AUGUSTA — During budget talks over the past week, the state’s top law enforcement officials warned the cost of crime-fighting is going up as criminals use the latest technology, including lab equipment to make drugs such as methamphetamine.
“Every time we break a meth lab it costs $15,000, because of the care we have to take and the (hazardous materials team) that we have to send in,” Public Safety Commissioner John Morris said.
He said the chemicals used to make meth and other designer drugs are very dangerous, some toxic and others explosive. It has become a growing cost as drug labs have been raided across the state, he said.
Morris said those types of cases create overtime, as do missing-persons cases and homicides.
“Right now in the Ayla Reynolds case, it is more than $97,000 just for the state police,” he said. “The missing firefighter from Florida cost us a lot of money. We are spending more and more money on what we call the major crimes unit.”
The missing-person case became a homicide investigation when the firefighter’s body was found near Bangor. The Reynolds case, in which a 20-month-old girl disappeared four months ago, is ongoing.
State Rep. Ken Fredette, R-Newport, asked Morris if the increasing costs would mean greater funding requests in the future, and Morris said it would.
“We are not only seeing increased costs; we are seeing reduced federal grant funds and special revenue funds,” Morris said.
Col. Robert Williams, chief of the Maine State Police, said another cost-driver is that criminals are making use of the wide array of electronic devices that have been developed to commit crimes and police are always playing catch-up with changing technology.
“We are solving more crimes today through science than we ever did,” he said. “The demand and the cost of doing that is increasing exponentially.”
Williams told lawmakers their initial approval of $362,000 for three additional positions at the computer crime lab would not reduce the backlog of investigations but would hopefully keep it from growing. He said nearly everybody has a computer, a cellphone and other electronic devices.
“So when a crime is committed, that has to be looked at,” he said. “When we stop vehicles now, we used to look for drugs and stolen property. The first thing we look for now are cellphones because that has a person’s life in it.”
Cellphone searches only occur when police have stopped a vehicle for probable cause, Williams said.
In documents submitted to the Appropriations Committee, the scope of the computer crime unit backlog is spelled out in detail. As of March 30, 417 computers and hard drives were waiting to be analyzed, as well as 71 cellphones.
In addition, 54 thumb drives, 32 digital cameras, 25 memory cards, eight zip drives, eight Xbox game players, six iPods, three GPS units, two digital records and two e-book readers are awaiting analysis, along with 600 CD and DVD discs.
“Some of these can take hours on hours to analyze,” Lt. Glenn Lang, director of the Computer Crime Unit told the Criminal Justice Committee last month.
He said some of the additional positions requested in the supplemental budget would be modeled on the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency’s practice of hiring police officers from local agencies so they can get training and experience in drug cases.
The Appropriations Committee has given initial approval to the additional positions, but work has not been completed on the supplemental budget.
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