Paper: Frein manhunt costs at least $1.4M per week
Posted: October 13, 2014 - 5:02pm

The hunt for the man accused of killing one state trooper and wounding a second is costing more than $1 million per week, according to an estimate from The Morning Call of Allentown. The hunt for Eric Frein is now in its fifth week. Roughly 300 State Police officers are in the field daily, split between two 12-hour shifts, State Police told the paper (http://bit.ly/1xLCjuY). Their salaries range from $56,000 to $145,000 and each shift they earn 4 hours overtime. The paper estimated the weekly cost of the state police personnel at $1.1 million. The FBI also has 140 to 200 employees working on the case, which the paper priced at a weekly cost of $243,000. The state police say they have no exact total on the cost of the search so far. "I know that we've spent several million dollars to this point. In the single millions of dollars, but I don't really have an exact number at this point," Lt. Col. George Bivens said last week. "We will have firm numbers, but beyond estimates of a few million dollars so far, I'd be taking a guess." The 2014-15 state police budget is $221 million.