Manhunt: Costs climb to estimated $1M per day
ALBANY – The search for two escaped inmates from Clinton Correctional Facility continued Monday as authorities said they may have found items belonging to the convicted killers in a North Country cabin.
With the hunt for David Sweat and Richard Matt in its third week, police said they are unconcerned about the cost of the massive search — which has included hundreds of state police, corrections officers and federal and state officials.
Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie pegged the cost of the search at $1 million a day, according to the New York Times, as the search at times has included as many as 800 police officers. It's unclear the daily tab to the state, which has deployed officers from around the state to try to catch the dangerous escapees.
State officials have not put a price on the cost of the search.
"No. I don't concern myself with the cost of the search. I concern myself with finding the inmates," Maj. Charles Guess of the State Police responded to a reporter's question Monday about if he knew the cost of the search.
The state Budget Division said it's "premature" to discuss the expenses, saying the focus is on finding the escapees.
The escape has raised new questions about staffing at the state's prisons, as well as overtime costs. The state has closed 13 facilities and eliminated 5,550 beds since Gov. Andrew Cuomo took office in 2011.
Still, overtime costs last year at the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which manages the state's 54 prisons, was by far the most of any agency: $180 million, an increase of 12 percent from 2013.
Guess, at a press briefing Monday near the Dannemora prison, confirmed that police found belongings at a cabin near Owl's Head, a hamlet located about 20 miles west of the prison.
"We have developed evidence that the suspects may have spent time in a cabin in this area. We have law enforcement officers from around the state and around the nation here today searching for more evidence," he said.
Sources told the Press-Republican in Plattsburgh that law-enforcement officials have DNA confirmation that the items belonged to the men. Boots, bloody socks and toiletries were found, along with a water jug and an opened jar of peanut butter, the paper said.
"We cannot get into the specifics of the evidence that we have recovered while investigating this particular lead," Guess said. "We don't want to put information out in the public that could jeopardize our investigation."
Meanwhile, a search over the weekend in Steuben County and in western New York is over, Guess said.
"We conducted a thorough search that has now ended. We have declared that area clear," Guess said. "We continue to pursue evidence in both counties, which included analyzing security camera footage provided by a business owner in Steuben County."
Sweat, 35, was serving a life sentence without parole for killing a sheriff's deputy in Broome County in 2002. Matt, 48, was doing 25 years to life for the 1997 kidnapping, torture and hacksaw dismemberment of his former boss.
Prison worker Joyce Mitchell has been charged with helping the two men escape by providing them hacksaw blades, chisels and other tools. She has pleaded not guilty.
The men escaped using the tools by cutting through thick walls and metal pipes at the maximum-security prison near the Canadian border.
JSPECTOR@Gannett.com
Includes reporting by the Associated Press.