US police spent $11 million on suspect manhunt

Eric Matthew Frein exits the Pike County Courthouse with police
officers after an arraignment in Milford, Pennsylvania, October 31, 2014.

Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) spent approximately $11 million only to capture a survivalist charged with shooting two state troopers killing one of them.

The costly weeks-long manhunt in the Pocono Mountains to capture Eric Matthew Frein took the officers 48 days, local media reported on Friday.

The costs included pays for overtime and other benefits for as many as 1,000 troopers hunting Frein, the Philadelphia Inquirer cited a police spokeswoman as saying.

In addition, search dogs, helicopters, armored trucks and infrared sensors were used during the round-the-clock manhunt through the thick mountainous wilderness.

However, the estimate did not include expenses incurred by other law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the US Marshals Service.

"As the circumstances of the search evolved, PSP identified various mission assignments or deployments that needed to be carried out by operational, tactical and command staff during various intervals (or waves)," said William A. Rozier, Agency Open Records Officer for PSP.

Frein is facing charges of ambushing two troopers on Sept. 12 outside the state police barracks in Blooming Grove Township, Pike County.

He was lying in the woods outside the barracks holding his .308 caliber rifle, before he shot dead Cpl. Bryon Dickson and critically in injured Trooper Alex Douglass.

According to Police, Frein might have spent several months or perhaps years plotting the crime and after the shooting he fled into the woods near his family home.

"Our nation is far from what it was and what it should be," Frein wrote in a letter to his parents, according to the court papers. "There is so much wrong and on so many levels only passing through the crucible of another revolution can get us back the liberties we once had."

AT/GJH

Source-Press TV