Cities other than Chicago struggle to solve murders
Decline in cleared cases spurs new approaches for improving results
For years, Jim Adcock, a former coroner living in the South, has been sounding the alarm: America’s big-city police departments are mired in a cold case crisis.
The national murder clearance rate – the calculation of cases that end with an arrest or identification of a suspect who can’t be apprehended – fell to 59.4 percent in 2016, the lowest since the FBI has tracked the issue.
“If we don’t address it, the issue is just going to get worse,” said Adcock, who recently started the Mid-South Cold Case Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to provide assistance to departments looking to bolster their cold case units. “The hole we’re in is just going to get deeper and deeper.”
The issue is in the spotlight as Chicago officials struggle to solve gun violence plaguing the city. But the nation’s third-largest city, which cleared only 26 percent of its homicides in 2016, is just one among many big cities struggling to solve gun crimes, according to FBI data and crime experts.
The struggle has been exacerbated by politics, fear, a no-snitching mentality, diminished resources for law enforcement and discontent with policing in minority communities, experts say.
Memphis, Tennessee, where Adcock is based, saw its homicide clearance fall to 38 percent in 2016. The city cleared more than 99 percent of its 126 homicides in 1972.
In Indianapolis, where the murder rate has surged, the police command staff earlier this year called on outside experts to help with the growing number of unsolved homicides.
The Midwest city has seen its annual clearance rate tumble since 2014, when 66 percent of murders were solved. Last year, about 40 percent of Indianapolis’ cases were solved, according to an analysis by the IndyStar, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK.
Police there believe part of the problem is that witnesses have become increasingly reluctant to speak out because of fear of retaliation. Half the people who survive gunshots refuse to answer questions about the shootings.
The Indianapolis City Council passed a proposal this year creating a $300,000 witness protection fund in hopes of getting more witnesses to cooperate.
In the past, cities such as Boston have made headway by assigning more officers to homicides and improving investigative techniques.
Between 2007 and 2011, the Boston Police Department Homicide Unit cleared 47.1 percent of the homicides investigated. After putting focus on the issue, the department managed to improve the clearance rate to 56.9 percent for 2012 to 2014.
The department, which saw its clearance rate dip below 50 percent last year, increased the amount of evidence analyzed by the crime lab and interviewed more witnesses at the scene immediately after the crime, according to a review of the Boston initiative by criminologist Anthony Braga and Desiree Dusseault, deputy chief of staff in the Boston police commissioner’s office.
Former Police Commissioner Ed Davis, who launched the Boston initiative during his time leading Boston’s department, said simple changes – such as adding more detectives to weekend duty – made a difference.