‘It takes a village to catch a killer’
The city has matched a record for homicides in a single year, but dozens remain unsolved
There’s a police spin on the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” It goes, “It takes a village to catch a killer.”
“The major way you’re going to solve (a homicide) is through the public,” said D. Kim Rossmo, an internationally respected criminologist and former Vancouver detective inspector. “They have to have trust in the police.”
With the shooting death of Yohannes Brhanu, 22, Toronto on Wednesday matched a record for homicides in a single year, at 89, with more than six weeks remaining. By the Star’s count, police have not yet made an arrest in 34 of those killings, excluding a single apparent murder-suicide.
The Star does not know whether arrests are pending in any these killings. In at least seven, police have issued a warrant for one or more known suspects who have not yet been arrested.
Toronto police say the force has a 67 per cent clearance rate on homicides this year — a number which is comparable to recent years. So why do some killers avoid justice? Arresting them is easier said than done. It takes a commitment in staffing for police to cultivate links with oftenalienated, vulnerable communities, said Rossmo, a pioneer in geographic
profiling who’s now director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation at Texas State University.
One approach is to send more beat officers out into communities. Beat officers can learn the patterns and comfort zones for drug dealers, sexual predators and burglars. Perhaps more importantly, beat officers also can develop trust by putting a human face on the police force, encouraging members of the community to come forward with information, Rossmo said.
“I walked a beat for many years in Skid Row,” said Rossmo. “That was very useful.”
Getting beat officers out into communities is expensive and tough work.
The alternative is frightening. The Washington Post studied more than 52,000 homicides in major American cities over past decade and found there are well-entrenched “pockets of impunity” in cities including Baltimore and Chicago where there are plenty of murders and few arrests.
Almost all of those “pockets of impunity” are in low-income Black neighbourhoods. The Post found arrests were made in 63 per cent of killings with white victims. For Latino victims, the arrest rate was 48 per cent, compared to 46 per cent of the killings of Black victims.
Although research on this scale has not been conducted in Canada, cases like those of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls suggest such pockets of impunity may exist here, too.
Here in Canada, it’s also vital to build links with communities that are often alienated from police, Rossmo said.
They could be new arrivals to Canada who come from countries where police aren’t trusted or respected. They could also be members of local marginalized communities, like the poor and the homeless. Efforts to reach out could include marching in uniform in the Pride Parade.
Rossmo investigated pig farmer Robert Pickton, who was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder after dozens of women went missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Many of Pickton’s victims were sex trade workers. Pickton was originally charged with 26 counts of firstdegree murder, but 20 were stayed after his conviction.
In Toronto, alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur has been charged with eight counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of men with ties to the downtown Gay Village.
Solving cases within traditionally alienated communities builds trust and relationships, Rossmo notes. Letting killers remain free can embolden criminals and make residents even more nervous about talking.
A Metroland Media investigation this fall found that a killer who uses a gun in Toronto still has a three in five chance of getting away with murder.
The type of murder weapon isn’t nearly as important a factor in solving a case as the level of community co-operation, Rossmo said. Rossmo notes there’s also an irony to murder statistics: homicide rates are dropping across North America, but so are arrest rates.
“There are fewer murders but we’re solving fewer of them,” Rossmo said.
Crimes of passion by killers who knew their victims — like domestic violence and bar fights — tend to be relatively easy to solve.
Killings by strangers who didn’t have a relationship with their victims are particularly challenging. There’s often a fear factor in gang-related cases, meaning officers need trust to gather information, Rossmo said.
In hardcore organized crime cases, a hired killer might not know his victim or even the motive for a killing.
In Toronto, recent unsolved murders with sharp organized crime overtones include the slayings of Simon Giannini and Antonio (Tony Large) Sergi in 2017, and the fatal shootings of John Ignagni, Sukhvir Deo, and Alfredo Patriarca in 2016.
In York region, recent unsolved murders with a profes- sional edge include Cosimo Ernesto Commisso in 2018, Domenic Triumbari in 2017, Carmine Verduci in 2014, Salvatore (Sam) Calautti, 40, and his associate James Tusek in 2013.
A retired veteran organized crime investigator in the GTA said that police often feel they know who committed gangland murders, but they can’t make arrests because they don’t have co-operating witnesses. Sometimes the victims are suspected hit men, who evaded murder charges themselves.
“It was utter frustration,” the officer said. “You knew who did it but you could rarely prove it unless you got someone to completely roll over.”
Organized crime cases often require a sizable budget, police say.
“They require a lot of surveillance and it’s expensive,” said Paul Bailey, a retired York Regional Police detective said.
Investigating organized crime cases often requires “spin teams” of several officers who follow suspects’ cars discreetly, Bailey said.
Police forces have a restricted number of spin teams, and nu- merous investigations compete for their services, Bailey said. “We would have to make a pitch to get a spin team to work on that,” Bailey said.
Britain tends to have a better clearance rate overall than Canada, while Canada tends to be ahead of the U.S.
The Metropolitan Police Service (also known as Scotland Yard) approach to solving homicides in Greater London, England includes sending a large team of detectives to each killing immediately after the investigation begins.
The Metropolitan Police have routinely solved more than 90 per cent of homicide cases, although that number has dipped to 72 per cent rate this year. Toronto police say their clearance rate is nearly 80 per cent since 1921; it has varied from between 40 and 80 per cent since 2010.
That brings Rossmo back to talking about the need to work to build relationships with atrisk communities.
“Your contacts with them are even more challenging and even more important,” Rossmo said.