Not sure about the financial side, the US government has a massive amount of resources to work with. The cost of employing 500 agents would be a fraction of the cost of say, a single military helicopter.
To say nothing of the bureaucratic fun that occurs when the US government is forced to work with itself in a JTTF-type situation.
1. Departments are territorial and image conscious (most being headed by elected officials or political appointees).
2. Individuals don't get promoted by passing up chances to work on those sorts of investigations. Even if they're nonsense.
If the feds want to check something out in a joint investigation situation, I can easily see 'federal agents want to have a talk' becoming 2 feds + 2 state/county + 2 local detectives.
Comments
Not sure about the financial side, the US government has a massive amount of resources to work with. The cost of employing 500 agents would be a fraction of the cost of say, a single military helicopter.
To say nothing of the bureaucratic fun that occurs when the US government is forced to work with itself in a JTTF-type situation.
1. Departments are territorial and image conscious (most being headed by elected officials or political appointees).
2. Individuals don't get promoted by passing up chances to work on those sorts of investigations. Even if they're nonsense.
If the feds want to check something out in a joint investigation situation, I can easily see 'federal agents want to have a talk' becoming 2 feds + 2 state/county + 2 local detectives.