
B. CHAPMAN: And still come on your show.
HANNITY: But I mean — but you’re out there putting yourself on the line. You don’t carry a gun. You can’t carry a gun.
D. CHAPMAN: No. I use non-lethal weapons. So don’t feel sorry for me for that because what I’ve got will put a mule to his knees. So…
HANNITY: Pepper spray?
D. CHAPMAN: We have paintball guns. We have pepper ball guns.
B. CHAPMAN: Pepper ball guns.
D. CHAPMAN: Pepper ball guns.
HANNITY: Yes, and do you use them fairly regularly?
D. CHAPMAN: Yes.
HANNITY: Now, you had an incident recently where you thought you were being shot at and the charges were dropped, because they didn’t find the shell casings and et cetera, et cetera? Tell me what happened with that story.
D. CHAPMAN: Well, the police did an investigation but we didn’t wrap the guy’s hands when we captured him and there ways lot of balls dropped there. I never saw the guy I saw his body language coming at us and the officer said you’re like throwing water balloons at him.
And we tried to stop him but we couldn’t. But the next — four hours later we trapped him again and he ran again. So we finally captured him. Then after we captured him, we, you know, gave him a cigarette. He settled down, and the guy was from Vietnam.
And I said, you know, “Why did you try to kill my family? Why did you do this?”
And he’s like, “Dog, I’m very, very sorry.” So you know, he wasn’t an actually killer. We were looking for him for a felon with a firearm.
B. CHAPMAN: … and we got — He’s wanted for a felony with a firearm. So the probability that he did shoot us is high. The problem is that our crime scene was overtaken by about 150 fans within about 10 minutes.
HANNITY: Because he was there?
B. CHAPMAN: Yes, of course.
HANNITY: Well, you two.
B. CHAPMAN: That’s OK, we get it.
HANNITY: You drive like a maniac. I’ve watched her on the show. Does she drive like that in real life?
D. CHAPMAN: Speaking of driving, let’s go to the next one.
B. CHAPMAN: But you know, they didn’t really have say fair enough chance to really do a thorough investigation. You know, those things happen to us all the time. The difference is now that the spotlight is on us. Of course, you know, they hear shots fired. The satellite trucks come running. You know, and it’s made a big deal of. It happens all the time.
HANNITY: And people know you’re in town too.
B. CHAPMAN: Yes.
D. CHAPMAN: Right.
HANNITY: So you’ve got to pretty much go incognito as long as you can?
D. CHAPMAN: Right.
HANNITY: And then you go in for the guys that you’re trying to arrest.
D. CHAPMAN: Which is about 10 minutes, because the radio stations there, usually where we’re at, try to say, you know, you get free tickets to Elton John if you happen to find where Dog is. Because then the reporters get the first-hand information.
So everyone’s on the lookout to, you know, find out where we’re at. So the — coming incognito doesn’t count. So we’re saying, we don’t drive by now, we pull up.
B. CHAPMAN: We’re not into filing charges on our people. We’re not into that. We’re there to find them, fix them, get them back into custody on the cases that they’re there for. We don’t want to make their life worse. We don’t want more charges to be filed on them. There is no way…
HANNITY: You want him for the charges that you’re getting?
B. CHAPMAN: That’s right. You know, all this other stuff is done out of desperation.
HANNITY: Yes.
B. CHAPMAN: And it’s done out of “I’ve got to get away.” And you know, we didn’t call 911. We didn’t give any police reports. Thereby we couldn’t be fudging anything for any reason.
HANNITY: Right.
B. CHAPMAN: Because we don’t want that attention.
HANNITY: You didn’t give a police report, and you can’t be accused of filing one for false…
B. CHAPMAN: Right.
HANNITY: It’s amazing how people, though, you know want to go after you guys still.
When I was with you in Los Angeles and I interviewed you, and you’re in the midst of this controversy and your TV show is off the air at the time, and you were pretty broken.
I remember you said to me at the time that you were going to change. You know, in other words because you grew up and the words that you used, have you been successful at it or? Because you said you were finding yourself.
D. CHAPMAN: I have. Right. Well, I — you know, I think that those kind of words are done in ignorance. And I don’t have that particular ignorance any more.
And yes, I have grown up a lot, and a lot of people have forgiven me. I think they did a survey the other day and said 85 percent said, you know, give Dog a chance. The other 15 are probably the guys that we’ve arrested. So, you know, I’ve learned…
HANNITY: I’m glad I’m not — I don’t want — forget about you. I don’t want her hunting me. I’ve watched her in action. You’re tough out there on the road. But there’s — you’ve changed — you’re watching out for him. You’re very protective of him.
B. CHAPMAN: We’ve worked very hard to come where we are. You know, we have a lot of children. We have a lot of influences. We don’t live life like normal people live life.
We sort of run in the streets, you know, where people are using slang and words that are really not socially acceptable. And you know, you get caught up in those things. And people find your weaknesses.
And you know, we have to watch ourselves. We’re examples to other people so we can’t be…
HANNITY: So you’ve changed? You’ve learned and changed, and the show — I understand the show it’s 30 percent higher in its ratings than you’ve ever had.
B. CHAPMAN: Yes.
HANNITY: So you’ve become even a bigger hit. How’s the issue with your son, the relationship there, him taping you? Where does that stand?
D. CHAPMAN: Well, Tucker is his name. Tucker — it’s ironic that last night Tucker went to jail for parole violation for the same things that I was complaining about. You know, I love Tucker. Always will.
I’ve got five other sons, and as a father, you know, I wanted Tucker to come back the second week when he said, “Dad, I’m sorry.”
And I said, “You know, son, it’s now up to your brothers,” because now I’m using the whole family. They’re adults now. And so the brothers are talking to him first, but last night, I guess he — we’ve heard, we’ve been on the road. He got in trouble. And he’s safe in jail. When the ambulance is going by I know it’s not my Tucker. He’s — you know, for right now he’s safe.
B. CHAPMAN: Sean, these drugs, it’s really important for your viewers to realize, because a lot of people out there have a lot of drug-addicted children and they have people in their families that are addicted.
But the drug changes them into someone else. And they’re almost not responsible for what they do, because they don’t really even know they’re doing it.
And these are things that Tucker was never taught, was never bred into him, you know. These are things — these are moves made out of money desperation because he has habits to support.
And you know, it’s a very fine line between enabling and being able to say, “Hey, you need help. You’ve got to go on.”
And so, you know, he kind of cut the line for us because he needs to move on and get some help before he can come back around.
D. CHAPMAN: I asked a guy the other day when I was chasing his son. I said, “Does your — you know,” the mother said, “He’s got a gun, Dog.”
And I said sir, do you think your son will use the gun? And the father said, “Dog, it all depends on what the drug tells him to do.” And at that time I realized, you know, the drug has its own personality. So not just because, you know, I’m Dog and my kids are going to be perfect. I think we all have problems.
So Tucker now has to work through his problems and get fixed, and hopefully, the part of me will shine through in him some day. So…
HANNITY: Well, OK, we’ll hope for that and pray for that.
Good to see you both. Thanks for being with us.
B. CHAPMAN: Thanks, Sean.
HANNITY: Don’t ever get mad at me.
D. CHAPMAN: Please watch these three shows, brother.
HANNITY: I’m going to watch them. I got a copy, as a matter of fact. Going to watch it, honestly. And congratulations on that and the success of the show.
D. CHAPMAN: Thank you, sir.
Watch “Hannity” weeknights at 9 p.m. ET!
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