Editor’s Note: Philip Lerman is the former co-executive producer of “America’s Most Wanted.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely his.
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Philip Lerman: A careful and methodical process led to the finding of the escaped prisoners
He says it's a tribute to law enforcement that no innocent people were hurt
The question everyone is asking, now that the two Dannemora, New York, fugitives are no longer on the run, is: What took the cops so long?
It’s the wrong question.
The real question we should be asking is: How is it possible that nobody, other than the fugitives, got hurt? No one from law enforcement. No one from the public. Not a single injury, not a single fatality.
That’s the real question because the answer tells us a lot about how these kinds of searches should be conducted.
There’s certainly an element of luck involved. Remember that these are among the most violent fugitives to break out of prison in recent memory. One dismembered his old boss before killing him; the other shot a cop multiple times before running him over with his car. These were not the kinds of people who, when faced with a desperate situation, are likely to make good life choices.
The fact that the fugitives decided to take a nonconfrontational approach at first – they sought out abandoned cabins and decided not to try to carjack anyone or take a hostage – certainly helped keep the public safe until the two fugitives started to go on the move.
But by that point, law enforcement had done two things very right. And those two things were the key to a positive outcome.
One, they were extremely patient. The lack of any positive sightings outside of the area around the prison told law enforcement that their strategy of concentrating manpower on the perimeters that were set up and not diverting it elsewhere was a good one. But it took a great deal of patience. And when they did get good leads, they proceeded with caution, making the safety of officers rather than a quick takedown the main priority.
When officers confronted Richard Matt, there’s a lot of reason to believe that David Sweat was nearby. But at that moment, Sweat had the upper hand: He knew where the cops were, but they didn’t know where he was. So rather than chasing after him – and knowing that he, like Matt, could be armed – they took their time, knowing that he could not get far. And sure enough, he didn’t.
For all the talk of how the fugitives could be anywhere, it was clear to law enforcement that they were still in the woods and that time was on the cops’ side.
Timeline of the prison break and manhunt
Much has been made of the fact that they were headed to Canada; at the rate they were moving, it seemed at times that they wouldn’t reach the border until sometime in the next president’s administration. But in the last days, Sweat, traveling alone, indeed made it within an hour’s walk of the border.
But even if he had reached the border – what then? It’s not like Canada has a nonextradition treaty. Quite the opposite: Waiting on the other side was a fresh squadron of law enforcement officers, not tired from spending 16-hour days chasing them through the upstate New York woods.
Canada had our back on this, and the search wouldn’t have let up for a second.
But something else went very right in this manhunt – and in the long run, it proved to be just as important.
At “America’s Most Wanted,” we often talked about the importance of the partnership between law enforcement, the public and the media and how that partnership was vital to catching fugitives. And nowhere was that partnership as strong, as evident, and as open as it was during this fugitive hunt.
Law enforcement was unusually open about where they thought the fugitives might be. That’s not the most helpful stance in a manhunt – the fugitives, after all, might have access to a radio, and letting them know what you know is never a great idea. But by being open, they put public safety first. And that’s a big reason that no one was hurt.
The public did their part by being vigilant. Thousands of tips poured into law enforcement. And in the end, some of those tips became vital to capturing the fugitive.
And the media were unusually persistent. Twenty-two days is an eternity in the 24-hour news cycle, but keeping the story at the head of the news was a vital part of making sure that the public stayed on the alert.
There are other lessons to be learned from this manhunt.
Clearly, there will be a review of the policies at the Clinton Correctional Facility; heads will certainly roll, and contact between prisoners and staffers will be severely curtailed.
More shortcomings at Clinton will undoubtedly surface.
One that will not come up, by the way, is the procedure of having buckets raised up to the Clinton Correctional Facility tower, as seen in the background of a now-viral video of a Greta Van Susteren report. That video had the Twitterverse abuzz – with people speculating if that how contraband was sneaked into the facility – but it’s actually a fairly standard procedure. When law enforcement needs to enter a prison, they have to surrender their weapons, but rather than leave them in a vault at ground level, which could raise security concerns, they’re towed in a bucket lowered from a guard tower. It’s a makeshift system but a rather widespread and effective one.
The procedure for setting up a perimeter might need a good review as well. We will learn more in the coming days, but it certainly seems as though Matt and Sweat may have slipped through at least one if not more “secure” perimeters.
But the real takeaway is how you go through a 22-day manhunt without any member of the public or law enforcement getting hurt. That takes patience. It takes really good police work.
It takes cooperation between federal, state, and local authorities, who don’t always play nice together. And it takes luck.
Hopefully, it’ll be a long time before we have to put all that into practice again. But we certainly will, at some point. And hopefully we’ll keep these lessons in mind for the next time.
Hundreds of law enforcement officers put their lives on the line every minute of every waking hour of every one of these past 22 days; hundreds of law enforcement officers who now, for the first time, can take a deep breath and relax. All their families were saying prayers of gratitude Sunday night.
As should we all.
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