UPDATE:Glendale police spent roughly $180,000 in the first month of the landfill search for 5-year-old Jhessye Shockley’s remains.
Police are in the fifth week of their search at the Butterfield Station Landfill in Mobile. They have yet to recover anything significant to their case but have not placed a time limit on the operation. By the end of last week, police had sifted through about a quarter of the day’s trash – roughly 6,000 tons – they believe are most likely to contain Jhessye’s remains.
Timeline of events in Jhessye Shockley case
Landfill search for Jhessye Shockley
Figures released to The Republic after a public-records request show the majority of expenses in the initial weeks of the landfill search were covered by funds from drug-investigation seizures. The largest expenditures were for heavy equipment and medical costs, such as shots and medical checkups for the searchers.
Though authorities have tried to limit overtime during the search, Glendale paid out more than $50,000 to its officers and firefighters who are on scene in case of an emergency in the first three weeks of the search. Total figures for the month of February were not immediately available.
Officers from Phoenix, Chandler, Gilbert and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are also on the search team but those agencies cover the overtime costs for their employees, said Tracey Breeden, a Glendale police spokeswoman.
Last month, Glendale Police Chief Steve Conrad said assisting agencies might help foot the bill for the search. Breeden said she could not provide related details on Wednesday.
A similar search cost Tempe police about $350,000 more than a decade ago.
Despite the costs, Glendale police say they are most focused on justice.
Investigators believe Jhessye’s body was disposed in a Tempe trash bin and taken to the landfill days before her mother reported her missing on Oct. 11. They say Jhessye’s mother, Jerice Hunter, is the primary focus of their investigation into the girl’s disappearance.
“We would love nothing more than to find Jhessye and hold the person who is responsible for her death accountable,” the police chief has said. “I feel we owe that to her, her family and the community.”
Source: http://bit.ly/zlfIrh
Glendale police have set a date to launch a landfill search for the body of Jhessye Shockley, the 5-year-old who disappeared in early October. http://bit.ly/z7ftKP
Crews plan to start the operation at the Butterfield Station Landfill in Mobile on Monday, Feb. 6. While the planning and preparation continues, the Glendale Police Department has identified the people who will be involved and the equipment they will use. Final preparations for the massive search include scheduling, train and medical screenings for the personnel who will be doing the heavy lifting.
According to Sgt. Brent Coombs of the Glendale Police Department, there will be more than 40 people on site every day of the search, which could go on for several weeks. Sworn officers, detectives, FBI agents and members of the Child Abduction Response Team (CART) will be involved.
Coombs said analysis and research have led investigators to narrow down the search area to a specific area that’s about 1800 feet by 200 feet. This area is more than 20 feet deep and contains about 6,000 tons of trash. According to Coombs, that’s the equivalent of one days’ waste.
The area has been secured and the heavy equipment necessary for the searched will be arriving within the next several days.
The Glendale Police Department announced its decision to search the landfill in early January. The launch date for the search comes nearly a month after that announcement.
Jhessye was last seen at her family’s Glendale apartment on Oct. 11, but investigators believe she was killed and her body place in a Tempe trash bin before that. Trash from that area ends up at Butterfield Station.
Officers arrested the little girl’s mother, Jerice Hunter, on Nov. 21, but later released her when the County Attorney’s Office decided it needed more evidence to move forward with any potential prosecution. So far, she has not been charged in connection with her daughter’s disappearance and presumed death.
Hunter, who spent time in prison in California for child abuse, has steadfastly denied any involvement in her daughter’s disappearance, but has not agreed to take a polygraph test.
Her lawyer, Scott Maasen, has repeatedly stated that the police do not have any evidence against his client.
Since Hunter’s arrest, police have said that she is the focus of their investigation.
While police believe they will find Jhessye’s body in the landfill, they have not released any information about what led them there. They also have not said exactly when they believe the little girl was killed.
If investigators are correct in their time line, it’s possible that Jhessye has been in the landfill, which is about an house southwest of Phoenix, for more than four months.
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Im not understanding why it has taken this long for a search to be done. If my little sister was blonde with blue eyes a search would have been done the day after she was missing. Why was the mother put in jail? When the blonde head blue eyes lady left her baby in the car as she says she was not put in jail and her baby is still missing. I dont blame the mother dont take the test if you didnt do anything wrong.
So sad but definitely so true! It’s sad how the media, community, & authority do when it comes to a black person whether child or adult!
It saddens me that this has to happen. Not only that I didn’t even know so much black children are missing like this. However let alone of no new’s coverage at all. And I must agree. What white folk’s do to thier children, they don’t get arrested at all. Nor anything of that nature happend’s to them. But when it done for another race. It’s diffrent. And they want to quickly throw the mother black at that into the prison systems,And I fill that Isn’t right maybe she don’t know what happend. She want her child to be found like everyone eles expecially black people that have lost their child. And It a shame that not much is being done. What can be done first is to exploite this Is In the media. And all black folk’s can be aware of missing black people not just children. But adult’s aswell.
Well the police obviously have more then what they are saying. The mother also has a criminal past & was suppose to be in prison but some odd reason wasn’t. Her own mother was the one that turned her in. The justice system failed these children in protecting them.