800 cops and $1 million a day!?

Watching the daily headline stories about the escaped prisoners in upstate New York raises questions: Granted these guys are dangerous and the authorities should make a serious effort to capture them, at what point does this kind of police action become grotesquely out of proportion to the threat and against the public interest? There are now 800 law enforcement people searching the countryside at a cost of $1 million a day. What supposedly necessary jobs were all those people doing before the escape?

It's like police car chases and San Francisco's "pursuit policy": 

When it becomes apparent that the benefits of immediate apprehension are clearly outweighed by an unreasonable danger to the officer or others, the officer shall not initiate a pursuit or, if the pursuit is already in progress, the officer shall terminate the pursuit.

But those chases continue, though it's not unusual that they cause injury and death to bystanders:

"On Monday, two people driving in front of the Westfield Mall in downtown San Francisco were hurt in a crash allegedly cause be a wanted felon who was trying to evade police. In April, Bridget Klecker will killed while in a Financial District crosswalk. Police say the car that hit her was carrying three men who were suspects in an armed robbery spree. Police Chief Greg Suhr acknowledges that pursuits can be dangerous, but said that why their policy limits them only to situations involving violent felons."