In Pennsylvania, up to a thousand law officers were deployed in the 48 day search for a man who assassinated a police officer. Is it legally or morally justified to use taxpayer dollars in this way?

We ask cops to put themselves in danger, so we can be safer. I think doing whatever it takes to catch cop killers is a more than fair exchange for this.

Officers of the law are charged with keeping society safe. They serve and protect the community they preside over. But there are infinitely more people under their authority than there are cops. So how do cops retain law and order? By having an authoritative presence. By protecting one another, by establishing their role in society. A similar comparison is with correctional officers. There are significantly more inmates per cell block than there are correctional officers (sometimes there may be only 1 to 50 inmates) but correctional officers keep control by establishing their authority and presence. What happens when someone attacks a police officer? They are sending a political message that they do not want to abide by authority, that they hate the police and that they are waging a war against them. If the police don't respond with the utmost force, then what kind of message are they sending to criminals and civilians everywhere? It's okay to attack us. We won't fight back. We won't do anything. We don't want to waste your tax dollars. NO. They need to respond swiftly and forcefully to establish that they are the dominant authority in power over any criminals and miscreants that try and attack them or the rest of the society and that their authority is not to be challenged, questioned or tested. People hate the police right up until something terrible happens and then they can't wait for them to arrive fast enough. If cop killers attack cops whenever they want then the police's authority will surely weaken and then there won't be much between you and the murderer that made it that way.

When a nut-job like Eric Frein has declared war on law-enforcement, what makes you think he would carefully consider who he shoots...a civilian, plainclothes LEO, or uniformed LEO? They were all out looking for him, and to prevent more carnage. When someone is a threat...a deadly threat...to society...all bets are off, and all hands on deck!

When someone is willing to do that to authority like law enforcement, there is heightened concern about what he would do to ordinary citizens. My guess is that the citizenry would be outraged if they had him on the run, stopped the hunt for financial reasons, and he killed again.

Well, if you were in Great Britain, it would be likely that, in any high profile murder case, that kind of personnel would be assigned to it. Even "routine" murders get more manpower than typical American murders do. Much of the world finds it strange that, when there's a murder in the U.S., the typical response is to assign two detectives who might be backed up by uniformed personnel. In much of the world, if there's a murder, the response is more typical of the U.K. - a detective inspector is assigned to head up the case with a team of detectives and a squad of uniformed officers dedicated to the case.  They don't get to stop until they can close the case.

Most of us don't go through our day with a sticker on our head that says what we do for a living.  And what we do for a living probably doesn't represent a role invested with authority from society to enforce laws and rules. Now imagine that what you do represents an authority assigned by society, and that you can't go to work without having that role shown to everyone?   And on any one day, a subset of people is willing to do you harm.  So when one of those people takes action to show that they are willing to bring violence upon our symbols of authority, they are the most important matter to attend to, with as much force as necessary.  If not, the clear message to those who would do harm is 'open season.' And as citizens, we support the investment for our own safety and out of respect for those people who go to work every day showing the world what they do and possibly being targeted.

Given the brutality of the assassination, and the risk to others both in law enforcement and in the general public, what would have been the outcry and the consequences of not searching assiduously for the culprit? I can't see any other way this could have been done.

Yes, it was worth it. This is because, as you stated, this was an assassination, as opposed to merely a killing (in furtherance of a crime, or heat of passion, etc.) Assassination is worse than a 'mere' killing. It is an attempt to subvert and change the established order through violence. A killing is bad, an assassination is a killing *plus*.

I think it is important to deploy this much force, not just because police officers are valuable, but because it should be made obvious nobody can get away with killing cops. Such a show of force hopefully discourages the future assassinations of policemen.