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Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and
Risk Management
Crisis and Emergency Management
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NOTICE: The ICDRM's monthly emergency managment forum, held at the GWU |
| February
2003
Volume 4 - Number 1 |
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Links:
Current events
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SNIPER AFTERMATH CO$T$
By Tania Brunn
Each shooting, the police say, involved a single shot. Thirteen bullets,
at 20 cents each--for $2.60, the snipers succeeded in terrorizing, locking
down and chilling the economy of a region of more than 3 million people.
Officials are still assessing the economic impact of the October shootings.
The economic impact has spread in many ways--restaurants, gas stations, tourist attractions and other businesses reported declines and a few business such as grocery and take-out delivery services experienced rises in sales. Other industries affected include the broadcasting stations such as Fox affiliate WTTG-TV (Channel 5) who used most of their resources and the intensive coverage cost the stations several hundred thousand dollars in lost advertising revenue. Gov. Mark R. Warner estimated Virginia’s cost for the manhunt at 3million. Montgomery County officials estimate they spent $2.3 million on the investigation, with the bulk going to pay overtime costs. County police racked up the lion's share at $1.46 million, nearly three-fourths of it going toward overtime. The rest went toward costs associated with the media, expanded use of the Crisis Center, toll-free tip line, equipment, and supplies. In addition to the county government, city police in Rockville and Gaithersburg had their own costs for patrolling schools and neighborhoods during the crisis. Gaithersburg City Police have not computed their costs yet, as for Rockville City Police they spent about $40,000. The 22-day ordeal resulted in Montgomery County loosing seven of its residents to the sniper attacks and despite all the effort and resources they used towards their capture, they are not the first to try the two men suspected of the killings. U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft announced that John Allen Muhammad, 41, faces a capital murder trial in Prince William and John Lee Malvo, 17, is to be tried for capital murder in Fairfax County. Mr. Ashcroft said he picked Virginia to begin the prosecutions because of its successful death penalty cases. Furthermore Maryland bans the execution of juveniles; Virginia allows it. At least Maryland will be spared the cost of mounting an expensive death penalty trial, for it's the most expensive kind of prosecution. A prison term costs about $30,000/year, (cost for 50yrs is 1.5 million) while the average death penalty case after all the appeals, sentencing, the trial itself, and the costs of the various procedural protections, the time spent in jail by the suspect can cost on average about $2.16 million more than cases that don’t carry the death penalty. Currently, cuts to the prosecutor's office in Prince William County will take $83,387 away from a state allocation of nearly $1.2 million. Fairfax County is scheduled to lose $95,951 from its $1.3 million state allotment. In Hanover County, prosecutors lost $34,082 of the $481,607 due from the state. The state reimbursement in Spotsylvania will be cut $29,716, about 7 percent, from a total of $419,912. But prosecutors said they were focusing on preparing cases for trial, not on reduced resources. The sniper case highlighted the havoc two indigent, not particularly well-trained individuals can wreak with one conventional weapon and the importance of coordination and the challenges of multi-state jurisdictions. If the Washington shootings demonstrate how terrorism might work, the response of the legal system might also reveal how, or how not, to deal with enemy terrorists. |