1 month ago
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New Orleans city officials say the search for 10 men who broke out of a local jail earlier this month has cost the city approximately $250,000 per week and delayed work on other investigations.
“Money is so not an issue to me,” NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told Fox affiliate WVUE. “It costs what it costs for your public safety. And I don’t think anyone here is going to say ‘boo’ to me or the city council about the overtime that I spent.”
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
Antoine T. Massey and Derrick Groves are still at large after escaping from Orleans Justice Center on May 16. They and eight other inmates breached a wall behind a toilet in their housing unit and left nothing but a message that read, “To [sic] Easy Lol”.
Authorities have already captured the eight other men and arrested a dozen people accused of helping them either break out of jail or while they were at large.
Last week, Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson asked the city council for $13 million in additional funding to fix critical infrastructure issues, which apparently allowed the inmates to escape in the first place, local CBS affiliate WWL reported.
“As your sheriff, I take full accountability,” Hutson told council members. “But the conditions that made [the escape] possible are not new.”
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Kirkpatrick told WVUE that the manhunt has taken a toll on law enforcement, calling it a “full-court process” after all officers assigned to the Violent Crimes Task Force diverted their attention to the search.
Metropolitan Crime Commission President Rafael Goyeneche told the outlet he’s worried about the long-term impact on public safety when officers are diverted from “working high-level cases.”
“Those investigations are critically important because the longer those violent and repeat offenders remain free, the more victims we’re going to see in the community, the more crime we experience in the community,” Goyeneche said.
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