Joint Homicide Investigation Team praised for success rate in cases

A squad of homicide detectives in Orange and Osceola counties has had tremendous success since forming last year, officials said Tuesday.

The Joint Homicide Investigation Team – known as JHIT — has solved 78 percent of the 36 murder cases it has taken on. That’s 16 percent higher than the national average. The best known case so far was the squad’s first: the Sept. 10, 2012 execution-style killing of Alex Zaldivar the night before the Ocoee teenager was set to testify against home invaders now charged with his death.

“I can tell you this is one of the best things law en- forcement has done,” Orange-Osceola State Attorney Jeff Ashton said when police chiefs and investigators met Tuesday.

Functioning as a graduate-level course in murder, the squad teams seven Orlando police homicide detectives with nine detectives from smaller agencies to share their experience.

The same concept has worked for years in Central Florida where the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation, the City-CountyInvestigative Bureau and the federal DEA drug task force have served as training grounds where top police officials today got their early experience.

“The message is clear … we will do everything we can,” said Orlando police Chief Paul Rooney.

In the Zaldivar case, the team brought decades of experience to Ocoee, where the police department in west Orange County investigated an average of just one murder a year.

JHIT’s four-month investigation used red-light traffic cameras, cell phone software, county jail home confinement records, gas station surveillance video and other means to identify more than six suspects linked to the killing.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Rafael Zaldivar credited that team work and shared experience with solving his 19-year-old son’s death, saying he believed it would have been beyond the capacity of a single agency.