PROVO — Two armed officers guarded the back door, two knocked on the front door and three more crouched in bushes in front of the apartment.

No response to the first knock. A second, still nothing.

The third and fourth knocks were significantly louder, especially because officers could see their probation violator sitting on the couch.

"Robert! AP and P — Open up!" the officer shouted after the fifth knock.

No movement.

The man — who has a no-bail warrant out for his arrest — had missed multiple court appearances, failed to report to Adult Probation and Parole and essentially told 4th District Court Judge Lynn Davis that the laws don't apply to him.

"We're just playing the cat-and-mouse game that they like to play," said Rick Manwill, a probation and parole agent. "They're hating life, but it's a game to us now, it's kind of exciting. One of these times, we're going to be sitting here when he comes out (of his apartment)."

Not every night is this action-packed for Adult Probation and Parole agents. The rest of the week, they're busy filling out reports or conducting one-on-one interviews.

But the field work — slinking around a front porch, hands on guns — is the best part of the job, said Manwill and his fellow agents Ben Lail and Tammy Black, who spent Wednesday night combing through Provo.

The three agents are part of the state program that has 40 agents each working with as many as 80 court-referred parolees or probation cases, said Cliff Cardall, a supervisor for Adult Probation and Parole, which in Utah's legal system is known simply as AP and P.

After being sentenced for a crime, convicts serve jail or prison time, then are placed on probation to ensure they stay out of trouble.

The average probation period for a felony conviction is 36 months — or three years. The ex-convict checks in with his probation officer every month or so, to prove that he or she is staying drug-free, making court appearances and paying any required restitution.

"Our main objective is public safety," Cardall said, "but we have to provide (probationers) with the tools to be productive members of society."

The first stop for Lail, Manwill and Black on this night was to the owner of a tattoo parlor.

"You still coming to our appointment?" Manwill asked his client.

"Yeah," the man responded, and offered his probation officer a tattoo — an offer respectfully declined.

At the next stop — two doors down — the officers left a message, because their client wasn't home.

It's not a problem if clients aren't there, Lail says, because generally that means they're out doing what they should be doing, such as working or completing substance abuse classes.