Where murders go unsolved
Police, prosecutors have trouble solving homicide cases in northeast section of OKC
Ten of Oklahoma City’s 78 homicide victims last year were killed in a northeast section of the city where a recent analysis by The
Oklahoman found that their deaths are more likely to go unsolved.
The 10 homicides occurred in an 8.5 squaremile section of the city that is bounded by North Lincoln Boulevard and Interstate 35 and NE 10 and NE 36, an area that is predominantly black and home to some of the state’s poorest residents.
Eight of the victims were black. One was white and one was Native American. Two were female and eight
were male. The victims ranged in age from 18 days old to 52 years old.
So far, prosecutors have filed murder charges against suspects in six of the 10 killings and declined to file charges in another. As of Thursday afternoon, no one had been arrested in the other three cases.
An Oklahoman analysis published in July 2016 found that more than one out of every 10 unsolved homicides that happened between Jan. 1, 2008 and June 30, 2015 occurred in that small section of northeast Oklahoma City.
For purposes of the analysis, unsolved homicides were considered homicides in which no one went to prison for the killing. That could be for a variety of reasons, including police never arrested a suspect, or police identified a suspect but prosecutors declined to file charges, or prosecutors filed charges but later requested they be dismissed, or the suspect won acquittal.
During the time period examined for the analysis, 46 people were killed in that section of northeast Oklahoma City, not including cases in which police shot and killed a suspect, murder-suicides, cases of self-defense, accidental deaths and one case that was still pending in court.
Thirty-one of those 46 cases, about two thirds, failed to result in a conviction, which was about 20 percentage points higher than the rate at which potentially prosecutable homicides went unsolved citywide, according to the analysis. In 20 of the cases, police never arrested a suspect.
Police and prosecutors cited a number of challenges with solving homicide cases, including witnesses who are unwilling or afraid to cooperate with investigators because of a fear of retaliation — a “don’t snitch” culture — or a distrust for law enforcement.