This happens mainly on los desporados, where on your way to the train station of the recruited gang members will just bail out and run away and you cant recruit them again, from what i see this only happens when a helicopter is near by, ofcourse due to the riot mode. and other ai will start to run randomly if they see a helicopter, and your recruits are no different apparently, and even if you start a helicopter infront of peds they will start to run off in fear, and i believe ai will do the same thing, especially where there is a way bigger chance of the helicopters spawning
People run when a helicopter is very near but otherwise I don't see why they would.
It seems to me that recruiting them makes them immune to panicking due to very close helis (outside Los Desperados at least).
More hypotheses are welcome.
The GTA:SA community has been deteriorating over a long period of time. Many top runners are not currently present on the leaderboard. This issue has not been seriously addressed yet, but an attempt will be made to remedy it now.
As of this news post, the San Andreas leaderboard will function in