Men Charged With Paying Homeless to Fight
S A N D I E G O, Sep. 26 -- Prosecutors have filed felony charges against filmmakers who allegedly paid homeless men to beat each other for videotapes sold over the Internet.
The video, Bumfights: A Cause for Concern, portrays homeless men either fighting each other or performing stunts that often leave them injured.
Some subjects are pictured punching each other in the face, or stomping and pummelling each other until bloody.
Others are show injuring themselves by smashing their own heads through windows or crashing down stairs in a shopping cart. In one sequence, a homeless man is seen ripping out his front tooth with pliers. Another rams his head into a steel door.
Investigators say participants sometimes were paid for fighting with cash, food, liquor or hotel rooms.
Four young Las Vegas producers claim to have sold 300,000 copies of the tape at $20 apiece via the Internet.
Four Charged, With Two Being Sought
The film's makers — Zachary Bubeck, 24, Daniel J. Tanner, 21, and Michael J. Slyman, 21 — were charged Monday with conspiracy to solicit an assault with deadly force. The charge carries a maximum of three years inprison.
Ryan E. McPherson, 19, was charged earlier in the month with conspiracy and an obstruction of justice charge. He is accused of offering $25,000 each to two San Diego-area homeless men in exchange for their refusal tocooperate with authorities investigating a Feb. 6 fight on the videotape, said prosecutor Curtis Ross.
McPherson, of San Diego, and Bubeck, of Las Vegas, have pleaded innocent and were freed on bonds. La Mesa police are still seeking Slyman and Tanner, who are expected to surrender to a San Diego court this morning.
The charges were filed against the filmmaker after police detectives in La Mesa, Calif., a San Diego suburb, recognized two local homeless men, one of whom suffered a broken ankle during a fight.
After the homeless men were found, Lt. Raul Garcia said police were able to bring felony charges against the Bumfights producers.
"It is against the law in the state of California to pay someone to fight, unless it's a sanctioned sporting event … In this case it's not," Garcia said.
They ‘Exploited an Illness’
Homeless advocate Bob McElroy and other critics say Bumfights exploits the down and out.
"It's a sickness, it's an illness," McElroy said of what leaves the video's subjects on the streets. "It's exploiting that illness saying, 'Jeez, if you throw yourself out in front of a truck I'll give you twenty bucks.' They're not seeing the fact that it's dangerous. They're seeing it as their next fix," he said.
But attorney Jan Ronis, who is defending one of the producers, maintains no crimes were committed.
"They were never paid to get into a fight or not to talk to the authorities," Ronis said. "Anything they ever did on film was of their own free choice."
The lead investigator in the Bumfights video case, Sgt. Dan Willis of the La Mesa Police Dept., agreed the issue of consent will be central.
"Consent is going to be an interesting issue, because on the videotapes you can see that the homeless people appear to beextremely intoxicated," Willis said. "Therefore, how much are you able to give consent under that state?"